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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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This trip report is designed to follow straight on from our Japan trip report, which can be found here: A personal Decade of Dreams tour
Some of you may well be joining me from that trip report, but for those who aren't, just to give you an idea of what you've already missed - and I can understand that there will be some of you who just want to learn about Tokyo Disney, rather than Japan as a whole - here are the edited highlights:
Dates: Sunday 29 March – Saturday 10 April Adventurers: Me, Cheryl (36) and DH Mark (43) Resort: Grand Prince Hotel, Akasaka, Tokyo, followed by Karasuma Kyoto Hotel, Kyoto, New Hiroden Hotel, Hiroshima and the Sheraton and MiraCosta, Tokyo Disney Celebration: It’s our 10th wedding anniversary and I’m visiting the country I’ve always wanted to go to!
So why Japan? Well, it's a country I’ve always wanted to visit for as long as I can remember. Don’t ask me why – I don’t think I could tell you. Perhaps it’s the mixture of eastern and western cultures that fascinates me, but whatever it is, I’ve wanted to visit this mystical land for many years now.
I kept jokingly saying for a long time – probably for most of the time that we’ve been married – that we’ll go there on our tenth wedding anniversary and, the closer it got, the more determined I became to do just that, so it became our own Decade of Dreams tour.
OK, so on our two week tour, the Tokyo Disney was the last part. To give you an idea of what we'd already done during our stay, here are our plans:
Saturday 28 March:
Drive up to London Heathrow in the afternoon and spend the night at an airport hotel.
Sunday 29 March:
Fly out from London Heathrow
Monday 30 March:
We arrive the next morning, so the jetlag will be a killer. Take the airport bus to our hotel, perhaps explore a little, but no big plans – our biggest challenge will be getting through the day! If we feel up to it, we might go out and see the Imperial Palace and its gardens, but we’ll see how we’re doing.
Tuesday 31 March:
Spend the day visiting Asakusa (remember - home to one of the city’s most beautiful shrines) and Ginza, the main shopping district.
Wednesday 1 April:
Visit Ueno and see the park and Tokyo National Museum, before heading off to Shibuya to visit Yoyogi Park and then Shinjuku to see the station and the government offices. Take the evening tour out to Roppongi and Obaida.
Thursday 2 April:
Take a day trip out to Nikko, which should be an adventure, as this will be on our own and will involve negotiating the Japanese railway system!
Friday 3 April:
Take a day trip to Hakone and Mount Fuji.
Saturday 4 April:
Leave early on the Shinkansen for Kyoto. When we get there, find our hotel and check into it, then spend the afternoon exploring Kyoto.
Sunday 5 April:
Take the train over to Nara for the day and any spare time we’ve got, see a bit more of Kyoto.
Monday 6 April:
Spend the morning exploring Kyoto, before catching the Shinkansen over to Hiroshima. Find our hotel and then head off to visit Miyajima Island.
Tuesday 7 April:
Spend the morning exploring Hiroshima, before taking the Shinkansen mid afternoon back to Tokyo.
This is pretty much where you join us - on board the Shinkansen on our four hour trip back to Tokyo from Hiroshima.
OK, so these were our plans and this is where our trip report will pick up:
Tuesday 7 April (cont.)
From there, take the subway out to Tokyo Disney and spend the night at the Sheraton there.
Wednesday 8 April:
Check into the MiraCosta and head into the Disneyland Park for the day with Donna (HiddenMinnie68, who lives in Japan) and her family.
Thursday 9 April:
Spend the day exploring Tokyo DisneySea with Donna and her family. In the evening, see Cirque du Soleil’s ZED.
Friday 10 April:
Spend the day exploring what we haven’t already seen of the two Disney parks. I suspect we’ll probably spend much of the day in Tokyo DisneySea again.
Saturday 11 April:
Head back to the airport for our morning flight back to the UK. We’ll actually arrive early in the afternoon after our flight and then it’s home and sadly it will all be over.
There's a brief introduction for those who haven't enjoyed the ride so far. Now without further ado, on to the trip report itself for possibly the best Disney theme park in the world... but I'm getting ahead of myself... that will come in due course.
Tuesday 7 April – part six: nightmare and magic on our first night at Tokyo Disney!
We made it to Tokyo about four hours after we left and that’s where the nightmare started. I know from what I’d seen before that it wouldn’t be easy getting from the Shinkansen to the Keiyo line, which is the one that takes you to the Tokyo Disney Resort, but even I didn’t realise how fair it would be, including some steps. Mark was almost dead by the time we finally made it to the tracks.
