As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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The wonderful thing about this particular Adventures By Disney itinerary is that it hits the major highlights of China and Hong Kong. So fortunately there wasn’t much planning for me to do at all. I do love to plan, though, so I had to research what I’d be doing with my On Your Own (OYO) time.
When I booked, I considered adding in a trip to Tokyo Disneyland (after all, it’s so close), but I decided against it because I wanted my first trip to Japan to be long enough to really see the country in addition to TDR. But I did have the idea of visiting the Disneyland Resort in California at the start, thanks to the email that started it all. And I figured a direct flight from LA to Hong Kong would be easier to manage than flying from New York City to Hong Kong.
So there will be three (three!! ) Disney Resorts visited on this trip. And as I mentioned in my first post, my goal is to visit them all, so once this trip is over, I’ll only have Tokyo yet to conquer. My original plan was for 2020, but now there’s all this exciting construction going on there, and rumors of a third gate, so I think 2022 is more likely. Hear that, Chez? And now that I’ve got a 10-year visa, I think when I do go to Japan, it’ll be easy-peasy to stop and hit HKDL & SDL first. After all, there’s a lot of growth happening for both parks right now.
First, the basics. The ABD itinerary highlights (our schedule is slightly modified from the regular ABD itinerary).
Day One – Hong Kong
• Welcome dinner
Day Two – Hong Kong
• Sightseeing in Stanley Market
• Victoria Peak
• The Peak Tram
• Hong Kong Disneyland
Day Three – Hong Kong, Beijing
• Flight to Beijing (all flights during the ABD were arranged by ABD)
• Dinner at Duck de Chine (famous for their Peking Duck)
Day Four – Beijing
• Temple of Heaven tour
• Tiananmen Square
• Forbidden City
Day Five – Beijing
• Hutong Pedicab tour
• Great Wall of China Tour (we visit in Mutianyu)
Day Six – Beijing, Chengdu
• Fly to Chengdu
Day Seven – Chengdu
• Chengdu Panda Visit (this is one of the things I’m most looking forward to. Pandas!! Squee!)
• Lunch at Sichuan Hot Pot restaurant
• Sichuan Opera
Day Eight – Chengdu, Xi’an, Guilin (this is our Amazing Race-style day)
• Maglev bullet train to Xi’an
• Terracotta Warriors Museum
• Fly to Guilin
Day Nine – Guilin
• Cruise on the Li (Lijiang) River (I’m really excited about this!)
• White elephant gift exchange (knowing what ABD trips are like, this should be fun)
Day Ten – Guilin, Shanghai
• Fly to Shanghai
• Shanghai Acrobat Show
Day Eleven – Shanghai
• Old Shanghai – Yu Garden Tour
• Shanghai Disneyland
• Farewell dinner
Day Twelve – Shanghai
• End of ABD
As you can see, there isn’t a whole lot of time in either park. Not even a full day for either park is simply not enough time. Fortunately, the smart folks at ABD scheduled them at the beginning and end of the trip so you can easily extend your trip in either direction for more park time. And y’all know I did that! I also considered booking other things on my own, but being an ABD veteran, I know I don’t want to pack my itinerary too full, because ABD packed it pretty full already (I’ve only listed the big-ticket items).
Now it was time to focus on my pre-days, my post-days, and my pre-pre-days. I wanted to visit Disneyland Resort first, then fly to Hong Kong from L.A. My plan was to stay using DVC points at the Grand Californian, but even right at the 7-month mark, there was no availability. I’m not sure what’s going on at that time, but I found that mostly everything was booked up, even for a random Wednesday night in October.
Sadly, they were only offering rack rates for the Disneyland resorts. Paying $700 a night for a hotel room (that’s really not all $700/night luxurious, sorry Disney) just stuck in my craw, so I decided to go for a Good Neighbor Hotel instead, the Camelot Inn & Suites. I keep checking for discounts, but there’s a 2-week gap between the summer discounts and the fall discounts that falls right when I’m visiting. I’d be afraid the parks are going to be mobbed, but the crowd calendars I’ve checked all seem to have low to moderate crowds. Shrug.
I also wanted to use my DVC points to stay at the Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel, but then, the Disney Explorers Lodge opened and I decided that looked like fun (the Disneyland Hotel is very reminiscent of the Grand Floridian while the Explorer’s Lodge is more unique). I was able to get that booked with no trouble at the 7-month mark. It cost more points than I normally would spend, but because I didn’t spend much time at WDW in 2018, I had the points to spare, and plenty left over to bank for next year.
Shanghai was a tougher choice. Should I go for the super-cute and immersive Toy Story Hotel or the classic Shanghai Disneyland Hotel? I flip-flopped back and forth and finally went with the Shanghai Disneyland Hotel. Now I’m kind of kicking myself for not doing a split stay. But I originally decided against a split stay because I’ll be staying in 8 different hotels already. I’ve graduated to Cheryl & Mark-level travel!
I checked flights to Hong Kong from LAX and American Airlines had the ideal schedule. I also decided that 13 hours was a long enough flight to justify paying for an upgrade. I’ve been hoarding my Delta sky miles hoping I could use them for this trip, but the Delta flight schedule was completely wrong for me, so I’ll have to keep on hoarding those miles for something else. My flight to Hong Kong is a red-eye (which I prefer, believe it or not). I depart LA early Friday and arrive in Hong Kong on Saturday, thanks to the time change. For the return flight from Shanghai to LAX, I will be flying back in time, so I’ll arrive in Los Angeles before I leave Shanghai!
I’d still need to get from New York to L.A. and back at the end of the trip, so I checked all available flights and found a great deal on JetBlue. This will be my first time flying JetBlue, so hopefully all goes well. I have some minor reservations based on others’ experiences. It should be fine, though.
I generally have no problem sleeping on planes, so I don’t expect to suffer too much from jet lag. Also, the entirety of China is on the same time zone, so once I get adjusted there, nothing will change until I fly home.
Up Next: Park, Park, Park, Park
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Mickey's so happy to see me back, he can barely contain himself!
About This Page: 
) Disney Resorts visited on this trip. And as I mentioned in my first post, my goal is to visit them all, so once this trip is over, I’ll only have Tokyo yet to conquer. My original plan was for 2020, but now there’s all this exciting construction going on there, and rumors of a third gate, so I think 2022 is more likely. Hear that, Chez? 
And now that I’ve got a 10-year visa, I think when I do go to Japan, it’ll be easy-peasy to stop and hit HKDL & SDL first. After all, there’s a lot of growth happening for both parks right now. 
I also considered booking other things on my own, but being an ABD veteran, I know I don’t want to pack my itinerary too full, because ABD packed it pretty full already (I’ve only listed the big-ticket items). 
Paying $700 a night for a hotel room (that’s really not all $700/night luxurious, sorry Disney) just stuck in my craw, so I decided to go for a Good Neighbor Hotel instead, the Camelot Inn & Suites. I keep checking for discounts, but there’s a 2-week gap between the summer discounts and the fall discounts that falls right when I’m visiting. 
I’d be afraid the parks are going to be mobbed, but the crowd calendars I’ve checked all seem to have low to moderate crowds. Shrug.
My flight to Hong Kong is a red-eye (which I prefer, believe it or not). I depart LA early Friday and arrive in Hong Kong on Saturday, thanks to the time change. For the return flight from Shanghai to LAX, I will be flying back in time, so I’ll arrive in Los Angeles before I leave Shanghai! 
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