Dreaming of a Disney spring break! THIS SECTION COMPLETED - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Pre-trip report – part six: our planning takes an unexpected knock...
By early December, information was starting to filter through about what would be in the 2011 Flower and Garden Festival, which helped to get my excitement levels even higher. All Ears Net informed me that Toy Story 3 and Cars unsurprisingly would be the headlines for this year’s festival, but for me, the highlight was the news that, with the new Winnie the Pooh film, there would also be a section dedicated to those guys. To be honest, everything I read in that article sounded wonderful and I couldn’t wait to see how they actually bring those new characters to life. Why do I have a feeling that I’ll be taking lots and lots of topiary photos...?
This wasn’t just to be a Disney trip, despite the impression you may have had up until now... As well as the guys’ trip over to Kennedy Space Center, it was our plan to buy tickets for both SeaWorld and Busch Gardens, as we haven’t been to either since 2007. It’s amazing how quickly the time flies by. Plans to visit both in 2009 fell apart when we decided to take our road trip to Key West instead. Don’t get me wrong – I wouldn’t have changed that for the world, as we saw some amazing sights on the way, but it’s high time we went back to both.
When our booking opened up for the Disney Dream, I was up early to log on and try to get into both Remy and Palo. I wasn’t convinced that I’d get either, as I knew they’d both be popular, and with less than five cruises under our belt, the only people we were able to book ahead of were first-timers. I logged on very tentatively, but amazingly, I could pretty much pick what I wanted, which amazed me. I ended up plumping for Remy for 7.40 for our second night on board and Palo for our final night at 7.30. I was so pleased to have been able to get bookings in them, as I’d read stories on the boards of people who hadn’t been able to get either!
However, our plans for this trip were to take an unexpected knock during January 2011 and early February 2011. Some of you reading this may already be familiar with the events that unfolded as we tried to return home from our week-long break to Egypt. Our Egyptian Escape took its toll on us, both mentally and physically, but the lasting impact was more financial. We were left more than £1,000 out of pocket, by the time we’d paid for two flights home and an airport hotel on the way and, as time went on, it seemed apparent that we wouldn’t get compensation for it, as every company involved either passed the buck to someone else or had a neat clause to get them out of dealing with it.
The net result was less money to put towards this vacation. In a way, it wasn’t a bad thing, as it made me shop around a bit more, rather than just accepting the original prices I’d got. We’d always booked with Avis for our car rental, ever since we first tried them about eight years ago. We’d been very impressed and, at that time, they were the only car rental company to quote their prices including insurance for UK drivers in the States. Well, times have changed and now everyone does that. I did a bit of research, looking at how much other companies charged. It turned out that for both parts of our trip, both before and after our cruise on the Dream, Avis was the most expensive.
I did a bit of research into car rental companies at Cape Canaveral, using my trusty Disney Cruise Line PassPorter and narrowed my choice down to the three they listed – Avis, who I knew were expensive, Budget and Hertz. Budget only came in a little cheaper than Avis, but Hertz came in a lot cheaper. I waited for the new credit card month to roll around and went to book. I got the first section booked easily enough, with the prices coming up just as I expected.
I then went to book the second section, picking the car up from Cape Canaveral, and was horrified to get a quote of £400 for eight days! A few days ago, that quote had been £180.... Avis and Budget were still the same price and no matter how much I tried, Hertz kept coming in at a stupid price. Why, I have no idea? The best price I could find was with Dollar, although I knew from research on various message boards that they charged $15 for the shuttle to get you to them from the port. As their price was around the £200 mark, I figured I could live with a $15 bill. Much better than paying £200 more!
Just as I was about to go ahead and book with them, Mark came up with an idea, suggesting I look at how much it would cost to rent a car for the whole vacation, picking it up from the airport and then dropping it off at the end of our vacation. Ok, so we’d have to pay parking while we were on the cruise, but it was only three days, and it would be easier for our arrival and departure from the port. I got some prices, finding Avis the most expensive again at £481, while the cheapest was Alamo that came in at £374. When I added up the cheapest rates, dropping off and collecting from Cape Canaveral, that was only £20 more! I went ahead and cancelled the Hertz rate. Fortunately, as we were cancelling within seven days, there was no fee to pay. Then I rebooked with Avis and we were finally set with car hire.
