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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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 for all the good info. I was dreading learning this new "system" for our 2015 trip, but this will make it much easier for me to understand and share with my DS & DDiL as we plan our trip. They are both "techies".....I just hang on and go with the flow! LOL
Just one question why is the term MDX being used instead of MDE for My Disney Experience? I haven't seen anyone else using MDX and I think if just one board used it people could get confused.
I used MDX instead of MDE, because MDE is too easily confused with DME (Disney's Magical Express). I've already seen a large number of posts on the boards where people mistyped DME instead of MDE, leading to confusion, since Magic Bands are now being used to check in for DME at MCO.
I saw MDX used on another board and decided to use it in this primer, because I like it better - it's obvious, as long as you're speaking in context about My Disney Experience. But I've got a poll going and MDX is losing. Dangit.
When the poll is done, I'll probably wind up replacing all of the MDXs in this piece with MDEs.
Excuse me, sir. Seeing as how the V.P. is such a V.I.P., shouldn't we keep the P.C. on the Q.T.? 'Cause if it leaks to the V.C. he could end up M.I.A., and then we'd all be put on K.P.
Thanks for the primer. One question though. I have two upcoming reservations which bookend a cruise. Stay 1 is a package with 8 day park hopper tickets which I've linked to my MDX account. Stay 2 is a room only because I'll be using the remaining days on the tickets from Stay 1. Will I be able to make FP+ reservations for Stay 2 when that reservation is a room only? In other words, will the tickets linked to my account for Stay 1 trigger FP+ privileges for Stay 2?
Thanks for the primer. One question though. I have two upcoming reservations which bookend a cruise. Stay 1 is a package with 8 day park hopper tickets which I've linked to my MDX account. Stay 2 is a room only because I'll be using the remaining days on the tickets from Stay 1. Will I be able to make FP+ reservations for Stay 2 when that reservation is a room only? In other words, will the tickets linked to my account for Stay 1 trigger FP+ privileges for Stay 2?
I can only speculate, since this stuff is rather new and I have not yet heard reports from anyone in your position, however...
My gut feeling is that the answer is probably yes. FP+ selections are made available for the length of your WDW resrt stay, so long as you have both a reservation and a valid ticket associated with your MDX account. Since your Stay 2 has both of them, my guess is that you will be able to make your FP+ selections for Stay 1 60 days from check-in, and that you'll be able to make FP+ selections for Stay 2 60 days from that check-in.
But as I said, this is just a guess. I might be completely off base here.
That being said, you could be a test case for us; we'd all really appreciate if you'd come back and report how your FP+ selections go when you get to those 60-day marks.
One MagicBand surprise we had in Nov'13... We walked on the Dinosaur ride at Animal Kingdom, without scanning our MagicBand anywhere, and our ride photo automatically appeared in our PhotoPass account! One other tip... some times the MDX app was down while we were touring, so I did a screen capture of our FP+ times so I could look them up in my phone's photo album if the app was down and did not have to locate a kiosk in the park for assistance.
Well, WILLCAD, I'm happy to report that I was able to
make FP+ reservations on Stay 2, once the 60 day window opened. Not sure if having a resort reservation was enough, or if having unused tickets linked to my MDX account did the trick, but it worked.
Well, WILLCAD, I'm happy to report that I was able to
make FP+ reservations on Stay 2, once the 60 day window opened. Not sure if having a resort reservation was enough, or if having unused tickets linked to my MDX account did the trick, but it worked.
You definitely need both to make FP+ selections in advance.
Thanks for the report. I'm sure your situation will come up for plenty of people, especially those who are cruising.
I would like to add an update. Photopass is now Memory Maker. Memory Maker is download only so you no longer get a CD of your photopass pictures. I preordered my Memory Maker for our March trip. When the card arrived in the mail, I went to MDX & registered the number on the back & linked it to my MDX account. I received an e-mail confirming the link-up.
I used MDX last year before you could link everything & I loved it specifically for the wait times. This year I have been using it to plan itineraries for the parks. I'm hoping once we get to the parks, it works better than it did last year when I had some spotty connectivity problems.
