Don't Stop - Disney part 2 UPATED 5/5 - Page 28 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Thursday 24 December – part eight: we seem to have missed the meet....
We got up, with Mark wondering if he would be able to walk in a straight line, but he was fine, albeit a little bit light headed. We were heading for the PassPorter meet, which we had agreed as being between Mexico and Norway. I had Suzi’s (HiddenMickey) cell phone number and texted her to ask where she was. They were just leaving the BoardWalk Villas, so we said we’d wait for them, but then they were delayed and due to a series of mishaps, including me having a full inbox and not getting one of her text messages, we didn’t meet up with them until we got to the meeting spot.
On the way, we stopped for some Photopass pictures by the Epcot Christmas tree:
... and some of our own photos:
When we got there, we couldn’t see any other PassPorters there. Whether they were there or not, at the time, I didn’t know, but I discovered later in our trip from checking on the boards that they were in fact there, but we somehow managed to miss them, which was a great shame. At least they all met up, which was something. I hadn’t thought about how dark it would be when I set this meet up, which is a bit daft I know, and I’ll know for future reference that you need to be more specific about where exactly you’re going to meet up. We had said just opposite the margarita stand, but that was quite a big area.
Happily chatting away!
We sat there chatting and, before we knew it, IllumiNations was due to start. Somehow we had managed to snag front row spots and so we were able to get some good photos. The only down side was the idiot behind us who kept taking flash photos of the whole thing. I think he blinded Suzi’s daughter Julie on a number of occasions. We all knew that he wouldn’t get any decent photos using flash either, which was even more frustrating, so we had to put up with his flash going off for no real result for him. He was also sticking his lens between Suzi and I, which I found downright rude and on a number of occasions, I think I was swaying to the music and may have accidentally on purpose blocked his shot. Oops.
When IllumiNations was done, we all walked slowly back through World Showcase with Julie and Suzi saying that this could be their last time in a park this trip. Do you know, I felt sorry for them for a split second, until they said that they might be back in three weeks’ time. How I hate it when people live so close to Walt Disney World. It’s just not fair. : I wish we loved that close to visit that often. And before anyone says that we live close to Disneyland Paris, we do, we’re about 40 miles away from there, but my goodness, it’s not a cheap place to visit.
They walked all the way with us to the Beach Club, as they wanted to visit the Marketplace and then we said our goodbyes. It had been really fun meeting up with them and it’s just a shame that we didn’t get to meet anyone else.
We headed back to the room and had a chat before going to bed. We had been thinking about getting up early and going to the Magic Kingdom in the morning for opening at 7am, just so we could say that we had been on Christmas Day and then clearing out an hour or so later, but I was tired and achy and decided that it wasn’t a good plan, so we cancelled our 5.45am wake-up call. Probably for the best.
The weather today was hot and sunny with temperatures in the 70s. The best thing today was dinner at the Flying Fish Cafe. The worst thing today was feeling so tired at certain points. The funniest thing today was Mark with Chip and Dale at the Merry Member Mixer. Today we tried going back to Rafiki’s Planet Watch And the result was it’s a lot of fun out there and well worth visiting. The most magical moment today was seeing Eeyore.
Wonderful update and I enjoyed the pictures you took at night of the Boardwalk area... and on Christmas Eve. makes it even more pretty to me. Your Dinner looked delish. I loved Marks drink face. I would do the same too. rather than ask for something else or if they could make it sweeter or less potent (lol) Sorry you were not able to connect all the passporters together, but still were able to enjoy the show ... despite the Camera Mcflashy guy Your pictures were really nice. CHristmas Eve and Christmas in the WOrld. I can't wait to hear what you did
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I always your pictures of Illuminations as it is my favorite nighttime show and your pictures are so clear (mine are still blurry, but I'm working on it). I too wish we lived closer to WDW! Your teaser for the next update as got me very curious.
Friday 25 December – part one: why would you do that on Soarin’?
I must admit that I did get up this morning and wonder whether it was early enough to still make it to the Magic Kingdom, but it was definitely not to be, as we didn’t surface until 7.10. I guess not going there was a good plan after all.
We got going slowly, getting ourselves all packed up for the next leg of our journey. At 8.00, I went to guest services to get our boarding passes printed up and we got A16 and A17, with early bird check-in, which was excellent. It couldn’t have been better.
I stopped off at the Marketplace to get breakfast for us and we had that when we got back to the room, as we finished our packing. Everything fitted and it came in within weight, with some of our cases well underweight, which was a relief. We opted to take the cases over to bell services, as we were so close anyway. The only issue was now, with four cases and two pieces of hand luggage, only one of which would fit on to the cases, we now had five things and only four hands between us, so Mark went off to the Marketplace to see if they sold any luggage straps to solve the problem and whether they had a tag for our newest case. He managed to get a tag, but no joy on the strap. Still, we managed to get all the cases out OK, with one piece of hand luggage balanced on a case.
We dropped the cases off at bell services. We headed out and it was just lightly raining. It felt quite nice, as it was pretty humid.
We made it through International Gateway and Mark gave his family a call to see how they were doing. They hadn’t got a white Christmas, but all seemed to be well with them, which was the main thing. I had already had an email from my dad with some photos showing they had a light dusting of snow, so someone got a white Christmas at home.
We walked through World Showcase and decided to head to Future World.
Mark suggested going on Journey Into Imagination, but I came up with a better plan and suggested Soarin’ instead. We walked on to that, with my Guest Assistance Card, although we probably waited about 10 minutes in total in the FastPass return line before we were on our flight.
I didn’t even have to ask for row one, as we lucked out and got it, which was great. While we were in line, we got talking to a family behind us from New York. All I’m going to say is that their daughter was a bit of a handful. My goodness, she was beating up her two older brothers with no problem.
Our flight was great, although I heard a Cast Member gave out at least three warnings about people taking flash photos while we were on this. What is it with people? Why on earth would you want to do that on this?
When we came out, we had a message from Sue to say that they had half an inch of ice up there. I hope that doesn’t affect our flight up their tomorrow.
We were walking along getting photos, when I realised for once we had lucked out with the Friendship and there was one that had just arrived with very few people waiting for it, so we boarded it.
I don’t know how many years it is since we last did this, as we always seem to just miss them. This is a very nice relaxing ride and at least helped to save my legs a bit. You get some very nice views, as you go, although with tinted windows, there was no point trying to get any photos. :
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The only down side was the idiot behind us who kept taking flash photos of the whole thing. I think he blinded Suzi’s daughter Julie on a number of occasions. We all knew that he wouldn’t get any decent photos using flash either, which was even more frustrating, so we had to put up with his flash going off for no real result for him. He was also sticking his lens between Suzi and I, which I found downright rude and on a number of occasions, I think I was swaying to the music and may have accidentally on purpose 
blocked his shot. Oops. 
: I wish we loved that close to visit that often. And before anyone says that we live close to Disneyland Paris, we do, we’re about 40 miles away from there, but my goodness, it’s not a cheap place to visit. 
Susan
![[SIGPIC]](signaturepics/sigpic27594_7.gif)
Deb
Your pictures were really nice. CHristmas Eve and Christmas in the WOrld. I can't wait to hear what you did
your pictures of Illuminations as it is my favorite nighttime show and your pictures are so clear (mine are still blurry, but I'm working on it). I too wish we lived closer to WDW! Your teaser for the next update as got me very curious.
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