the EIGHTEEN years, TEARS, CHEERS & Hurricane FEARS TR - Page 7 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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I have to preface this part of my trip report. This was by far our WORST day. It is NOT a pretty picture, and though there were some good moments, there were some BAD moments. I don’t like to be negative, but I didn’t want to gloss things over, so if your not up for a bumpy ride, you might want to skip this day!
Today’s portion of the Trip Report gets its own name:
the “At least there was no bloodshed!” intra-TR
Saturday August 16th: The weather was sunny in the morning, and overcast with rain showers the rest of the day.
On the itinerary for today: Get up early 6am. Be on the bus and at Animal Kingdom for 7:45 – am EMH opening Ceremony
Ride Safari, maybe walk trail then Breakfast at Tusker House 9:25
That was WRITTEN down and left out where EVERYONE could see it! I also TOLD everyone the plan. They ALL knew we were getting up early!! So here is what happened: (insert intensive orchestral music here)
After dinner at Spoodles, we got back to the room around 10:15. Alicia decided she wanted to go to the gym and work out. Ok. She’s a dancer. She’s used to eating and exercising at the same time. Can’t be helped when you are in competition and you are in thirteen dances. You eat when you can! You gotta eat, and you gotta dance! Evan decided to join her. Corey went to fill his mug at the Marketplace. I reminded them all that we had to get up EARLY for our day at Animal Kingdom. We went over the itinerary for the next morning and the kids went off. Jeff went into the bedroom to read and watch the Olympics and I went on line to update my live trip report. All seemed well, but I couldn’t go to bed until the kids were back from the gym. They got back a little after 11 and seemed to be getting ready for bed, so off to my bedroom I go. Watched a bit of the Olympics with Jeff. Start to doze off, even though I can hear the kids are still up. It’s now past midnight.
SCREAMMMMMMMM CRASH…… somewhere just after 1am Alicia and Evan decide to get into fisticuffs and start a brawl! Not actually physical fighting mind you, just yelling! They are at each other because Alicia was getting ready for bed washing her face, and because her “space” and her “bed” also happens to be the living room couch she wanted Evan to move something he left on the couch so she could pull it out. He didn’t want to since it was “Just the remote for the tv” so they started screaming at each other. Now mind you it is AFTER ONE AM~!~ Corey jumps into the mix and Jeff jumps out of bed and starts up blaming Alicia (she yells the loudest!). It doesn’t matter that they were ALL wrong! Jeff always blames Alicia and never yells at the boys. Long fight story short, I get up, fix her bed, settle everyone down, get the shouting stopped and have everyone quiet and in bed by 1:30. Thankfully, no bloodshed! UGH! I can see how things are going to look at 6am already!
Needless to say 6am rolls around and NOBODY but me is up. I get ready and start getting people moving. I wake up the boys, but they don’t budge. 6:40 and they are still sleeping. Now Alicia is up and ready and she starts FREAKING out on them (not good!) to get moving. I am too tired for this! Honestly at this point I don’t know how we all managed to get out of the room in one piece - "At least there was no bloodshed"!! (Insert laughter here - cuz if you don't laugh you'd probably cry!)
Everyone is mad at everyone else. And Everyone is beyond GRUMPY again! I spent the entire bus ride from BC to AK crying – actual Tears. Alicia kept texting me saying she refused to get the Fps for EE for everyone, and when we got there to go in she was way ahead of us all. I made arrangements with the boys to take their tickets and go get FPs for us, figuring she would get hers and meet us at Kilamanjaro Safari – or not. We somehow all ended up together before going through the turnstiles and after we went through Alicia grabbed everyone’s tickets and took off! I would have liked to enjoy the front part of the park, but I couldn’t. My stomach was a ball of pure acid. Forget “bad tummy” I was just sick!
