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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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First to explain the title, those of you in the medical profession are probably familiar with the expression "when you hear hoofbeats think horses not zebras." EXCEPT, when staying at Animal Kingdom Lodge those may very well be zebras you are hearing. Unless you are me, because it took us almost the entire week to see those dang zebras!! lol
Day One
To start our story I have to say that the best laid plans and all that. Christina, Jonah and I were all supposed to arrive at MCO at the same time and then meet up at the DME area. Except, my flight got in half an hour early and when I got to Level 1 B side there was a line that went on forever!! I seriously have never seen the DME line that long! So, I got in line and left them a message to head over when they got in. I figured that they could just join me in line when they got there. Well...like all things Disney, this line moved pretty efficiently and before I knew it I was waiting in my bus line and C&J hadn't even landed yet Needless to say, we decided to just meet up at the resort.
I give you the most spectacular Disney resort I have stayed in to date: Kidani Village.
Despite my beautifully worded letter we were not upgraded But, they did give us a studio with a partial savannah view. There is nothing more amazing than waking up each morning and seeing animals from your balcony. I would also like to note that the curtains in those rooms are AWESOME at blocking out the light! So good in fact that we had to leave them cracked or else we never would have gotten up in the morning!
Our views and animals:
Although we didn't see any of the "big" animals from our room we constantly saw Okapi, Greater Kudu, Impala, and Nyala. In fact the truck would drive through in the morning and leave food out for the herd and they would follow the from the paddock area (left) to the savannah (right).
By the time we were all settled in (C&J arrived about 5 minutes after I got to the room) it was about 1pm and we were starving! So we walked from Kidani to Jambo House (the 1st and only time, the rest of the time we took the bus) and grabbed lunch at The Mara. I severly neglected my food porn this trip, I apologize! I have a couple photos later in the TR, but that's about it. I will say that I was very impressed by the lunch selection at Mara. I had a flatbread with feta and kalamata olives on it that was YUM, Christina had a chicken pita, and Jonah had a burger. Everyone enjoyed their selections and as we were finishing a CM was setting up to do "Traditional African Face Painting". Christina and I decided that it would be a fun start to our day and here are the final results:
Umm, yea...looking back on the pictures the next day we decided that the "funny looking syphillis" look was not for us.
Our first park HAD to be Magic Kingdom so off we went! We decided that we would not be commando touring and that our only plans were to see where the day took us. We ended up doing the majority of what we wanted to do in MK that night because the lines weren't bad and we made use of FPs. Here's Christina and Jonah in front of The Enchanted Tiki Room, a first for them!
We pretty much worked our way around, and they did the Teacups...and I took pictures, lol.
Our dinner reservation that nigth was at Crystal Palace, a first for all of us, and totally somewhere I would go again. We all enjoyed our meal and we never felt hurried, even with the characters.
Having never eaten there before I can't comment on if anything was new or different after the refurb, but I think the building itself is beautiful to start with.
After dinner we snagged spots on Main Street to watch Spectromagic, they were showing it twice that night, the first clue that the hours I had written down would not be correct all week The last time C&J went the people they went with didn't let them see any parades and ran them ragged through the parks, so of course I felt it my duty to make them relax and see all the magic there is around them. And of course, I love Spectro, and it was so nice to stand and WATCH instead of trying to snap the perfect picture of each float.
My initial plan was to stay and watch Wishes from street level that night, but by the end of the parade we were all dead on our feet from a long day, and evening EMH or no, we were done. So, back to the resort we went and trudged for the first of many, many times, down the never-ending hallway to our room.
Next Up: Day Two, Flowers and Butterflies
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Last edited by unewillow; 04-25-2010 at 10:08 PM..
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Our second day was our first day of having absolutely nothing on the agenda but dinner and we decided that Epcot definately needed more than one day. Our goal was to do as much of the front of the park as we could so that the next day we went could be focused on WS.
I have never been during F&GF and while beautiful, F&WF still ranks #1 with me. I did love all the topiaries though and took a lot of pics of them.
We were pretty successful in riding everything we wanted. Our first stop was for lunch at Sunshine Seasons after we snagged FPs for Soarin'. I wanted to ride LwtL, but the line was CRAZY long, so we headed to The Seas Pavillion instead. We rode our clam-mobiles and watched Turtle Talk with Crush which as always, was a hoot. From there we still had time before our FPs were up so we went and rode Journey into Imagination (1st time for me) and Honey I Shrunk... Then it was back to Soarin'. On our way over to Mission Space we stopped for our free Disney Visa pic and C&J rode the Segways.
We also got a ride on Test Track in there at some point, but I can't remember exactly when. One of my absolute FAVORITE things was the Fairie area/playspot for the kids, it was so adorable! I also really fell in love with the butterfly house because they are gorgeous up close (depite their creepy bug bodies).
We had an earlyish dinner at Jiko this night so we headed out of Epcot, but not before a quick ride through the giant golfball.
