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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
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Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
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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.

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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!

Best wishes for a wonderful and magical new year!

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Old 09-27-2014, 10:47 PM   #1
shazza
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Our Fall 2014 Trip Report - Coming to You Barely Live from Orlando

Hi folks. We are currently on our week long adventure in Walt Disney World, and I'll be updating as we go. This report will only be "Barely Live," because I'll be running a day or two behind actual live events. We've scheduled afternoon down time for each day, so I should be able to keep up with reporting. Barely Live may also describe how we are dealing with heat, rain, humidity and initial crowd levels

For the back story and planning details, you can check out the PTR - 9/26-10/03 MNSSHP, Food & Wine, and More." If you haven't seen it, I'd recommend skipping the PTR, since it looks like things are not going to be sticking to the plan

We (DH=Lou + Me=Sharon) left our house in South Florida at 1pm Friday. Rain was forecast for the afternoon, but who knows what will really happen. It was clear, but cloudy when we hit the turnpike:





We knew we'd hit rain ... and we did, as this next photo shows. For periods, you could barely see a car length or two ahead:




I'd been checking in on the Touring Plans Line App, and knew it was raining off and on in the Magic Kindgom, and most of the outside rides were down. As we crossed into the bubble at 3:30pm, it was cloudy, but there was some blue sky showing:





We checked into Bay Lake Tower and our room was ready - good thing, since it was almost 4pm We booked a Lake View Room - this is the view we had:





Apologies for the weird green color in the photo - I'll have to do some editing once we return home. We did have Lake View to the right as we looked out the balcony. I'll post more on the room later. For now, let's skip to the evening's plans. Lou was tired from the drive up in the rain, so he elected to rest. I did a loop around the Resort Monorail track. You can't see a lot of the Poly Construction from the Monorail:





Good views of the Grand Floridian. We are looking forward to staying there in February:













It started raining again as I was riding the Monorail, so I was no hurry to get over to the Magic Kingdom. We had tickets for MNSSHP tonight. Friday - September 26th - the first night to sell out after Halloween itself. Yay for us I was beginning to think the Party might be a write off, but we'll wait and see ...


Lou was awake when I returned to the room, and we headed up at 6pm to check out the Top of the World Lounge at BLT. This was our first visit to the Lounge. Neither of us were hungry, so we just had a snack and a glass of wine:








The House Made Chips with Gorgonzola Cheese were tasty. We relaxed for an hour or so, and I took some photos. There were a few other people in the Lounge, but it certainly wasn't crowded. They have a few more substantial items on the menu, but still a very limited menu. We found the group with screaming kids somewhat annoying (and we like kids!). I guess TOTWL is not considered a bar because it serves food, but it's not very exciting for kids if there are no fireworks.








We left the lounge and I made the first of several tactical errors. Stay tuned tomorrow, and find out if we make it to MNSSHP.
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