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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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When this trip was first planned, I wasn’t even on the guest list. My sole function was the provider of DVC points (and trip advisor, of course ) and the only person actually going on the trip was my dear friend from work, Ramona. She had spent one night at BLT last year after a cruise out of Jacksonville and it left her wanting for more (i.e. she was hooked ). Upon her return, she immediately began looking forward to a longer trip for this year. We went with the familiar and booked her four nights at BLT again.
Of course, that’s when I began thinking . . . she would absolutely love AKL (the animal prints in her bedroom kind of clued me in ). I talked it over with her (okay, I may have actually just told her that I was going to try and move her to AKL ) and, at the 7 month mark, I was able to switch her to AKL Jambo house with a savannah view with no problem.
Not long after that is when things began to change drastically. When the new confirmation arrived, I brought it in to work for Ramona and she proudly posted it at her desk. Only a few days later, I heard another co-worker, Carol, and Ramona chatting and laughing at Ramona’s desk. Moments later, they were both at my desk with sneaky grins plastered on both their faces. Ramona put the confirmation on my desk and said “You’re going to need to call them back and change the number of guests from 1 to 3.”
She had already told me that her two daughters were definitely not going with her, so I was confused. “Who are you taking?”
Carol started laughing and answered for her “Us!”
Huh???
A little background on Carol first. She had just gone through the worst year of her life. Her dad’s health had steadily declined over the past year and she had been there for him and her mom every step of the way. She left work countless times to take him to the doctor or hospital or to hold her mom’s hand during the worst of times. He passed away in March and she was still reeling from it.
So here stood these two women explaining to me that we would all go to Disney together and what was my response “I don’t have enough vacation time left.” Carol and I pulled out the calendar and counted what I had planned and I was shocked that I actually did have time left. I still didn’t want to commit because this trip came totally out of left field. Can you tell that I don’t do well with surprises?
I kept it in the back of my mind, but admitted to them that I didn’t think it would work for me this year. They looked disappointed, but suggested that we try to plan a trip for next year.
As the idea sunk in throughout the day, I began to realize that this might be doable. There was really only one person who needed to give the final okay and I decided to talk to him that night while the girls were watching a little tv. I started out by saying that Ramona and Carol had this “crazy” idea, but I soon realized that Thom didn’t think it was crazy at all. He didn’t have anything planned for those dates and he was perfectly fine taking care of the girls for that week. I gave him a big not just for me, but for Ramona and Carol too because they needed this week much more than I did.
I immediately sent off a text to Carol and she was thrilled. The next morning we walked over to Ramona’s desk together and gave her the good news that she would have two traveling companions. And that’s when the fun began.
Me being me . . . I had a loose itinerary for us with suggested park plans and restaurants by the end of the week. When Carol saw my Excel spreadsheet, she almost passed out. She was the planner in her family and she had never been on a trip as an adult where she didn’t have to do all the planning. After her last several months, I think it was a relief for her not to have to make any decisions.
Once I had Ramona and Carol’s okay with my restaurant choices, I easily made all of them online. We had decided to do the DDP since our table service meals alone would pay for it.
The months flew by and resulted in only a few tweaks of our plans. Carol had spent a lot of her childhood vacations in St. Augustine and suggested that we leave a day early and stop there for a night. It would be a great break on the way down and would give Ramona and myself a chance to get to know this city a little better.
Since we were staying at AKL and planning to eat at Jiko one night, I thought a surprise might be in order for the girls. Ramona is a single mother who works multiple jobs to keep her family going while never forgetting her friends and Carol simply gives her heart and soul to her family and friends. Despite their full lives, both of them have done so much for me through the years, so I wanted to do something special for them. That something special was taken care of with one simple phone call. Thankfully there were still three spots left on the Sunset Safari. I hinted to them that there was a surprise, but they didn’t find out what it was until the night before.
The final addition to our plans came about when I checked out the F&WF brochure that I received in the mail. The new 3D party sounded like a fabulous way to spend the last night of our trip - - a perfect finale! Unfortunately, I waited until about a month before our trip to call and it was completely booked! Fortunately, I had my suspicions that the first CM might have been new on the job , so I called back a couple of days before our trip and easily reserved us three spots!
