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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Hi guys, do any of you have a particular favourite port adventure in Nassau? I fancy the Blue lagoon island beach day, but not sure if Atlantis is a better option. We have the first seating for dinner so want to make sure we have the option of being back on board in good time to get glammed up.
The third time, we stayed on the ship, although many folks were headed to Atlantis. It was December and we just weren't sure about the weather and water tempts, etc.
We, too, are main dining folks and each time we did return in time to get cleaned up for dinner.
Have a great cruise!
We recently returned from a 4 night Disney Dream cruise.
We chose to do the Atlantis Aquaventure because for years (probably decades, actually) we have thought "going on a vacation to the Atlantis resort would be really neat" and we figured the port adventure would be a good way to explore it and decide if we REALLY wanted to do that in the future, plus it gave us a "water park" which we were not going to be doing for the land side of our trip.
Our day was a mix of sunny and cloudy for part of the morning, and then the sky opened up and it rained like crazy, thunder and all, for quite a while. We were in swim suits already at that point, so we didn't care about ourselves getting wet, but we did go and (after quite a bit of walking around to find it) put our day bag into a locker at the hospitality center to keep it dry for the rest of the day (in hind sight, the very first thing we should have done is gotten a locker...the small is $9 and holds a decent-sized tote plus a couple pairs of shoes (we had aquashoes to change into)). Then we hung out until it stopped raining and went and got lunch and then did more aquaventure. Then change and the aquarium and off to the bus for the ride back. We were back to the boat at maybe 4 ? Certainly in plenty of time for a main seating for dinner.
We are VERY glad we did Aquaventure. It was enjoyable even with the rain.
We also learned that Atlantis is somewhere we (1) would not want to stay; and (2) is not somewhere we would want to do again (the once was good, and enough, for us). So it was well worth it for us to do the Aquaventure port adventure.
The third time, we stayed on the ship, although many folks were headed to Atlantis. It was December and we just weren't sure about the weather and water tempts, etc.
We, too, are main dining folks and each time we did return in time to get cleaned up for dinner.
Have a great cruise!
Thanks for the link, your report was really useful and is definately swaying me even more to the blue lagoon beach day. I would definately want the morning departure though given the timings, if you reserve the PO online do you specify the time at that point or is it luck of the draw?
We recently returned from a 4 night Disney Dream cruise.
We chose to do the Atlantis Aquaventure because for years (probably decades, actually) we have thought "going on a vacation to the Atlantis resort would be really neat" and we figured the port adventure would be a good way to explore it and decide if we REALLY wanted to do that in the future, plus it gave us a "water park" which we were not going to be doing for the land side of our trip.
Our day was a mix of sunny and cloudy for part of the morning, and then the sky opened up and it rained like crazy, thunder and all, for quite a while. We were in swim suits already at that point, so we didn't care about ourselves getting wet, but we did go and (after quite a bit of walking around to find it) put our day bag into a locker at the hospitality center to keep it dry for the rest of the day (in hind sight, the very first thing we should have done is gotten a locker...the small is $9 and holds a decent-sized tote plus a couple pairs of shoes (we had aquashoes to change into)). Then we hung out until it stopped raining and went and got lunch and then did more aquaventure. Then change and the aquarium and off to the bus for the ride back. We were back to the boat at maybe 4 ? Certainly in plenty of time for a main seating for dinner.
We are VERY glad we did Aquaventure. It was enjoyable even with the rain.
We also learned that Atlantis is somewhere we (1) would not want to stay; and (2) is not somewhere we would want to do again (the once was good, and enough, for us). So it was well worth it for us to do the Aquaventure port adventure.
YMMV.
-SW
Thank you for the advice, I've read reviews with differing opinions of Atlantis. When did you sail? We are booked on 1st June 2014 and I'm hoping for sunshine What were your highlights of your trip? Any definate dos or donts?
Thanks for the link, your report was really useful and is definately swaying me even more to the blue lagoon beach day. I would definately want the morning departure though given the timings, if you reserve the PO online do you specify the time at that point or is it luck of the draw?
You can reserve the specific time for the Port Adventure when you reserve on-line. Specific choices will be given and you can pick the one you want. . . if it is still available.
We've done 4 visits to Nassau. We did a walking tour on our own once, Blue Lagoon and the swim with dolphins (see my sig pic), Atlantis, and staying on the ship. I'd say Blue Lagoon was my favorite, but Atlantis is something to experience once.
Thank you for the advice, I've read reviews with differing opinions of Atlantis. When did you sail? We are booked on 1st June 2014 and I'm hoping for sunshine What were your highlights of your trip? Any definate dos or donts?
Most welcome.
We sailed Sept 15.
I am going to post a trip report soon for both our cruise and the land-side (probably do them as two separate TRs), and will make sure to address highlights and dos and don'ts in it.
One thing we did learn: if there is something you just *must* do (e.g. take a ride on Aquaduck), get it in early. Things happen (like, er, an emergency trip to the medical center.... and the medical issue causing it meaning "No Aquaduck for You!") that can disrupt your plans or make you have to change 'em around. On our next cruise, we are getting in an Aquaduck ride early on so we have done it at least once :-) This applies to the land-side too. We had scheduled what we wanted to do when at WDW in advance of the trip... Lets just say the schedule underwent major modifications in real time once we were actually there :-)
So, flexibility is important. And, just RELAXING and going with the flow :-)
At Atlantis:
- the aquarium/"the Dig" is pretty neat; note that you can walk through it fairly quickly if you want to (we did, at a pace that let us look, but we didn't stop along the way through)
- if you are going to wear any kind of glasses (sunglasses, Rx eyeglasses) on the lazy river part of Aquaventure: SECURE THEM TO YOUR HEAD. Get a good pair of eye-glass retainers (preferably ones that go right up against the back of your head to FIRMLY HOLD the glasses in place) and USE THEM. I am not kidding here -- The lazy river is NOT a calm meandering river... there are parts of it that WILL knock unsecured glasses off very easily. We watched as one of the lifeguards actually managed to "rescue" a lady's eyeglasses that had gotten knocked off when the lady got tossed into the water (I was VERY impressed the lifeguard managed to actually get the glasses, which were well under the water and flowing with the current). SECURE GLASSES OR DO NOT WEAR THEM.
- study a map of the Atlantis resort. We spent a lot of time in the pouring thunderstorm rain trying to get to the hospitality center where the lockers were. We followed the signs and they send us on a meandering walk that seemed to take forever. Later, we discovered much more direct routes along the perimeter that we wish we knew about before.
- get a locker first thing. it is cheap, it locks, and you will have fewer things to worry about while exploring the water park area.
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