Bizarrely enough, when I went through the various companies, I got a price of £395 from Hertz for 17 days of car rental. Compare that to seven days after we came off the Dream for £400 – something’s not quite right there!
Another way of saving money was to reduce the non-Disney parks we’d be visiting this trip. We quickly decided that, rather than getting tickets to both Busch Gardens Tampa and SeaWorld, we’d just go to SeaWorld. I looked around for deals, but very few people sell just one-day tickets to SeaWorld and buying their website ended up giving us the best deal. Best of all, you could also get a second day there free of charge, within seven days of your original visit, which seemed like a good deal to me.
I also left another couple of days free, figuring that perhaps we could take a non-theme park day out of our trip to either Sarasota or St. Augustine. I’ve wanted to visit both for some time and they’re about the same distance away from Disney, so hopefully this time, we’ll finally make it to one or the other. Having researched both, there’s certainly plenty to see and do in both locations. It would certainly be cheaper than a day at a theme park anyway...
With Sarasota, it looks like just one or two places would take up a day. I’ve identified both the Ca d’Zan Mansion and the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens. Both look amazing, but neither come cheap, which is why I think it’s probably one or the other or both and nothing more. It’s a very different story for St. Augustine, with a lot of the attractions much more reasonably priced, and lots to see and do there. I think both would be great days out for us and I’m sure we’d really enjoy them, whichever one we go for.
It was at about that time that we also did all our online check-in for the Dream. Just when I thought I was done, Disney introduced a new requirement, to say when you’d be arriving at the port. My goodness, talk about having to plan! After a lot of discussion and working out what we’d like to do that day, we went with 12.30pm – 1.00pm, figuring it would give us enough time for breakfast at ‘Ohana, an hour or two at the Magic Kingdom, then with still time to get to the port. Hopefully that would work out OK....
Still, I went on looking at our booking every so often to see if we’d got an upgrade. Don’t get me wrong, I was very happy with the idea of an inside cabin and couldn’t wait to experience the virtual porthole, but it was also frustrating. Whenever we use our Disney Vacation Club points for our cruises, there’s no chance at all of getting an upgrade, so I kept hoping that perhaps, for once, as we weren’t using points, we’d get an upgrade, but no such luck.
I knew we were totally out of luck, when Wendy mentioned to me that her cruise (she would be on the Dream about two weeks before us) was fully booked and I went and had a look for any cruises to the Bahamas for April 2011. Absolutely nothing came up on my search! Ok, so I guess that means our cruise is also fully booked then...
We did discuss with Sean and Sharon the possibility of doing an excursion at Nassau, but somehow the Atlantis Beach Day for $95 each seemed a bit much for what was on offer. We instantly said that there was no way we’d do the glass bottomed boat, not having had a very good experience on the last one we did in Castaway Cay or in Spain last year. The Seaworld Explorer Semi-Submarine is still a possibility, but no decisions have yet been made for definite on that!
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To be honest, everything I read in that article sounded wonderful and I couldn’t wait to see how they actually bring those new characters to life. Why do I have a feeling that I’ll be taking lots and lots of topiary photos...? 
As well as the guys’ trip over to Kennedy Space Center, it was our plan to buy tickets for both SeaWorld and Busch Gardens, as we haven’t been to either since 2007. 
It’s amazing how quickly the time flies by. 
Plans to visit both in 2009 fell apart when we decided to take our road trip to Key West instead. Don’t get me wrong – I wouldn’t have changed that for the world, as we saw some amazing sights on the way, but it’s high time we went back to both. 
and narrowed my choice down to the three they listed – Avis, who I knew were expensive, Budget and Hertz. Budget only came in a little cheaper than Avis, but Hertz came in a lot cheaper. I waited for the new credit card month to roll around and went to book. I got the first section booked easily enough, with the prices coming up just as I expected. 
The best price I could find was with Dollar, although I knew from research on various message boards that they charged $15 for the shuttle to get you to them from the port. As their price was around the £200 mark, I figured I could live with a $15 bill. Much better than paying £200 more! 
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