Based on the timing, I was sure the opening ceremony would be over by now, but it was not . The crowd kept pouring in and the small space getting more and more congested. It was probably the most horrific time ever! I generally do not like large crowds around me, but deal ok. Corey on the other hand looked like he was about to throw up and have a severe panic attack! He was becoming more and more agitated. Between his low blood sugar, being over tired, and over all grumpy mood, it was not a good thing. . I tried to distract him by pointing out the Tree of life carvings, but it was so far away it didn’t do much good. The ceremony was finally over and they dropped the ropes. Even though I enjoyed the little opening ceremony and the characters, the crowd was definitely SCAREY!!!
Having never been to this park before, it was also a bit daunting trying to navigate our way to Africa and the safari. The boys and I took a little side path to let some of the crowd pass, then continued on. We finally found our way to the Safari and waited for Alicia. She had about the same kind of navigational luck that we did, but finally found EE, the FP machines and her way back to the Safari. . The boys were very grumpy at this point AND very .
The original plan was for the kids to grab a granola bar on the way out of the hotel on our way to AK. But given the bloodrage that was going on, that didn’t happen. At this point EVERYONE is complaining about how hungry they were, but it was too early for breakfast. Corey, who has the most expensive camera and is the “official trip photographer” exclaims that “I am not taking any pictures until after I eat!”. Fine. What ever. It is finally our turn to board the jeep for the safari. I offer Corey the outside seat and he refuses, stating again he is not going to take any pictures! Alicia grabs the outside, then me, then Corey in the middle. Jeff and Evan on the other side. Before the jeep takes off, Corey is pulling out his camera! I offer to switch seats with him, but he refuses! Well .... at least there was no bloodshed!
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cont from previous post...
I took ONE picture before Alicia grabbed the camera away from me. She did a pretty good job getting pix with my point and shoot. Corey snapped away with his Nikon. There were only a few quips like “well I WOULD have gotten that if ALICIA”S head wasn’t in the way”!
I’m sure by now, if you haven't seen the humor I've found looking back on this evil morning, then you are ready for some cheering up! Here are our Safari Pictures (well some of them - Corey managed to take over 200 shots! Not bad for someone who's NOT going to take any pictures!)
First the ONE picture of an animal I took – REALLY it IS an animal. It was just TOO close to the jeep and my camera was zoomed all the way to telephoto!
Here are some of Alicia's:
Mr Grumpy's on next post
Last edited by tinker_me_happy; 09-02-2008 at 05:24 PM..
Reason: spacing
Oh, my stomach hurts with you. The most magical place and they're ..... Ack! I don't know how you held it all together.
I know it gets better. Looking forward to more.
__________________
ºOº ~*~
Oct '99: CSR ~ May '02: CR ~ Nov '04: SOG ~ May '06: SOG ~ Dec '07: Solo @ Pop ~ May '08: Pop w/friends ~ Oct '08: SOG ~ Dec '09: Pop w/LeAnn ~ Sept '10: Solo @ Pop ~ Spring '11: AKL ~ Jan '12: Pop for 1/2 Marathon ~ Sept '12: 1st trip for DL 1/2 Marathon? ~ Feb '13: Pop w/pals? ~ Mar '13: Tokyo Disney w/PP's?
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. The crowd kept pouring in and the small space getting more and more congested. It was probably the most horrific time ever! I generally do not like large crowds around me, but deal ok. Corey on the other hand looked like he was about to throw up and have a severe panic attack! 
He was becoming more and more agitated. Between his low blood sugar, being over tired, and over all grumpy mood, it was not a good thing. 
. I tried to distract him by pointing out the Tree of life carvings, but it was so far away it didn’t do much good. The ceremony was finally over and they dropped the ropes. 
. The boys were very grumpy at this point AND very 
.
, stating again he is not going to take any pictures! Alicia grabs the outside, then me, then Corey in the middle. Jeff and Evan on the other side. Before the jeep takes off, Corey is pulling out his camera! 
I offer to switch seats with him, but he refuses! 
ºOº ~*~ 
PassPorter Guide Author
I've been jingled! Thanks Rella!
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