Go your own way - Decade of Dreams - UPDATED 6/24 - COMPLETE!! - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Wednesday 6 May – part one: and where do you think you’re going?!
We were up early again, which meant we could use the Internet before our 24 hours was up, which was neat. Fortunately, most of our packing was done, so it didn’t take us too long to get that finished. No problem with weight for me, it came in at 24kgs, well below the 32kgs limit and only one of the two expanders on the case was open.
We went down to front desk, so that I could check in online, which was simple enough, but I couldn’t get a boarding pass printed. It didn’t give me the option, but I did think they might have e-mailed it to me, so I got the Cast Member to let me check my e-mail, which was good of her. You should’ve seen me with the computer screen, keyboard and mouse in front of me on the desk. Sadly, there was no e-mail with a boarding pass, so I had to assume that I would just get that when I got to the airport, but at least I was now checked in, which was one less thing to worry about.
We headed back to the fourth floor and grabbed a muffin each and went back to the room to have those for breakfast, sitting out on the balcony for the last time this vacation. It’s been a lovely treat to be able to do this every day.
We set off just after 8.20 and left our bags with bell services, discovering that we would then pick them up from an external company. I know Disney needs to provide the best possible value for money, but the way they keep outsourcing is a bit of a shame.
That done, we headed up to catch the monorail and our timing was impeccable, as one was just arriving, so we hopped straight on.
When we got to the Ticket and Transportation Center, I wanted to ride in the front cab, but we had to wait for the next one to come. That was no problem, as we weren’t in a rush. Just as we went to go to the front cab, three girls tried to push past us. The Cast Member asked them where they thought they were going and when they said the front cab, she told them that they weren’t and that she already had people waiting for it, who had asked. As Wendy said, it was tempting to make signs at them as we boarded, but we resisted the temptation. We rode with a mother and her young daughter and she told us that she’d heard the parents telling the kids to push their way in front of us. Please – what sort of example is that to set?
We got some superb views from there, over the Flower and Garden Festival:
The heat was already almost unbearable when we got off the monorail and went into the park at 9.20. I have been shocked by just how hot it has been. It’s been terrible on some days here. We stopped for some Photopass pics as soon as we got into the park:
We slowly made our way through Future World up to the festival guide area and this is where we checked to see where all the topiaries were that we wanted to see.