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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Sorry about your work situation, especially with the holidays and all. Sometimes it's hard being a mom and trying to work at the same time. People tend to forget that's a full-time job in itself. Hoping it gets better for you.
Sorry things are so stressful at work! When my oldest DS was about 6 months old, I basically went an entire month without seeing him (he was asleep when I left for work, asleep when I came home, and I was working 7 days a week). It was terrible! And even though DH picked up the slack without complaining and DS obviously doesn't remember it, I hated being away from my child like that. So I completely know how you are feeling!
I'm also sorry you'll miss the MSEP. The good thing about January, though, is that with low crowds, you'll be able to experience lots of attractions and hopefully you'll discover some wonderful things that you might not otherwise have had an opportunity to try!
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So sorry about work! I can imagaine what it's like - just the 8 hours at work and all the stuff at home is exhausting enough.
Just think though - you will be rewarded with a Disney trip once all the chaos is over!
Thanks. I'm really looking forward to my WDW reward. Hopefully they don't call me while we're there. I can just tell them that cell phones don't work at WDW right??
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cam22
for work! So sorry that you'll miss MSEP.
Thanks. We'll live without MSEP. I'm sure there will be plenty to keep our minds off of missing it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by honeybee723
Sorry about your work situation, especially with the holidays and all. Sometimes it's hard being a mom and trying to work at the same time. People tend to forget that's a full-time job in itself. Hoping it gets better for you.
Thank you. I'm hoping that after Jan. 6th work will settle down a little. For now it's still busy, busy, busy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by shnewell
Sorry things are so stressful at work! When my oldest DS was about 6 months old, I basically went an entire month without seeing him (he was asleep when I left for work, asleep when I came home, and I was working 7 days a week). It was terrible! And even though DH picked up the slack without complaining and DS obviously doesn't remember it, I hated being away from my child like that. So I completely know how you are feeling!
I'm also sorry you'll miss the MSEP. The good thing about January, though, is that with low crowds, you'll be able to experience lots of attractions and hopefully you'll discover some wonderful things that you might not otherwise have had an opportunity to try!
Thanks. I can't imagine not seeing Cameron after getting home from work. That must have been so hard for you. I've at least been able to work my normal hours, spend a little time with my boy - although not a ton, but I see him every day - and then work from home after he's gone to sleep. It means I've gotten very little sleep, but mom's never sleep right?
I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! Today we hit one month out from our trip! It's very exciting, but at the same time it stresses me out a little because I have so much going on before the trip I'm not even sure when I'll have time to pack. Thankfully we've almost made it through the holidays. After this weekend at least the extra activities should die down a bit.
Because of work my evenings are pretty much non-existent. So I've got to try and get as much done on the weekends as possible. My husband works 2 of the weekends between now and the trip so I'm going to have to figure out how to be productive with a little helper. Should be interesting.
We did have a good time over Christmas. Although it was too much. Cameron is still recovering from all the activity and non-naps. Next year I told my husband that we will do one Christmas gathering with my family and one with his. We've been doing 3 gatherings with his family at Christmas and it's just too much. Plus we end up fighting about it every year because I get jealous because we aren't spending as much time with my family. My goal is a lower key Christmas next year. Maybe we should just go to WDW....
We got a new camera last Tuesday for our trip. It's a Panasonic FZ150. After the pictures we got at Christmas I'm not sure what I think about it. Hopefully by the trip I will have it figured out. And if not I've always still got my old one.
Here are a couple of pictures from Christmas:
Me and Cam
So serious about opening gifts this year
Santa brought him the DVD player and headphones for the plane. Gotta love Santa.
His favorite was the shopping cart
Family picture
Second favorite gift
But why can't I open everyone's presents?
Also here's my updated TODO list (green means completed!):
- Finish packing list
- Make final Disney payment
- Activate rewards cards
- Survive Thanksgiving with my family
- Make Christmas shopping lists
- Get lists of what people want in the Garden Grocer order (for us mostly breakfast snacks, water and diapers)
- Find someone to take care of our cats and fish when we're gone
- Go Christmas shopping
- Decorate for Christmas
- Wrap Gifts
- Survive Christmas gatherings with my family and DH's family
- Figure out transportation to/from the air port (here in MN)
- Download toddler iPhone apps
- Finish purchasing things needed for trip
- Make/buy something to put on the stroller so that it is easy to spot in the sea of strollers
- Finalize plans for what park when
- DS 18 month check-up
- Pre-order photopass CD
- Get tip money and make tip envelopes
- Submit the order to Garden Grocer
- Make room request for location, conjoining rooms and pack and play
- Online check-in for flights
- Online check-in for hotel
- Laundry (it's never ending, but I've got to get the last bit done before the trip so we have clothes to pack)
- Pack
I'm making progress, but I need to at least get out and buy the stuff we need for the trip!
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Well I ended up gaining a few extra hours today to tackle a few things on my trip TODO list. But I really wish I didn't have this extra time. I'm home from work because I was in the ER last night until 1:30 AM with Cameron. He's had a cold since Sunday and last night his breathing got a little rough. We called the nurse line and they said we needed to take him to the ER. We were there from 8:30 PM to 1:30 AM. Needless to say neither my DH or I went into work today. Cam went down for a nap and I ran to pick up his prescription and decided to make a quick stop at the bank to pick up some cash in smaller bills for tip money for mousekeeping and such. Then I've been using the rest of his nap to print out things like hotel confirmations and flight confirmations and such. I had a lot of that taken care of a while back, but then our flights changed. We're taking Cameron into the Dr. in a while. He's doing much better now. He's got a mild case of pneumonia, but he was running around causing trouble before his nap so I'm pretty sure he's on the mend.
Looks like the list is half complete, so that's progress.
Cam looked like he had a good time at Christmas. My little one could've cared less, no big brother was the complete opposite!
Looks like the list is half complete, so that's progress.
Cam looked like he had a good time at Christmas. My little one could've cared less, no big brother was the complete opposite!
He did have a good time at Christmas. Although all he really cared about was ripping the gifts open. He played with a few of the things he got, but then just kept saying "Op, op, op! More!" cause he wanted to open more gifts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OhToodles!
Hope Cam is feeling better soon!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by honeybee723
Hope Cam is feeling better soon and it looks like you guys had a great Christmas!
Quote:
Originally Posted by shnewell
Oh dear! I hope Cam is feeling better very soon!
Thanks guys! Cameron is feeling better. He's still got a little cold, but after the ER gave him a breathing treatment he was doing much better. Back to causing trouble last night so today he's back at Grandma Daycare and I'm at work.
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Disney Magic - Oct 2015
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