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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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I have a book all aboutthe play too so I'll bring that and maybe it will help with the story. And if you need a little help understanding TLM I'll help you with that too. . Speaking of I started a thread in the Gatherings section about going to the show.
I read the book and enjoyed it although i found it very sad. don't know that i would enjoy the theatre version myself. ha ha ha...i am laughing over the grey goose story and can only imagine how quite amusing you actually were. (ps...did you manage to hang on to your camera??? tee hee)
I read the book and enjoyed it although i found it very sad. don't know that i would enjoy the theatre version myself. ha ha ha...i am laughing over the grey goose story and can only imagine how quite amusing you actually were. (ps...did you manage to hang on to your camera??? tee hee)
Sheri, my camera was safely put away by then -- now I'm kicking myself that I didn't ask Jason if I could take any pics backstage or of us with him. Oh well. Knowing your penchant for musicals (. . . . NOT), I am pretty sure you would have disliked that show immensely. Knew you'd appreciate the grey goose story, though!
Saturday we again woke around 8:00 a.m. -- it didn't seem to matter that we'd gone to bed at 1:30 a.m. We felt a little tired but not bad. We had to get a move on to catch up with Sue's mother who was taking the bus in from New Jersey.
The three of us ended up going to brunch at a delightful place whose name escapes me. As soon as we sat down, Maurine handed Sue a large Ziploc bag that contained many smaller bags -- inside of each was a necklace. Sue expressed no surprise at this but promptly put on one of the necklaces. To my astonishment, Maurine then handed me a large bag containing three necklaces as she said, "Here. Now you're my daughter, too."
Turns out Sue's father enjoys collecting various stones and making jewelry. Maurine and Sue like that hobby a lot, of course -- and now, so do I! How nice of them to include me in their gifts!
You can tell Maurine and Sue are mother and daughter, can't you? And those are all Bob's creations they're sporting.
Here I am with my favorite of Bob's necklaces -- in fact, I'm wearing it at work right now.
Saturday's weather was a bit warmer and the winds were much calmer -- a delightful day, in fact. The three of us did a lot of walking -- Maurine said her pedometer read 7 miles by the time we walked her back to the Port Authority at 6:00 that evening. But we also stopped to eat and/or drink several times, so needless to say we didn't walk all of that off. But we sure had fun!
Sue wanted to take me to the original Saks Fifth Avenue store, where we stopped for some lovely chocolate desserts and tea.
That yummy-looking chocolate cake thingy was mine, and I poured the cream over it. OMG -- I kept urging Sue and Maurine to help me eat it, and I finally had to stop and say, "You girls better get a bite now, because I'm going to lick this plate clean!" It was delightful!
We had tickets to the matinee of "Driving Miss Daisy" whose main attraction for us was the opportunity to see James Earl Jones in a production. He was hilarious and touching -- just as magnificent a stage actor as we'd imagined. We had great seats again -- Sue had purchased them from home, because this is a limited-run engagement that was getting such great reviews, we didn't want to chance it at the TKTS booth.
I was almost as excited about seeing Boyd Gaines play Miss Daisy's son Boolie. Boyd has won 4 Tony awards -- all for musicals -- and so I've gotten to see him in little snippets of things that they show during the televised ceremony. Vanessa Redgrave has been ill, so we weren't surprised that she wasn't in our production. Maureen Anderman, a wonderful stage actress, was magnificent as Miss Daisy.
Now, comparing two musicals to a straight play (90 minutes, no intermission) is like comparing apples to oranges. But Sue and I both voted Miss Daisy our favorite theatrical experience of the weekend (with Billy Elliot a close second). So glad Maurine could join us -- she had been wanting to see this show but couldn't talk any of her friends into going into NYC for the day to see it.
After the show, we walked back to Rockefeller Center to take Maurine into the Rock Cafe for a glass of wine. The wind had kicked up a bit, but it was still a warm enough day that no one seemed to mind.
All too soon, the day had evaporated. After seeing Maurine off at the Port Authority, Sue and I decided to walk back to the theater district to see if cheap seats were available for this show:
We think it's cool someone named a theater after Al Hirschfeld, the famous caricaturist who had recorded so many show business legends. On his sign, he's drawing and redrawing himself -- very
Well, the only tix left at the box office were $303 apiece -- we wouldn't have paid that much to see James Earl Jones, so we sure weren't going to spend it seeing if Harry Potter and sing and dance. (We both assume he can do both admirably, and How to Succeed is a great show, so I'm delighted they're reviving it. John Larroquette plays the big boss, and he's sure to be hilarious in it.)