To be honest, what didn’t help here were the Japanese themselves. For the first time I would say, that we witnessed rude Japanese. I appreciate that they were racing to get trains, but they practically knocked us over a couple of times in the process.
Finally, we got to the tracks. We weren’t sure if the train there was going to Maihama, the stop for Tokyo Disney, and eventually I found someone to ask and he confirmed that it was, so we hopped aboard. The train did get fairly full, but fortunately, we got on at the terminal, so at least we were able to get seats, which we desperately needed.
Fortunately, I was able to follow the announcements in Japanese as we travelled and I also knew Maihama station was either the third or the sixth stop on the train, thanks to my Tokyo Disney guidebook.
We got off and made our way out, showing our tickets on the way out. We hadn’t been able to find any ticket machines at Tokyo station, but they were fine about it and the charge was only 130¥ each, very reasonable. The thing I still can’t get my head around here is that you’re never fare dodging without a ticket on the railways here, as they will let you pay when you get off. Not an option we’ve got at home.
When we stepped outside, we knew we were in Disney. It’s amazing how it immediately changed from an ordinary railway station into something much more special and soon we saw the monorail go post. We took it all in for a few moments and grabbed some photos.
Then we headed down to find a taxi to take us to the Sheraton hotel.
One picture grabbed on the way – how cool is this?!
We were quickly there and we had staff buzzing all around us to take our luggage and check us in. We were told that we had been upgraded to the 11th floor with a theme park view. What a magical start to our time here.
The poor guy taking us up to our room was trying to tell us all about the hotel, but all I wanted to do was take photos as we went and it was no better when we got to the room. Mark said he was full of information, but I had no idea, as I was out on the balcony, getting all the photos I could. It was a lovely view.
When Mark joined me, he admitted that this idea of no tipping is really hard when you’ve got staff who go so far out of their way for you and I would agree with that. It’s something that takes some getting used to.
We took in the view for a while and then explored the room. Wow, what a great room. As I said to Mark, I doubt that our room at the Hotel MiraCosta will be this big or grand, but heck, it will be Disney, so I’m sure it will still be magical. The Sheraton is certainly a great non-Disney choice and I can thoroughly recommend it. It’s got a great location and some wonderful staff, all of whom speak great English.
We found the TV channel about the Tokyo Disney resort and, even though it was in Japanese (it did claim to be English, but obviously wasn’t), it was still a useful introduction to the parks and helped to get us into the Disney mood, something that had been seriously lacking when we were at Tokyo station earlier.
Today we walked 3.18 miles The weather today was hot and sunny with temperatures in the high 60s. The best thing today was Miyajima Island. The worst thing today was the hike from the Shinkansen to the Keiyo line at Tokyo station. Today we tried visiting the Peace Memorial Park at Hiroshima And the result was it wasn’t as sombre as we had expected, but rather hopeful. The most magical moment today was seeing the Torii gate and seeing the view from our balcony in the evening.
Ohhhhhhh - it looks amazing already!! I can't wait to see more of it, I've been all over the Tokyo Disney website since I started reading your Japan report...looks like I need to start another holiday saving fund
May I ask what Tokyo Disney guidebook you have? I tried looking on Amazon for one but it didn't give me anything back...
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Tinkerboo (or in the real world, Toyah) Reading Challenge 2015: 0/84
Follow my journey from sweaty panting mess to running goddess (I hope!) Out walking with The Boy...
Time for the Disney part of the trip!!! YAY!!!! Wow, what a great upgrade, such beautiful views!! Can't wait to hear all about this part of the adventure!!!
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It looks like luck was in your favor Cheryl with the room upgrade to a Park View! I'm glad you and Mark made it to Tokyo Disney and your pictures are amazing! I'm so looking foward to more please!
Yeah, we are now almost to Tokyo Disney. Love it! I love love love the picture of the outline of the hotel with Space Mountain in the forefront. That is Space Mountain right? Very beautiful.
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If we feel up to it, we might go out and see the Imperial Palace and its gardens, but we’ll see how we’re doing. 
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I know from what I’d seen before that it wouldn’t be easy getting from the Shinkansen to the Keiyo line, which is the one that takes you to the Tokyo Disney Resort, but even I didn’t realise how fair it would be, including some steps. Mark was almost dead by the time we finally made it to the tracks. 
What a magical start to our time here. 
Disney Magic - Oct 2015
Getting upgraded was such a nice surprise. Looking forward to the rest of the journey.
!!! It all looks amazing! Can't wait to read and see more!
!!!
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