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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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That's the way to see the fireworks, and toast the New Year,
It was really a prime location! We are usually at BLT so we see the "sideways" view!
Quote:
Originally Posted by lauriep
What a wonderful NYE!
It was one of the best ones I've ever had!
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezp
What a wonderful experience with Club Level. Great food and drink choices (White Zinfandel? I'm sold! ) and I love how they celebrated the New Year as well. Wonderful photos of the fireworks and I'm so glad you had your own area to watch it, even if you didn't get the view from your balcony you'd originally hoped for.
Aside from being a little chilly, it was perfect! How often do you get to watch fireworks from a beach lounge chair? They really did a great job
Quote:
Originally Posted by lfredsbo
Looks like a great way to spend NYE to me!
We enjoyed it!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Colexis Mom
Wow, what a spread at club level! Sorry about your florist package being messed up! You're just not having the luck this trip! Great pics of the fireworks!
Yeah it wasn't ideal, but thankfully it wasn't anything we needed once we had the Club amenities!
January 1, 2014: Day 4, Part 1 - Starting 2014 off right!
After reading through some TRs in my down time, it was becoming apparent that Norway’s princess breakfast was not worth the price tag these days. Sooo we cancelled the night before and slept in. If we got charged a cancellation fee, I’m not sure, as mom hasn’t told me if it was on her credit card or not yet. Really this just meant getting to Epcot closer to 8:45 than to 8am, so not a huge amount of extra but enough that we were nice and perky this morning
Stopped by the lounge for a quick breakfast to tide us over as we finished getting ready for the day. It was about this time that I realized my lens cap was missing So suddenly there will be more pics from my iPhone as I wasn’t risking carrying around my camera… (note to self, order yourself a new lens cap before your cruise!)
Breakfast selection (this didn't seem to change much)
We headed right over to Test Track, having already gotten our Soarin’ ride in earlier in the trip. The line was already about 35 minutes but we hadn’t done it since the update! We hopped on in and enjoyed the queue area.
Once again, we found the crowds!
Our assigned Color/Number
The super weird car I built
So many things you can buy for your car these days!
We enjoyed the new look of the ride, but I wouldn’t wait in a super long line to do it again. Epcot is much more about the atmosphere than the rides for us
We decided to head to the Land after this to grab some more substantial food, as we had a pretty late lunch ADR at 1:55pm. On our way, we noticed a 5 minute wait for Character Spot and hopped in to bulk up our Photopass pics! There was next to no one around, great time to get some time with friends
Quickly we were back on our food finding mission, and found a pretty empty Sunshine Seasons waiting for us, since it was about 10:15-10:30 at this point. We sat and enjoyed our meals. Not overly impressive but not bad food by any means. What I found interesting was that if you wanted hot tea, you had to fill up a cup of hot water, then get in line to get it from the cashier. Not a big deal when it’s dead, but I can see the water cooling off if you have a long line to pay. Also, the only option is English Breakfast Tea.
Breakfast Panini (can come with breakfast potatoes if you wish) I think it was eggs, bacon, pulled pork and cheese on herbed focaccia
Breakfast Platter - eggs, bacon, breakfast potatoes, sausage, biscuit, french toast
We headed over to one of our favorites, Living with the Land! We had to toss the remainder of our drinks before entering the line, even though it was about a 15 minute wait and we would have had time to finish (Yep, there was a wait, but it wasn’t bad!) Here come lots of pictures because I just love all the plants, every time!
How cute is this little guy?
A successful ride selfie!
More festive decor!
It was so cool to see people actually working in here!
We decided that was really all we needed to do in Epcot this morning and headed out! We had about an hour of downtime at the resort, checked out the midday offerings and weren’t overly impressed. Popcorn and gummy bears. I think trail mix? I believe it was raining on and off again this morning - so we just wanted to hide out and dry off a bit, as our plans for the evening would have us out a bit late!
Great view of the fireworks. I watched a video of them on Youtube from the Poly and they were beautiful!!!
They should have made the sand snowman in Living with the Land Olaf from Frozen, that would have been so cute!
Epcot didn't sound too bad for the morning.
Great morning at EPCOT! I need to get some of that car merch you took a photo of!!!
