The trip of many changes... TRIP REPORT UPDATED 4/25 - Page 6 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Glad that you made it in safely and didn't get hung up because of bad weather. Great picture of the ship, and that rainbow was amazing! Will be interesting to see if/how your boarding process will be the same or different as in Port Canaveral.. Short tangent--When we boarded in Barcelona in 2016. we found the terminal to be dark, chaotic, and no place to sit down, I felt bad for the people who were older (or had a hidden condition) that were obviously exhausted from standing so long. OK, end of tangent.
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Glad that you made it in safely and didn't get hung up because of bad weather. Great picture of the ship, and that rainbow was amazing! Will be interesting to see if/how your boarding process will be the same or different as in Port Canaveral.. Short tangent--When we boarded in Barcelona in 2016. we found the terminal to be dark, chaotic, and no place to sit down, I felt bad for the people who were older (or had a hidden condition) that were obviously exhausted from standing so long. OK, end of tangent.
Ahem, I think you might find that San Juan is remarkably similar to what you've described in Barcelona. And without further ado, I'll get into the next instalment, so you can find out....
Sunday 14 January – part two: I hadn’t meant to get anyone in trouble…
We were amazed when we arrived at the port at just how many people were already there, given that check-in didn’t open until 11:00am and it was only 10:30am now. We got in line to hand our luggage over and the line to get into the terminal was already snaking round and round and round. Oh my goodness! I did ask a Disney Cast Member if there was anywhere that I could sit if the terminal didn’t open until 11:00am, but he didn’t think so. Great!
We had a bit of a wait to hand over the luggage, as they said they were full, although they had plenty of empty luggage carts, so I didn’t really understand that. Oh well, we ended up chatting to the old guy there, who we got the impression was a supervisor of the baggage guys. He was telling us how they started at 5:00am for disembarkation, then they moved on to us and they’d finish around 6:00pm. Wow! That is a long day.
He also told us that some of the major stores had shut up shop after the hurricane. He didn’t say why, but he said that this was one of the few jobs left, as they’d lost so many since the hurricane hit. Again, he didn’t say it with bitterness or with any complaint, just as if it was a matter of fact. That’s what I’ve been so impressed by – anyone you speak to is just getting on with their lives and not complaining in any way. I’m not sure I’d be like that in the same circumstances.
He was very fair and got us into the line for the terminal immediately after the family who’d been in front of us and once there, the line did move quite quickly, well apart from the family of about 10. The security woman was yelling at us to come forward and we couldn’t get there, as they were all milling around and were in the way.
When we got to security, we managed to dodge past them. We headed into the check-in area and immediately saw the sign for gold and silver Castaway Club check-in, but nothing for platinum. We asked and the woman just pointed to the silver and gold line. Ok…
As we got further up, we saw the platinum line, so jumped in it – well only after yelling three times at the woman that we were platinum. I promise you we are!
We literally only had a couple of minutes’ wait, then we were seen. Oh my goodness, what a nightmare over getting our photos taken. The piece of kit crashed on the guy’s computer who was checking us in and he summonsed one of the ship’s officers. He couldn’t fix it, so his colleague next door offered to do it for him. Now we were taking up two check-in positions – not bad. Her photo wouldn’t show on his computer, so eventually they got a supervisor in and finally he was able to sort it out and we were on our way.
We headed through towards the ship only to end up in this area…
There was a stupidly small number of chairs out for everyone. There were only a few going when we arrived and we soon found out why – because they hadn’t yet called the back-to-back cruisers over. We’ve never been this early before for check-in. And how exciting – we’ll be doing that in September in New York City!
We took the opportunity to get a photo of us finally in our coveted black platinum lanyards!
We asked how long it would be before boarding group number one was called and we were told 25 minutes, so we headed back to our chairs. It was at about this point that Mark realised we hadn’t been given a Navigator during check-in. I think the guy checking us in had enough problems on his plate. I went to see a Cast Member and I think she was in charge of check-in completely. She walked me back to check-in to get one and immediately got on the radio and told whoever was on the other end to “remind platinum check in to ensure they give out Navigators to everyone”. Oh boy, I hadn’t meant to get anyone in trouble…
Literally about two minutes later, another Cast Member dropped a pile of Navigators next to me. I guess they decided it was a good idea to have some in here then…
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The check-in and boarding area is kind of underwhelming. I know it's not a permanent one like the one at Port Canaveral, but I think they should put a little more effort to it.
Glad you enjoyed your dinner and that you got a good night's sleep even with all the noise! Sounds a little chaotic your check-in but hopefully it was smooth sailing from here.
Well so much for thinking it wouldn't be crowded with such an early arrival. Cripes! All those people can't possibly all be in early boarding, can they?! I don't know - your teaser has me thinking this sort of unorganized chaos continues with the boarding process....
And another interesting conversation with a local travel industry employee. Tourism was such an important thing before the hurricane and it's going to be even more important while they keep rebuilding. Their attitude is amazing.
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The check-in and boarding area is kind of underwhelming. I know it's not a permanent one like the one at Port Canaveral, but I think they should put a little more effort to it.
Sadly, we've found all the ports, apart from Port Canaveral, that Disney use are like that. I just think that because they're not Disney terminals, you end up being disappointed by them. It was no different when we boarded at Southampton for our Celebrity cruise. I think Port Canaveral is such an amazing building, no other terminals really come close to it.
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Well so much for thinking it wouldn't be crowded with such an early arrival. Cripes! All those people can't possibly all be in early boarding, can they?!
I don't know. Some were re-boarding, as they were on back-to-back cruises, but there can't have been more than about 20 or 30 families doing that. There was a fairly big group with us in platinum, but I think there were a lot of people who probably just turned up early in the hope of getting an early boarding number to get on board...
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I don't know - your teaser has me thinking this sort of unorganized chaos continues with the boarding process....
Well, I'll just say it wasn't as bad as disembarkation...
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And another interesting conversation with a local travel industry employee. Tourism was such an important thing before the hurricane and it's going to be even more important while they keep rebuilding. Their attitude is amazing.
Oh, my! This looks so familiar. As I've mentioned to you in the past, the port in San Juan is definitely lacking in organization. We've sailed out of there twice on Royal Caribbean and it was crazy both times. Of course, once you get inside to where you are dealing with Disney cast members, it was probably a little bit better, but the facilities are definitely lacking. I'm glad you found chairs to sit in while you waited.
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Perhaps, time for the hotel to replace the windows with thicker glass.
You wouldn't want to lose that at all costs! 
Oh well, we ended up chatting to the old guy there, who we got the impression was a supervisor of the baggage guys. He was telling us how they started at 5:00am for disembarkation, then they moved on to us and they’d finish around 6:00pm. Wow! 
That is a long day. 
Sounds a little chaotic your check-in but hopefully it was smooth sailing from here.
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