PTR....Universal Adventures of Dreams and an Expanding world part 2 - Page 17 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Thanks. With so much going on at home, I am going to kind go off on the "wild" side and do more winging it for this one. Ok...I might not wing it, but not over plan it either.
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You one lucky girl. Have fun planning another trip.
It's just getting better and better. I find myslef chatting on facebook each day with a few other girls I know going on this cruise too. We are all childless and it just seems so unreal.
Time is ticking away. I am proud to say I got a lot of work done yesterday, which makes me more relaxed about going. I still have a lot to do, but the majority is done!
One year ago on this date, Aug 16, I was starting my 2nd day of "Disney school" and we were having breakfast at Cape may right about now....and then off to tour the Dream. So it's been 1 year since I have stepped foot on her. I miss her so.....
Luckily I only have to wait a few more months to see her again.
BUT, I do get to see her "little sister" sooner than that. And how little is Little Sister. Well here...I'll show you.....I found this fabulous picture, taken by Posnel on Dis (Ellen) of them docked side by side this past spring. She said I could borrow it! The 2 ships I will sail this year.
They both are so lovely!
This Sept trip is starting to take some shape. 2 gals from my AEP are going as well as my fellow co-worker, Brook. We linked all our rooms and will dine together. I can't wait to see them again.
We also started to think maybe we should do a Palo dinner...for research purposes of course! We booked that on our semi formal night. I'm excited to see what dinner is all about.
I wanted to do a snorkling adventure in Grand Caymen. Lisa was unsure about it though. I told Brook and she was all for it. Lisa decided, what the heck, let's do it, so the 3 of us are booked on a shipwreck snorkle. I will be bringing along the waterproof camera for that one.
There is other talk of excursions, but honestly, this is supposed to be a cheap trip, so not sure if I'll do anything else. I am already doing more than I had origionally planned.
Getting away from Ohio is the biggest plus of the whole thing anyways! A Disney ship in the caribbean...all icing on the cake!
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We keep doing more and more planning. LOL. Luckily Brook is on a budge too because she is heading off to WDW 2 weeks after she gets home too. So we are looking for fun and cheap things to do.
I am still alive. I just haven't had much time to do much reading or writing lately.
I need to load some more pictures and get them posted here of a few more things we have to take on the trip. Hopefully this week I can get some extra time.
I have been thinking about what I need for my Nov. trip over the summer.
If you remember from last year on our spring vacation (Dream. WDW and SeaWorld), I had run out of space on my memory cards and had to have some DVD's made of pictures to free up some more room. Since that time I bought a couple more cards...and had 1 old card go bad. I am still worried if I will have enough for such a long trip.
I ended up getting 2 more a month or so ago to add to the collection. I think I should have enough...even more than enough, but I still worry and am almost tempted to buy one more before I go.
I shoot in jpeg, rather than raw, which means less space taken up on each card...but I still worry. I think I averaged about 4G worth each day last year. I think I have 44G worth right now, but will be gone for about 14 days.
Most likely one more 8G will be ordered before I go to be on the safe side.
I also ordered (no picture) 2 more batteries for my SLR. I have 3, but I just want to be sure I have plenty of power, and I did have issues last summer of running down 3 batteries in 1 day. Better to be safe than sorry.
Hopefully I can gage how much I might be using on this 7 night cruise in Sept. I will actually be gone 8 nights. If I use at least half of my memory on that cruise, then I will be sure to get another card.
I wil lalso have 2 point and shoots with me, but the picture quality is not near as good on those.
Gosh, my brain hurts just trying to figure this out this morning. LOL!
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I'd get a 32G card. They aren't really that pricey anymore.
I have one of those, and then a few 16G as backups. That was more than enough for two different 2 week plus trips to Europe.
I'd get a 32G card. They aren't really that pricey anymore.
I have one of those, and then a few 16G as backups. That was more than enough for two different 2 week plus trips to Europe.
I am scared of the 32 G...isn't that weird...but my worries are one, that loading on the computer will be too much for it and 2, if I lose a card or something happens to it, then I will be out several days worht of pictures. I should take the plunge though.
I have been a busy bee lately. I am going to try and get that last Mickey head sewn into the pillowcase today so I can start to tye die those.
It's not hard...but for some reason I just put it off. It's just not "fun".
I had lunch with several of my family members who will be cruising with us in Nov. yesterday. It was a fun lunch, but had to com home and make some more changes for them. Wanted different excursions or time. I think we have it all settled now. I just need to update paperwork on that now, which isn't hard.
After lucnh I had some time to kill. Claire was at a party with some friends, so I stopped at Walmart to get ink for my printer...um I forgot to get the ink in the end. LOL
I found several clearance racks of clothes. I decided to look for a swim suite cover up. I ended up finding one for $5. It's cute. The downside is that it is one size smaller than I wanted, and even though I searched all over, that was the only dang one I could find, so I still go it. It fits, but I would be happier with a little more flow room around the rear. But since it's just a cover up, it should be ok.
I did however find several pairs of cute shorts. I am stil lheavier than I should be, and only have a few decent pair of shorts. I have sworn off buying clothes for myself till I can lose some more weight. Thats not working out well for me. LOL I went ahead a bought 3 more pairs. They fit decently, though nothing ever fits right, becasue I have a thinner waste than the rest of me, and a bigger than normal rear and thighs. Everything seems to be made for the complete opposite body type. With a belt though, these were good and not skin tight in the rear and thighs.
They are the longer style, so refreshing to find when the style is short shorts...which are not friendly to people with large thighs and even better, they don't taper down, they are wide legged the whole length.
They were $11 each in clearance. Not the best "walmart" clearance price, but still not bad at all. Last summer I got a coupl of pairs of decent shorts at kohls and dillards on clearance too, so between all of those, I won't look like a total bum on the ship.
I finally made a pair of flip flops for Claire for that cute skirt outfit that I got...the one that took forever to arrive. Here it is , if you don't remember.
Here are the flip flops. She really likes them, but I am not letting her wear them till the trip. She can be a bit rough on flip flops. I do remember to bring along glue. She seems to walk hard...and they are cheap flip flips and she pulls the thing between the toe out. I have found a pretty good glue that works to glue them back in and still be functioning.
Also a few weeks back (probably over a month), I got a notice from my friend Jeanne that a certain facebook seller was listing some really cute things for pretty cheap. I ended up getting this pink dress with anchors for Claire. I think it only cost like $15...what a bargain.
She really likes this one too, and I am kicking myself now for not ordering one for my 2 nieces as well.
I also had place a vista print order recently. I had bought a deal on groupon a while back for $70 worth of Vista print for $17. I found this graphic on our Sept. cruise meet forum. I had one made for both Lisa and I. I am not sure how she will feel about wearing matching shirts, I guess we'll find out soon enough. LOL
And I decided that for pirate night, I wanted to join in the fun, but I KNOW there is no way Lisa would go all out, so I made these t-shirts as well.
I think they are cute. I have 2 pairs of capris I could wear it with. Depending on how much weight I lose prior, but at the rate I am going, I think the one pair wil lbe a bit too tight still to wear on this cruise.