I would like to add an update. Photopass is now Memory Maker. Memory Maker is download only so you no longer get a CD of your photopass pictures. I preordered my Memory Maker for our March trip. When the card arrived in the mail, I went to MDX & registered the number on the back & linked it to my MDX account. I received an e-mail confirming the link-up.
I used MDX last year before you could link everything & I loved it specifically for the wait times. This year I have been using it to plan itineraries for the parks. I'm hoping once we get to the parks, it works better than it did last year when I had some spotty connectivity problems.
PhotoPass is still PhotoPass.
Memory Maker is a specific PhotoPass product which replaced a previous product called PhotoPass+.
Both the PhotoPass+ and Memory Maker products include 2 things:
1) Digital files of all of the images in your PhotoPass account (PP+ was on disk, MM is download-only unless you pay a $29 extra fee to get a disk)
2) A special PhotoPass card which allows you to add pics to your account from attractions and dining venues that are not included in a regular PhotoPass account
There is a lot of confusion regarding PhotoPass; many people think that "The Photo Pass" refers to the cards given out by the photographers, while others refer to the PhotoPass Archive CD as "buying the PhotoPass".
But PhotoPass is the name of the entire system, and the system has multiple products available for purchase, including digital downloads of individual pics, the Archive CD (which contains all the pics in your account), and the aforementioned Memory Maker Product.
Incidentally, as relates to the tech primer: PhotoPass photographers are now equipped with a new type of scanner, which can scan both the old-style barcoded PhotoPass cards, and can scan Magic Bands. So, if you are staying on-site and have a Magic Band, you can use it to associate PhotoPass pics with your PhotoPass account (which is linked to your My Disney Experience account). If you do not have a Magic Band, the old-style barcoded PhotoPass cards are still available for free from any PhotoPass photographer.
Sorry to be a bother.... we will be travelling from Canada and have our resort and flight already booked but will be using Air Miles (a points reward system in Canada) to pay for our park tickets at a later date as we are on a tight budget.
I have been able to customize our MagicBands with nicknames and select colours but I was wondering how we would go about adding our 4 digit codes for purchases to go on our account via the MagicBand and if we will be able to link our park tickets to MDX even though we used a rewards system to purchase them?
Also, will we still be able to add the Memory Maker on we have our tickets (assuming we can link the tickets to the account once we get them)?
Sorry to be a bother.... we will be travelling from Canada and have our resort and flight already booked but will be using Air Miles (a points reward system in Canada) to pay for our park tickets at a later date as we are on a tight budget.
I have been able to customize our MagicBands with nicknames and select colours but I was wondering how we would go about adding our 4 digit codes for purchases to go on our account via the MagicBand and if we will be able to link our park tickets to MDX even though we used a rewards system to purchase them?
Also, will we still be able to add the Memory Maker on we have our tickets (assuming we can link the tickets to the account once we get them)?
Thanks a bunch!!!!
No bother at all, answering these questions is why Passporter Boards exist.
1) Any WDW ticket can be added to your MDX account. There have been some glitches with older tickets from prior to 2005, but new tickets can all be added to MDX.
2) Memory Maker can be purchased whether you add tickets to MDX or not; it's simply a product you can buy from PhotoPass.
3) My memory is fuzzy; I can't remember exactly how to set your 4-digit PIN in MDX. I believe it's done after you complete on-line check-in.
3) My memory is fuzzy; I can't remember exactly how to set your 4-digit PIN in MDX. I believe it's done after you complete on-line check-in.
That is correct. You must do online check-in (starting at 60 days prior to travel) and add a credit card to your reservation for incidentals and room charging purposes. During the online check-in process, the system prompts you to create a 4 digit PIN.
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Sorry to be a bother.... we will be travelling from Canada and have our resort and flight already booked but will be using Air Miles (a points reward system in Canada) to pay for our park tickets at a later date as we are on a tight budget. 
That is correct. You must do online check-in (starting at 60 days prior to travel) and add a credit card to your reservation for incidentals and room charging purposes. During the online check-in process, the system prompts you to create a 4 digit PIN. 
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