Wanna Have a Destination Wedding? No problem mon! PTR - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Wanna Have a Destination Wedding? No problem mon! PTR
Well, I'd like to start off saying that I'm part of a destination wedding discussion board, but they don't allow for people to write things like PTRs. Only a planning thread a couple weeks before your actually wedding. Well, planning a wedding certainly takes more than a couple weeks! I feel like not being able to write a full PTR about my wedding suppresses my excitement for it! I'm thankful that I can write about it here with my PassPorter friends, so my first statement is THANK YOU for making me able to share my excitement with anyone who wants to hop along my happy wagon with me
To get started, my fiancé's name is Gary. We met in May of 2007 at work, fell in love, and have been practically inseparable since. I have some background about our relationship in my first ever Disney TR (link is in my siggy). Gary asked me to marry him at 2:00am on April 4th, 2009, and I, of course, said yes!
Gary and I are DJs, mainly in bars, and secondly for weddings. We've been to almost every venue in the area. My choice for ours? The casino. It was absolutely beautiful. Not long after our engagement, we got a tour of the facility, and although it was extremely impressive, and would have been perfect, elegant, and fit for a princess, approx. $40,000 just for the venue itself wasn't quite going to fit in our budget.
It was one Saturday night when we had Gary's two boys for the weekend (see PTR for the Disney December Surprise )when I was messing around on my laptop, trying to find somewhere else to have a wedding. We already knew what was in Utica. What about Syracuse? Albany? Rochester? Buffalo? NYC? Finger Lakes? Wow wouldn't a DISNEY wedding be cool?
Disney wedding was our next endeavor. We Disney, so wouldn't that be perfect? We didn't want to do anything more than an escape wedding... Oh. Guess that won't work. We have WAY too many people for that... Okay what about a Wishes wedding, that looks beautiful! We started mentioning it to some of our guests and we started to get "Gee that's going to cost me a lot of money to go..." Yeah. Not only do we have to pay for the wedding itself, our stay, park tickets, meal plans, hair, makeup, EVERYTHING, our guests ALSO have to pay for their stay, park tickets, and a meal plan. And if we decide to go out for some FABs one night, that's going to cost a ton too...
Guess we're looking to be cheap-Os but still try to be classy and elegant...
Then I remembered when I was in high school, I once asked a friend "What do you see for my wedding?" and she replied "Honestly, I see you barefooted on a beach."
Remembering that, I went for it. My mom gave me some insights about how when she went to Aruba, they were at an All-Inclusive resort, and they had these really reasonable wedding packages. So I started with Aruba. Couldn't find any packages I really loved for the price. Mexico? Well they're good packages and prices, but man you have to go through a LOT to get married there... Then I came across Jamaica... good prices, GREAT packages, and fairly simple to get married there... Now to just find a resort...
Once you have the country finding the resort is pretty simple. I found the Iberostar Grand Hotel Rose Hall near Montego Bay. Oh and look at that! JetBlue flys into Montego Bay too! How convenient!
The initial decisions started to all fall into place... but what happens when Grandma doesn't want to go?
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