So with all of our plans in place and my bags almost packed, you might ask “What did you tell your girls?” Well, in true Koenigs fashion, I lied. I waited until the day before we were leaving and told them that I was going to a work conference in St. Augustine with Ms. Carol and Ms. Ramona. Neither one really seemed to care. Maddie’s response was “Can you bring me back a Webkinz? And not a monkey one.”
Mary Devall must have been thinking about the trip throughout the day because she said later that night. “What is this conference about? You three don’t even do the same job.” Okay, first of all, how do you even know that we don’t do the same job? I think I said something about team building and left it at that.
When I put two tired little girls to bed that night, emotions started surfacing. Maddie started crying when I tucked her in, but I was able to calm her down fairly easily. Mary Devall, on the other hand, came out of her bedroom to blow her nose about ten minutes later and I realized that she had been crying. She just cried over and over that she was used to Daddy being gone (which made Thom feel so very special ), but she wasn’t used to being apart from me. When I thought about it, she was right. I had been with her almost every single night for the past six months. I finally calmed her down also, but it took a little longer. I knew they would be okay, but I just hated making them so sad. By the time that I spoke with them the next day on the phone, they were perfectly happy and asking me that age old question “Did you get us anything yet?”
The title of this trip report results from one of our numerous chatty sessions in the months, weeks and finally days leading up to this trip. One of our co-workers had recently returned from a solo cruise and confided that her “name” on the cruise had been “Ramona.” Well, that started it for us. We spent days trying to figure out what our “trip names” would be and even took suggestions from our co-workers. In honor of our dogs, we finally came up with “Holly” for Carol and “Heidi” for me. Ramona’s dog is named Nala which didn’t fit in our “H” scheme, but we quickly came up with a perfect one for her, Honey. Word spread and, before we knew it, our entire floor seemed to be calling us by our trip names. This was going to be some trip.
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About This Page: 
My sole function was the provider of DVC points (and trip advisor, of course 
) and the only person actually going on the trip was my dear friend from work, Ramona. She had spent one night at BLT last year after a cruise out of Jacksonville and it left her wanting for more (i.e. she was hooked 
). Upon her return, she immediately began looking forward to a longer trip for this year. We went with the familiar and booked her four nights at BLT again.
. . . she would absolutely love AKL (the animal prints in her bedroom kind of clued me in 
) and, at the 7 month mark, I was able to switch her to AKL Jambo house with a savannah view with no problem.
Her dad’s health had steadily declined over the past year and she had been there for him and her mom every step of the way. She left work countless times to take him to the doctor or hospital or to hold her mom’s hand during the worst of times. He passed away in March and she was still reeling from it.
He didn’t have anything planned for those dates and he was perfectly fine taking care of the girls for that week. I gave him a big 
not just for me, but for Ramona and Carol too because they needed this week much more than I did. 
The next morning we walked over to Ramona’s desk together and gave her the good news that she would have two traveling companions. And that’s when the fun began. 
Despite their full lives, both of them have done so much for me through the years, so I wanted to do something special for them. That something special was taken care of with one simple phone call. Thankfully there were still three spots left on the Sunset Safari. 
I hinted to them that there was a surprise, but they didn’t find out what it was until the night before.
Fortunately, I had my suspicions that the first CM might have been new on the job 
Well, in true Koenigs fashion, I lied. 
Okay, first of all, how do you even know that we don’t do the same job? I think I said something about team building and left it at that. 
Maddie started crying when I tucked her in, but I was able to calm her down fairly easily. Mary Devall, on the other hand, came out of her bedroom to blow her nose about ten minutes later and I realized that she had been crying. 
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Pixie Dust
Cassie
Liz 
Previous trips: POFQ 2005 & 2007, Boardwalk 2008, BCV & AKLV 2009 (our honeymoon) & 2012, BCV & BLT 2011, BCV 2013, AKLV 2014
Susan
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