Mother-Daughter 13th Birthday/Princess Half Celebration - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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8:30 p.m. That left 2 1/2 hours until park close and 13 attractions to complete! We did a quick regroup and decided we'd save Stitch's Great Escape for last. It's a 20 minute show, which means you have to time it just right to get in - and the attraction gets terrible reviews. We figured it doesn't really belong in the Magic Kingdom anyway, so if we finished one short, Stitch would be poetic justice.
Raced to Under the Sea and found no wait... still in that post-Wishes lull. It takes a while to walk through the (beautiful!) queue even with no wait. The plan was to breeze through the Ariel Meet and Greet as soon as we were done and then check New Fantasyland off as completed. Ursula had other plans. Our clamshell stopped just as we entered the "scary" portion of the ride. We were stuck for 19 precious minutes.
It was 9:00 p.m. when we finally got out... and the line next door to meet Ariel had grown to 30 minutes. We crossed Ariel off the list, knowing we could do 2-3 other attractions in the same amount of time. If we were really lucky, we'd be able to come back and visit her just before park close. Plan B: On to Tomorrowland, then Fantasyland, then Haunted Mansion, Jungle Cruise, with a circle back to either Ariel or Stitch's Great Escape if we had time.
9:09 p.m. Carousel of Progress
9:31 p.m. Peoplemover
At this point we looked around for the Tomorrowland Arcade. One requirement was to play a full game at the arcade. I thought it was over near the gift shop and Cosmic Rays... but we didn't see it and there was no time to look further. (We found out later that we had walked right past it when exiting Space Mountain earlier in the day!! We were so glad to finally get past that slow group we missed our chance for a game and photo.)
9:45 p.m. Tomorrowland Speedway
10:00 p.m. Mad Hatter Teacups
10:06 p.m. Prince Charming's Regal Carousel
10:12 p.m. It's a Small World (never realized how LONG this ride is!)
10:28 p.m. Mickey's Philharmagic
10:44 p.m. Haunted Mansion
We exited Haunted Mansion at 10:54 p.m. Time for one more ride if we hustled. We walked as fast as we could to the Jungle Cruise and arrived at 10:58 p.m. They held the boat for 2 more minutes and then took us (along with 2 other guests) on the last cruise of the night.
This was really a great way to end our adventure. Our skipper was great and we laughed and laughed.
We missed our goal by 3 attractions - Ariel Meet and Greet, Tomorrowland Arcade, and Stitch's Great Escape. But we had a crazy, wonderful time and were pretty pleased with how much we accomplished. 48 attractions in 14 hours! As of March 21, no one has officially completed an Ultimate Touring Plan since New Fantasyland opened. I think it will take longer park hours to make it through everything. We might have finished with one more hour.
By this point, we were exhausted and hungry - and floating on a bit of a high from our exciting day. One last photo op in front of the castle, french fries at Casey's Corner, and we were on the bus headed back to our comfy bed at the Beach Club.
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