Florida flowers and Caribbean cruising LIVE TRIP REPORT COMPLETED 3/8 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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 twelve: we were supposed to book those two days ago?
Sunday 4 January
I saw on the boards that they had opened up bookings for the IllumiNations sparkling dessert party for January and February. Now I’m a bit on the fence about this, but I figured I’d have a look to see what dates were showing up. Well, I went on to the Disney World website, and nothing was showing up for either month. Apparently, I wasn’t alone, as someone else posted that they had a similar issue, and they’d tried calling Disney, and the Cast Member they spoke to knew nothing about it either. Ok, so I guess I won’t be doing this, at least not yet anyway….
On the subject of dining, I did something I’d been planning to do for some time, and that was to work out whether it’s worth getting Tables in Wonderland for this trip. I was conscious that for a couple of days, we’re on the Dining Plan, so we wouldn’t be making any savings on food for that portion of the trip, although I do appreciate that there is the potential for saving on drinks.
I put together a table, using the prices in my trusty PassPorter as a basis, then working out what the saving would be with Tables in Wonderland. I checked to see which restaurants had a DVC discount, and actually it was surprisingly few of them, but where DVC Members get 10% off, I then only calculated a 10% extra saving on top of that. By the time I’d finished, the total saving worked out to $242, and the card only costs $100 for DVC Members, so that sounded good to me.
Even better, we’d get valet parking at a number of different resorts when we were dining there, so I think I’ll be purchasing Tables in Wonderland before we head out, as it seems to make financial sense.
Tuesday 6 January
I heard from Maci this morning, and she won’t be on a solo trip any longer, as she’s got a friend joining her, so I need to change some of our ADRs. However, I wasn’t 100% sure which ones, so I messaged her to ask her…
Wednesday 7 January
A message was waiting for me from Maci this morning, and I tell you what, I so should’ve just gone ahead and made the ADR changes that I thought were needed last night. Have I mentioned recently that I really hate the Disney website? This morning, when I tried to make the changes, the site kept telling me it couldn’t recognise my login details. I know it’s the site, and not me, so there’s nothing I can do right now.
Finally, when I got back from work, I was able to log into the Disney website and get all the changes made. I knew it wouldn’t be an issue to go from three to four people, and so it proved. I was able to snag tables at the same time as I’d had for the three of us.
Thursday 8 January
I was looking in my diary at work for something, and I realised with horror that there was a note for two days ago, reminding me that I needed to book our seats on our flight home. Oops… Of course, as soon as I got home, you can guess what I did? I was expecting there to be no choice by this stage, but we seriously lucked out, as there were loads of choices. The seats we’d been allocated were on the upper deck, which usually we tend to prefer, but this time, we found some seats we liked the look of on the lower deck, so we swapped to those instead. Phew – crisis averted!
I also took the opportunity to change the times slightly for our Fastpass+ for our final full day, Friday 6 March. With all the changing around I’d done to our dinner time, it had crept up a bit, and now we wouldn’t have time to visit the Epcot character spot, so something needed to be done about that, and a couple of minutes later, it was!
Friday 9 January
I was very excited to read on the boards this morning that Remy will be doing new tastings, but sadly the information on the Disney Parks blog didn’t give us much to go on. When will they become available, in time for our cruise? How much will they cost? I’m interested at this stage, but no more than that until I know more about it. Hopefully Disney will reveal more soon…
Saturday 10 January
This morning, there was an email in my inbox from the Disney Cruise Line called “some helpful information for your cruise”, and it was interesting to read. It talked first about pirate night, setting out what happens during the evening, which is good for first timer cruisers. Then it goes on to talk about celebrations, and what you can get delivered to your stateroom, before talking about formal attire. That may seem strange, given we’re only on a four night cruise, but essentially this section says that there’s no formal night, but reminds people of the dress code for Palo and Remy, which is helpful. It finishes off by looking at air and ground transportation, neither of which concern us, given we’ll have a rental car, but again useful, and not something I remember receiving for previous cruises.