Tonight's dinner at Jiko was our absolutely favorite meal of the entire trip. The atmosphere is warm and inviting and the food is very good. These are pics of the wood-fire ovens where they make the flatbreads and the "decorative birds" on the ceiling.
And here are the food pics. Jonah and I had the Artisinal Cheese Plate and Christina had Spice Tomato Soup for our apps. For our entrees I had the Filet Mignon over (the best) Mac & Cheese. Jonah had the Roasted Lamb Loin and Christina had the Grilled Berkshire Pork Loin. For desert they brought out a mini Pistacchio Creme Brulee for C&J's anniversary and then Christina ordered a real one and I got the Jiko Trio (flourless choc cake, caramel ice cream, choc mousse). It was all fabulous and I would go back in a heartbeat. I will note that we paid for this meal OOP.
I will also note that I had a Vanilla Roobios tea with desert and it was the first of many (MANY!) excellent cups of tea on this trip. Jonah was also thrilled anytime we went somewhere that served real coffee and not Nescafe.
Day Three: Tonga, Tea, and Topiaries
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Last edited by unewillow; 04-24-2010 at 10:55 AM..
This was our planned Epcot day, but we decided to sleep in a bit and then grab some breakfast. For some reason I thought that we could get breakfast at the Poly at Cpt. Cooks...but, apparently not because all they were serving when we got there was lunch. None of us were in the mood for lunch so we decided to head back up to Kona Cafe so that I could get some TONGA TOAST!!! I'd never had it before but after hearing so many people around here talk about it I had to try it. OMG...SO GOOD. After breakfast we perused the shops for a bit and paid our respects to the locals.
From the Poly we jumped on the monorail to the GF because I had wanted to do some shopping at Basin before tea. We probably had about an hour and a half before our reservation so I shopped a bit and then we all vegged out in the lobby for awhile and digested. Next time I will know not to have a big breakfast before doing the GF tea because wow, way more food there than expected.
We did the Buckingham Tea because it was my Anniversary Gift to C&J. I had a pot of English Breakfast, Christina had the Mad Hatter Blend,, and Jonah had a Green Tea. The Buckingham includes finger sandwiches to start (R to L they are: Watercress and Cucumber, Egg Salad, Chicken Salad, Shrimp Salad, & Pear and Gorgonzola) as well as a yummy sweet onion tart and duck pate (blech). After that you get a plate with a scone (best ever) and a strawberry tart...which I did not get a pick of. Then you get to pick from the selection of pastries or the English Trifle, we all had the trifle. I drank the entire pot of tea and floated out of there.
From tea we headed back to Epcot and started our way around the WS. Since C&J basically ran through it last time they were here I was determined that we get to see as much of it as we could.
Funny story time...while waiting in line to get our pic with Donald, his handler started to give the photopass photog a shoulder massage. Jokingly I asked where the line was to get one of those (a massage) and we all laughed. Finally it's our turn and we get our pic snapped with Mr D. and as we are finishing up and I am waiting to get our Photopass card back Donald starts massaging my shoulders!!! For the rest of the trip when one of us would get sore we were like, let's go find Donald!
As were were finishing up the WS it was time for dinner so we made our way back to The Seas for our Coral Reef reservation. I will be the first to admit, this is one of my favorite places to eat and C&J really enjoyed their meals here as well. I would have enjoyed mine too had I not had a gallbladder attack between the soup and the entree But, despite that little bump in the road otherwise our meal was fabulous and we got to sit right next to the tank which was AMAZING.
After dinner we watched Illuminations (again, so nice to just watch) and then headed back to the resort.
I'm enjoying your trip very much! I sooooo want to do tea at GF, but it just isn't happening this trip. I do have the same china though... so I guess I'll just have to do my own!
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I've run out of time to read Day 3, but I'll be back for it and more. Your first two days look like so much fun! Great meals and several firsts -- can't beat that!
Sorry you didn't get an upgrade on your room but it looks very nice! How awesome to sit so close at CR. When we went there we would have needed a telescope to see the tanks!
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Needless to say, we decided to just meet up at the resort.
But, they did give us a studio with a partial savannah view. There is nothing more amazing than waking up each morning and seeing animals from your balcony. I would also like to note that the curtains in those rooms are AWESOME at blocking out the light! So good in fact that we had to leave them cracked or else we never would have gotten up in the morning!
The last time C&J went the people they went with didn't let them see any parades and ran them ragged through the parks, so of course I felt it my duty to make them relax and see all the magic there is around them. And of course, I love Spectro, and it was so nice to stand and WATCH instead of trying to snap the perfect picture of each float. 
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Sorry you didn't get an upgrade. 
For the rest of the trip when one of us would get sore we were like, let's go find Donald! 
But, despite that little bump in the road otherwise our meal was fabulous and we got to sit right next to the tank which was AMAZING.
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