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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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You'll find the pre-trip report - along with some of the drama that unfolded while we were gone - in this thread here. If you're not already aware of the background to this trip and our nightmare journey home, it may be worth reading this first.
I'm now splitting this trip report into two parts, one of which is our actual vacation, which is what you'll find in this thread. The other part is underway and is about what happened when we tried to come home. It's called our Egyptian Escape.
I hope you enjoy the (much more!) fun side of this trip report, which starts with the day we headed out to Heathrow Airport for an overnight stay, before our flight out to Cairo.
Friday 21 January – part one: “I’m getting hungry”....
Why on earth are the lead-ups to vacations always so hectic? Is it a way of exhausting you before you go, just so that you’ll enjoy it even more when you get there and relax?
Let’s just say that if I told you the stories from where I work (which I won’t be... I value my job! ) you would not believe the dramas and crises that went on in the 72 hours before we were due to fly out for Egypt. :
Fortunately, despite all the dramas, I was able to get away from work on time, which today was at 3pm, as I’d worked the previous evening until late and had been in the office early in the morning. It was just as well that I was home early, as I seemed to have a massive stack of things to do, which included last minute packing, the bits you can never pack until literally you’re about ready to go. I also had plenty of time to catch up on the boards, pay one set of our Disney Vacation Club dues, grab a shower, empty the dishwasher and do a few other bits and pieces.
By the time Mark finally made it home it was about 6.30pm, a bit later than I’d expected him back and I’d pretty much run out of chores to do. I think it’s fair to say that Mark had had an even rougher 72 hours than I had... and that was saying something! Apparently he’d worked very late the night before (I wouldn’t know, as I’d stayed the night where I work, because of my late night) and was then in at 6am this morning. I think it’s fair to say that we both felt like we needed a vacation.
That feeling got even more intense, with the discovery that Mark had lost his camera charger. Apparently, he’d spent the previous night looking for it, with no luck and I wasn’t any help, not having seen it for some time now. We looked and looked and looked and, once again, got very frustrated with the state of the house, as the study is essentially in every other room, as we wait to recover from the water leak in there, so tempers got a little frayed...
Time marched on and, while Mark grabbed a shower, I decided to have dinner, as I didn’t want to leave it too late. He declared he wasn’t hungry, as he’d had lunch late... By the time we’d both finished, it was about 7.30pm before we even headed out to the airport.
About 20 minutes into the journey, what did Mark declare? “I’m starting to get hungry”. that just figures! We carried on our way and had a very good journey along the M25, which is renowned as the world’s largest car park. I don’t think we’ve ever seen it so quiet, which was good.
We soon made it to the hotel, but we carried on past it, as we had a more pressing problem. We needed some cash, as neither of us really had any on us and we’d need to pay for the bus to get to the airport in the morning. We kept driving, wondering if we’d ever find civilisation. Isn’t it just the way? Usually, you see cash dispensers everywhere, but tonight of course, they were few and far between.
Finally, we saw a supermarket and parked up there, assuming there’d be a cash point there. : because there was a bank across the road and one further up the road. Neither had been illuminated at all, as we drove through the street, which is how we’d missed them. Cash in our hands again, Mark headed next door to KFC to get himself some dinner and then it was back in the car.
About 10 minutes later, we were finally at the Crowne Plaza and it was pretty quiet in the car park. We pulled up and parked right outside the hotel entrance, which was great, especially negotiating our luggage and a meal from KFC. Let’s just say that the 7UP didn’t exactly all stay where it was supposed to... At least the cases were light, although to be honest, they were almost a little too light, which got me worrying that perhaps we hadn’t packed enough... It’s not a problem we usually have to worry about, it’s usually more “will the suitcases come in under weight?”
We checked in and were given our room keys. We were on the third floor and, as we went up in the elevator with a group of teenagers, who looked like they were on their first ever time away from their parents (let’s just say they were getting fresh with each other in the elevator!!! ). They got off on the same floor and, as we walked down the corridor, we were both thinking the same thing – “please do not let us be anywhere near them”. : Thankfully, our room came up way before theirs...
When we walked in, we were blown away by the size of it. As Mark said, we didn’t need any upgrade, as it looked like we’d already had one!
Mark about ready to finally tuck into dinner!
Mark finally got his dinner and then we finished off a few chores, like syncing up his i-Pod and recharging it and then it was time for bed. Tomorrow would be an early start, taking us off to Cairo!
The weather today was in the low 30s and very cold. The best thing today was how quiet the drive to the hotel was. The worst thing today was how late Mark got home.
It has begun! Yay! Yay! Yay!! We have the same things happen to us before vacation Cheryl. I think it's Murphy's Law at work! Glad you made it to the Crowne Plaza with minimal distress!
There always seems to be some pre-trip odds and ends to deal with. Did Mark ever find his camera charger? You had a nice, large room to start off your trip. Wondering what happened with your flight .
There always seems to be some pre-trip odds and ends to deal with. Did Mark ever find his camera charger? You had a nice, large room to start off your trip. Wondering what happened with your flight .
No sign so far of the charger. I think it's at work and he's gone in today (I would, but my stomach is refusing to behave ), so I'm wondering if he'll find it there....
I definitely can sense the frustration you must have been experiencing in your writing. I would have been using bad language a lot if I were in your shoes. It's always the little, irritating things that get to me and drive me up the wall.
Great start! I hate it when a trip gets off to a rough start like that! It makes the vacation seem that much more deserved, though, right? Looking forward to more!
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Is it a way of exhausting you before you go, just so that you’ll enjoy it even more when you get there and relax? 
: 
We looked and looked and looked and, once again, got very frustrated with the state of the house, as the study is essentially in every other room, as we wait to recover from the water leak in there, so tempers got a little frayed... 
that just figures! We carried on our way and had a very good journey along the M25, which is renowned as the world’s largest car park. I don’t think we’ve ever seen it so quiet, which was good. 
It’s not a problem we usually have to worry about, it’s usually more “will the suitcases come in under weight?” 
). They got off on the same floor and, as we walked down the corridor, we were both thinking the same thing – “please do not let us be anywhere near them”. 
Deb
Holly: 
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