Wow! Is he really 10 years old? Let's go to Disney! - The TR - COMPLETE!! 5/28 - Page 39 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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PassPorter's Free-Book to Walt Disney World It’s hard to believe anything is free at Walt Disney World; but there are actually a number of things you can get or do for little to no cost. This e-book documents over 200 free or cheap tips to do before you go and after you arrive. You could save a considerable amount of money following these tips. Perhaps more importantly; you can discover overlooked attractions and little-known details most people whiz by on their way to spend money. Click here to see free sample pages from the e-book! Get this popular e-book free of extra charges when you join the PassPorter's Club for as little as $4.95. A club pass includes access to all our other e-books; e-worksheets; super-size photos; and more! This e-book is also available for separate purchase in the PassPorter Online Store for just $5.95.
Planning: This was the longest trip for us that I have ever planned. Two weeks in our happy place! It was a challenge especially with the dining plan and our son being a Disney adult! I turned to the boards for help and looked for planning tools to use. I wanted a spreadsheet so I turned to the spreadsheet Guru Cheryl Pendry and she sent me one of hers that I was able use for our trip and it was a tremendous help in keeping track of everything. It was even more help in rearranging our plans when our trip had such a rocky start with Jonathon in the ER. I was able to look at the spreadsheet and see how everything was laid out and what could be adjusted. So thank you Cheryl so much for that.
Getting there: We love that we live close enough to Disney to drive there in just 8 hours. We made great time and arrived before we planned which was a good thing since the room reservation mess up delayed things greatly. We also like that it lets us have our own transportation so we don't to rely on the buses although sometimes it is fun to ride those too.
Resort: We love staying at POP, it has been our resort of choice the past several trips. The room mess up was not the fault of the resort, our reservation was changed when our discount was applied to it back in February. The CM who added the discount changed the room from the Handicapp King/Double that it was to a regular room and apparently no other CM noticed that the numerous times that our TA called about our reservation between February and the time of our trip. Unfortunately we arrived on memorial day weekend. The CMs at the check in desk were wonderful and they tried as hard as they could to find a solution to our issue. At first they were going to put us at AOA but it would have only been for 9 of our nights. I think that the length of our stay was an issue. 14 nights was difficult to find. They were able to put us in a handicap room but not with the connecting room for the first night(it was actually supposed to be for two nights but they were able to get that resolved to just the one night) and then we moved to the correct set of rooms the next day. I credit our TA Marisa Garber-Brown and the CMs that helped get us into our correct rooms for all their hard work in fixing the situation. The three of us crammed into that one room was not a good situation. It did bring to light what had been progressing each time we traveled. That was the our son can not sleep in the same room as my husband. My husband snores and that along with Jonathon's autism makes it impossible for him to sleep. So thankfully it was only for that one night and he was able to sleep the rest of the trip. That lack of sleep and his ear infection return is what landed us at Celebration ER. The manager of POP was great, he even checked up on us a few days afterward to make sure all was okay. I was very pleased with the way everything was handled at the resort. So kudos to POP Century and all their staff.
Touring: Even though our plans were flipped around because of the rocky start, we managed to get most of the things we wanted to get to done. There is always something new at Disney this time we took Jonathon on some new rides. Some of them he loved like Test Track, TSMM and Buzz Lightyear. Others he was not so sure about like Barnstormer and Splash Mountain. There will be more trips and more new things to try. We can't wait to ride the new Seven Dwarfs Mine Train!
Feasting: The food at Disney has become as much a part of our love for Disney as everything else. We tried some new places and found some new must do's as well as some not so urgent to return to places. We did the dining plan again this trip and found out that it really no longer works for us as Jonathon is a Disney adult and he just does not eat that much food and the adult menu just does not work for such a picky eater. Although some of the dishes we ordered for him turned out to some of the best food we have ever tried at Disney. So our dining plans for the future do not include the DP (unless it is free ) As always the Chefs at Disney are the best when it comes to allergies and that is one of the reasons we love eating at Disney with the knowledge that they will do everything to keep Jonathon safe and to make sure he is happy with his food.
Photopass plus: This purchase was worth every penny. The ride photos, the character meals, all the photographers and more made it worth the price. This was the last time that this package was offered and I am so glad that we did it.
Length of trip: Even though it was two weeks it just seemed like it was not long enough. There was so much we still could not work in, some of it due to the beginning of the trip but never the less there is always something we don't manage to do. Would we go this long again - in a heart beat and longer if we could swing it.
This concludes this TR, finally! I thank all of you that have read my TR and I loved all your comments. I am not sure when my next TR will be, our last trip was very short and I actually did not take a single food pic the entire trip so I don't know if I will write one for that trip at all. Whew! It is done and I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed revisiting it.
PassPorter's Free-Book to Walt Disney World It’s hard to believe anything is free at Walt Disney World; but there are actually a number of things you can get or do for little to no cost. This e-book documents over 200 free or cheap tips to do before you go and after you arrive. You could save a considerable amount of money following these tips. Perhaps more importantly; you can discover overlooked attractions and little-known details most people whiz by on their way to spend money. Click here to see free sample pages from the e-book! Get this popular e-book free of extra charges when you join the PassPorter's Club for as little as $4.95. A club pass includes access to all our other e-books; e-worksheets; super-size photos; and more! This e-book is also available for separate purchase in the PassPorter Online Store for just $5.95.
PassPorter's Free-Book to Walt Disney World It’s hard to believe anything is free at Walt Disney World; but there are actually a number of things you can get or do for little to no cost. This e-book documents over 200 free or cheap tips to do before you go and after you arrive. You could save a considerable amount of money following these tips. Perhaps more importantly; you can discover overlooked attractions and little-known details most people whiz by on their way to spend money. Click here to see free sample pages from the e-book! Get this popular e-book free of extra charges when you join the PassPorter's Club for as little as $4.95. A club pass includes access to all our other e-books; e-worksheets; super-size photos; and more! This e-book is also available for separate purchase in the PassPorter Online Store for just $5.95.
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Pixie Dust
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So our dining plans for the future do not include the DP (unless it is free 
Would we go this long again - in a heart beat and longer if we could swing it. 
so I don't know if I will write one for that trip at all. Whew! It is done and I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed revisiting it. 
for taking us along for your two-week adventure. 
PassPorter Guide Author
*Melissa
Holly: 
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