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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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One of the flight attendants must have heard me say, “Where’s my stroller.” Because she walked off the plane and asked me what it looked like. I was hoping it was my "bestest buddy: flight attendant, but it was actually a nice one. I told her it’s in a red bag that says “STROLLER GATE CHECK” written on it so any fool with a brain cell would realize there’s a stroller in there…okay, I didn’t actually say the last part, but I really really wanted too. She opened the door that goes to the outside and called down to one of the guys getting the luggage off the plane. About 2 minutes later I was being given Big Red, and a massive beat down had been averted. The only other bad thing about this was that we had actually arrived about 15 minutes ahead of schedule, and that little incident completely set us back to where we were.
We headed to baggage claim since we didn’t have Disney pick up our luggage... we weren’t going to a park so we didn’t need that service. I love how Southwest is on the complete opposite side from Magical Express, so we had to go down, then go back up and then go back down again. This was the first time I didn’t have to check in at the ME desk before I went to get on the bus, so that saved us a little bit of time too, and before we knew it we were in line.
We didn’t even have to wait because our bus was already there. We got on and got the first seats and about 5 minutes later we were headed to the Beach Club with a stop at The Yacht Club first.
Hope watched the movie on the bus, pointing to just about every little thing, but it kept her happy so in turn, I was happy.
Before long we were seeing this beautiful sight and then I felt like my vacation had begun.
Since I had done online check-in for the fist time ever I wasn’t sure what to expect. I can’t remember the CM’s name, but he was extremely nice. He asked my last name, and when I told him Boyle, he pulled out a folder and handed me Cody’s birthday pin …that’s right Cody, not Hope, and even if it would have been Hope it definitely wasn’t her birthday. I told him I don’t have a child named Cody so he looked in the computer and told me there must have been a mistake, but wanted to confirm that my name was Judy. Nope…apparently there was another family with the last name Boyle checking in on the same exact day…what are the odds? I told him Cody would have been very upset if he didn’t get his birthday pin, so I’m glad we got that fixed.
He wanted to find me a room that was ready, but there wasn’t one. There was a room that would be ready in about 30 minutes though because it was being cleaned as we spoke, so I told him I would just sit around and wait instead of changing into our bathing suits. I’d rather do that in my room anyway, so I didn’t mind waiting a bit. Besides, it was only 11:45am so we had plenty of time to get our swim on. We headed towards the villas so we could patiently wait for Mousekeeping to finish up.
We found the Drawing Room and had the whole place to ourselves.
So we let Hope run abound a bit in there. She was sooooo happy to be free of sitting on laps and in a stroller she didn’t know what to do with herself.
While she ran around like a crazy fool, I finally got out my camera and took a few pictures of the rest of the main lobby of the villas.
It was around 12:20pm when I realized I still hadn’t gotten a text that my room was ready, so I decided to call guest services. I didn’t want to be a pain, but I was told 30 minutes, and I didn’t want to suck up anymore swim time. Plus we were kind of getting at this point. I called from the hotel phone and a very nice woman answered. I explained the situation and she put me on hold while she called the manager of housekeeping. Apparently my room was still being cleaned, and I was beginning to wonder what condition it had been left in to need this much time. We decided to wait 15 more minutes and if I still hadn’t gotten the text we were going to just take our luggage to bell services, change and head to the pool.
Well, 15 minutes passed and we decided we had wasted enough time, so we headed back out the door to bell services. Wouldn’t you know that as soon as we walked out the door my phone rang. Yes, I said rang. I didn’t get a text because the nice CM that checked me in was personally calling me to tell me that the reason my room wasn’t ready is because they decided to clean the carpets! Okay, well that’s great and all but when will it be ready? He told me they needed to get the heavy duty fans in there to dry everything out and then it would be ready. Heavy duty fans??? I asked him if he had the room number so we could just place our luggage in there and he was nice enough to give it to me.
When we go to the room the carpets were indeed wet, so much so that I almost slipped in the bathroom because my flip flops were soaked on the bottom. The fans hadn’t arrived yet so we ran around the room changing, hiding our luggage, and taking a few pictures. Yes, we were bad but we were so happy to have a room we didn’t know what to do with ourselves.
Our view straight ahead (you can kind of see The Land behind the trees)
Then we were on our way. We needed to stop for a cute little picture on the really cool chair.
Then I took some time to get a few shots of the courtyard outside…this was great practice for my new camera.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, we made our way to Hurricane Hanna’s Grill for lunch.
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but it was actually a nice one. 
I told her it’s in a red bag that says “STROLLER GATE CHECK” written on it so any fool with a brain cell would realize there’s a stroller in there…okay, I didn’t actually say the last part, 
but I really really wanted too. 
She opened the door that goes to the outside and called down to one of the guys getting the luggage off the plane. About 2 minutes later I was being given Big Red, 
and a massive beat down had been averted. 
The only other bad thing about this was that we had actually arrived about 15 minutes ahead of schedule, and that little incident completely set us back to where we were. 
We got on and got the first seats and about 5 minutes later we were headed to the Beach Club 
with a stop at The Yacht Club first.
…that’s right Cody, not Hope, and even if it would have been Hope it definitely wasn’t her birthday. 
Nope…apparently there was another family with the last name Boyle checking in on the same exact day…what are the odds? 
I told him Cody would have been very upset if he didn’t get his birthday pin, so I’m glad we got that fixed. 
so I told him I would just sit around and wait instead of changing into our bathing suits. I’d rather do that in my room anyway, so I didn’t mind waiting a bit. Besides, it was only 11:45am so we had plenty of time to get our swim on. We headed towards the villas so we could patiently wait for Mousekeeping to finish up.
I didn’t want to be a pain, but I was told 30 minutes, and I didn’t want to suck up anymore swim time. Plus we were kind of getting 
at this point. I called from the hotel phone and a very nice woman answered. I explained the situation and she put me on hold while she called the manager of housekeeping. Apparently my room was still being cleaned, and I was beginning to wonder what condition it had been left in to need this much time. 
We decided to wait 15 more minutes and if I still hadn’t gotten the text we were going to just take our luggage to bell services, change and head to the pool. 
Okay, well that’s great and all but when will it be ready? He told me they needed to get the heavy duty fans in there to dry everything out and then it would be ready. Heavy duty fans??? 
The fans hadn’t arrived yet so we ran around the room changing, hiding our luggage, and taking a few pictures. 
Yes, we were bad 
but we were so happy to have a room we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. 
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