So we spent the evening going into various restaurants for appetizers and drinks. We were well content with our weekend. Sue connected by phone with the daughter of a friend. The young lady expressed great excitement that Sue was in town and promised to meet us Sunday morning for a tour of Noho, Soho, and other neighborhoods in the south end of town.
Sunday morning we awoke at -- you guessed it -- 8:00. Definitely feeling tired, so it must be almost time to go home. There was a pretty steady rain falling, but no wind and the temperature was still warm, so we certainly weren't going to let that stop us. We stuffed our luggage full and dropped off our bags downstairs so we could have one last adventure with Page, Sue's friend's daughter.
Page led us onto the subway, which we took running south several stops. Then we walked and walked and walked in the rain, stopping in little shops in Noho and Soho. Lots of architecture.
Here are Sue and Page -- I mostly wanted to show Page's legs (gorgeous) and her very New York black high heels. She stepped around puddles like they were nothing, keeping up a happy chatter about the area. She was a great tour guide!
If you've seen "When Harry Met Sally" (which I adore), you'll recognize this as the structure where Sally dropped off Harry after their Chicago-to-New-York trek.
OK, now I have to give a shout-out to Deco Jewels (131 Thompson Street - between Houston & Prince) and owner Janice Berkson. She collects vintage costume jewelry and Lucite handbags. She's written a book with fabulous photos of the Lucite handbags -- it's fun to keep clicking on "surprise me" on Amazon's web site to see some of the photos: Amazon.com: Carry Me: 1950's Lucite Purses: An American Fashion (9781851495931): Janice Berkson: Books)
Janice was so fun to talk to -- very down-to-earth, and early passionate about the stuff she collects and sells.
How is this Lucite handbag from the 1950s? A place for everything.
Sue bought some vintage cufflinks for her boyfriend -- they nearly match the skylight in the building they're refurbishing into their new home (they just moved in a few days ago). I found a cool necklace that I bought -- haven't taken a pic of that yet, so can't show it to you.
VERY fun way to spend our last couple hours in New York.
.
Any PassPorters who are New Yorkers will understand the significance of our last "find" of the trip. Page suddenly started jumping and running toward a truck -- not just any truck, mind you, but the "TREATS TRUCK," which has apparently become a New York institution. About at Treats Truck
Page said, "The truck drives around and if you're lucky, it stops in your neighborhood." Of course we had to stop and each purchase a freshly-baked treat. And it was YUMMY. I had a peanut-butter cookie "sandwich" (with chocolate in the middle). OMG.
Here's the back of the truck:
And now I was finally able to get a front shot at Sue and Page as they waited for their treats.
Now, that's about the end of my story except for this: Sue had mentioned a few times over the weekend that we had never spotted the Empire State Building during all our roamings -- never saw it peeking out or anything. Well, Page got off a stop or two before we did, and after we exited at the stop she'd instructed us and started walking, I began laughing.
"Hey Sue, look up," I said.
You guessed it, and here's the proof:
A nice finale to our whirlwind wicked weekend in NYC!
Now I'll be heading to the Happy Place tomorrow morning for an HR conference (being held at the Grand Floridian, can you believe it???) I'll be busy with the conference most of the week, but will stay over until Sunday to get into at least a couple of the parks -- it's going to be really really REALLY crowded but I'm going to take advantage of being there just to soak up some of the
Sounds like a fab weekend, Cindy! And that picture of the chocolate dessert at Sak's almost had me licking the COMPUTER screen! Wouldn't have blamed you one little bit if you'd licked your plate clean!!
Off to the World now? Lucky girl! Enjoy!
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. Speaking of I started a thread in the Gatherings section about going to the show.
Disney Magic - Oct 2015
But we also stopped to eat and/or drink several times, so needless to say we didn't walk all of that off. But we sure had fun!
We stuffed our luggage full and dropped off our bags downstairs so we could have one last adventure with Page, Sue's friend's daughter.
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