I also printed out some reading material for our flight out, as it’s nine and a half hours long, and while later in the trip, I have trip report to write, on the way out, you don’t, so I need to keep occupied. I saw Carolyn (silvercat) had posted her trip report all in one go, and it sounds like an amazing trip, so I can’t wait to enjoy it on the plane. It runs to a total of 69 A4 pages, so it’ll certainly keep me occupied.
Sunday 11 January
It was while reading an update to Maci’s pre-trip report, where she mentioned checking in online at 60 days out, that I suddenly realised we could do the same. I went to the DVC Member website, not realising it would eventually take me back to the Walt Disney World website, but could I get into the darned thing? Of course I couldn’t! I’d sometimes be able to log in, then not be able to get to our reservations, then on other occasions, I wouldn’t even be able to log in. I gave up in the end!
Monday 12 January
Well, I managed to get into the Walt Disney World website today to do online check-in, and I thought it was all going smoothly, until I realised that every time I was modifying the check-in of one of our later stays, it was defaulting back to our first stay at the Treehouse Villas at Saratoga Springs. After finding this out about five times I gave up for the night. Well, I guess at least the first night is done anyway…
I made a very pleasant discovery while doing the online check-in as well. The Magic Kingdom now opens for Extra Magic Hours at 7:00am on our first full day there, not 8:00am. This is great news for us, because we’re usually hideously jetlagged and awake at some appalling early hour. I don’t think I’ve ever slept past about 4:30am, let’s just put it that way. At least now we can get up, check out of the Treehouse Villas, drive over to Bay Lake Tower, check in there, and then hopefully get to the Magic Kingdom for 7:00am. Result!
I also had more good news, as I heard from Sharon (PrincessSharon). Now I knew that when we started to plan this trip, she was looking at visiting Disney at the same time as us, but I’d heard nothing from her in months, so I had no idea whether she’d still be coming or not. I hoped so, and ironically I’d made a mental note to contact her this coming weekend to ask. Well, obviously we were on the same wavelength with that. No promises, but she’s asked for our dates, and plans, which I’ve given her, so fingers crossed it’ll all work out, as we’d love to see her again.
Tuesday 13 January
I’ve managed to get online check-in done for our stays at Bay Lake Tower, and Animal Kingdom Lodge now, but it looks as if you’ve got to log out and back in to do separate resort check-ins, which is a bit bizarre. Trust Disney not to make it easy with their website.
At work, I rang a company that specialises in cell phones for America, as to cut a very long story short, our Tracfone that we’ve had for years, has vanished. Because it hasn’t been used in over a year, it means we’ve lost the number, as you have to make a call at least once every 365 days, so I want to look at other options. I found a company online, but it all seemed too good to be true, so I wanted to check it out. I called them, and it was exactly what I thought.
You buy the phone, and that’s it, then you get your American number, so at least I can let friends have it before we travel, which is the problem I’ve had with other sites I’ve looked at, as with them, you only get the number when you arrive Stateside. You then pay for texts, calls etc., and the charges are reasonable, so as soon as we move on to the next credit card month (oddly this one has been a bit of a pricey one ) then I’ll order that, and that will be something else sorted.
Next: improving our fitness by visiting my friends…
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Apparently, I wasn’t alone, as someone else posted that they had a similar issue, and they’d tried calling Disney, and the Cast Member they spoke to knew nothing about it either. Ok, so I guess I won’t be doing this, at least not yet anyway…. 
Have I mentioned recently that I really hate the Disney website? 
This morning, when I tried to make the changes, the site kept telling me it couldn’t recognise my login details. I know it’s the site, and not me, so there’s nothing I can do right now. 
Of course, as soon as I got home, you can guess what I did? I was expecting there to be no choice by this stage, but we seriously lucked out, as there were loads of choices. The seats we’d been allocated were on the upper deck, which usually we tend to prefer, but this time, we found some seats we liked the look of on the lower deck, so we swapped to those instead. Phew – crisis averted! 
Because it hasn’t been used in over a year, it means we’ve lost the number, as you have to make a call at least once every 365 days, so I want to look at other options. I found a company online, but it all seemed too good to be true, so I wanted to check it out. I called them, and it was exactly what I thought. 
) then I’ll order that, and that will be something else sorted. 
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