Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay (Lake Towers) 6/4-6/12/10 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay (Lake Towers) 6/4-6/12/10
Whenever we get back from a Disney trip I have what I, and maybe some others, refer to as the “Disney Blues”. I don’t know why that is since I already know we are returning in October but it has taken me a month to get down to organizing and looking at all my notes from our last trip. I do this after every trip actually. It’s like I need some time to come to the realization that I am now “outside the bubble”. This time I actually have excuses. About 2 days after we came home my DMIL arrived for 2 weeks. At the same time I had to prepare for our annual physical inventory at work so there wasn’t a moment to breathe, not to mention write a trip report. Once DMIL left we had some friends come down for a week. Such is the life when you live at the beach during the summer. Actually, we love it. Anywho, that’s my list of excuses as to why it took a month to even begin to work on a trip report.
Our trip begins where the pre-trip left off…with a near-death experience.
O.k. so maybe I’m being a little dramatic.
Actually, there was an explosion
….o.k. still too much.
We blew a tire on I-95 just outside of Jacksonville, FL. Thankfully a state trooper arrived almost as soon as it happened and she was a true angel. We were able to find a tire place and get the tire put on within the hour and were back on the road. I honestly can’t say enough good things about what could have been a horrific situation. Our plans were to drive as far as Daytona and spend the night there. We arrived around 6 p.m. and drove straight to Volusia Mall for dinner. There is a sandwich place, Mr. Dunderbak’s, that we absolutely adore. It brings back so many memories. DH and I used to live in Raleigh and there was a Mr. Dunderbak’s in the mall there. It was our favorite place to stop for food and drinks….and then more drinks. This was in our B.C. days (before children).
It was roughly 6 p.m. when we got there and the place was fairly empty. We had our choice of seating so we went to the rear of the restaurant. DH had Der New Yorker-a triple decker of Pastrami, corned beef, Swiss, and cheddar cheeses with horseradish on pumpernickel. I had Der Blue Max-a triple decker of corned beef, Pastrami, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut and bleu cheese dressing on rye bread. Devin went with the hamburger with fries and Margaret had the chicken nuggets with fries. We were all stressed from the drive but I think no one was more stressed than DH. He had the largest beer they had to offer while the rest of us just went with sweet tea. It was all fabulous and we were stuffed to the gills. Dessert was out of the question. As soon as dinner was over we got back in the car and went across the street to check in to our hotel.
We have stayed in Daytona almost every trip and we have settled on one hotel as our favorite. The proximity to I-95 and I-4 as well as the abundance of restaurants around it have led us to favor the Residence Inn. The hotel is nice, the rooms are big and clean, they have free internet and full breakfast in the morning. You really can’t ask for much more.
After checking in and getting all of our overnight stuff up to the room, we were wiped out. We immediately settled in, I had a glass of wine (or 3), DH had a beer (or 3) and we just relaxed for the rest of the night. I think we were lights out by 10 p.m.