Enjoy! We didn't purchase any but I was happy to see better variety than I had in the past
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Originally Posted by lauriep
I love that photo of you and your mom with Minnie!
Isn't Minnie just the cutest?! We love meeting her and Daisy!
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezp
Great start to your day!
Thanks!
Quote:
Originally Posted by MayraLR
What a great morning at Epcot!
It was!
Quote:
Originally Posted by disneydreamer33
Great view of the fireworks. I watched a video of them on Youtube from the Poly and they were beautiful!!!
They should have made the sand snowman in Living with the Land Olaf from Frozen, that would have been so cute!
Epcot didn't sound too bad for the morning.
That would have been a cute idea! It wasn't terrible, considering it was 1/1 and people were off school/work!
Quote:
Originally Posted by lfredsbo
Sounds like a pretty decent morning at Epcot - crowd wise!
You and your mom look sooooo much alike!!!!
Wasn't bad at all, we would have liked to venture into the seas, but will save it for another trip. And I know, it's getting worse as I get older... especially with my brown hair now! When I'm blonde and tan I look just like my daddy too! Guess there's no question on whether or not I'm adopted
January 1, 2014: Day 4, Part 2 - This isn’t what we planned at all!
So after we had our quick stop at the resort, we headed back out to the Studios for our Fantasmic Package at Mama Melrose. Once again, the weather was playing games today and was pretty chilly and a little damp! We noticed the FP window for Star Tours wasn’t too bad so on our way in we grabbed some to see how that worked out. No problemo!
We then headed over to check in for our Mama Melrose ADR which was set for 1:55pm on the Fantasmic Package. The hostess confirmed with us that we were on the package and made sure we were okay with it. Sure, why not. So we moved off to the side and started to wait (really not an ideal waiting area in here)
...and we waited. And we checked on our time at the podium (there was no indication they were running behind when we checked in. Then we waited some more. I started trying to move around our FP+ with no luck as it kept timing out and wouldn’t load.
And finally, about 50 minutes PAST our ADR, we were sat. What’s worse? There were empty tables all over the place! This was unbelievable. Our waitress quickly found us and apologized and blamed the hosts for sitting walk-ups (even though we heard them turn multiple families away) I would not want their job, nope not one bit! Working in the restaurant industry, I would have been offering people drinks while they waited and probably a lot of free appetizers would have been happening. There was no such hospitality here. No one seemed to care that we had waited so long. The upside was she let us out of our Fantasmic Package, saying most families were trying to opt out because they didn’t think they’d last the weather. Since we were just kind of sick of being here the thought of not having a 3 course meal each was great, plus, I had to redo our FP+ completely at this point, since we were about to go into the window for the first one and hadn’t started eating. Fantasmic was still an option so we decided we would try that IF we even made it that long (spoiler, we didn’t)
We decided to not only split an appetizer, (because we sooo filled up on bread!) but also an entree because we were really having a hard time eating so much AND we had our Raglan leftovers still!
Bread and butter service
Empty tables everywhere!
Fresh Mozzarella and Vine-ripened Tomatoes - with marinated sweet onions, balsamic drizzle, basil-scented olive oil and fresh sweet basil
Chicken Campanelle - wood-grilled chicken over Campanelle pasta tossed with four-cheese sauce with broccoflower, sun-dried tomatoes, fresh spinach and sweet onions
The food was amazing! So it somewhat made up for it, but I’m still going to be hesitant about booking here again. I had such an amazing meal at Hollywood Brown Derby on my September trip (which we had slated for later on this trip, but ultimately cancelled with the Club offerings keeping us full!) that I think I would head back there if I were to eat in DHS again anytime soon. Or Sci Fi, mm I love those milkshakes! But back to this - we love Italian food and like I said, it was so tasty! Our waitress was also pretty good, aside from bashing her peers a bit. She did vanish for a small amount of time but you could tell she was dealing with a lot of angry people today We ended up taking food home STILL even with splitting it. And it was so good I ate it back in the room pretty quickly
I don’t remember exactly when I was finally able to get into the FP+ system or exactly what I had updated it to, but I had added Fantasmic, I think for the 8:30 showing, and the Comedy Warehouse for the 5:30 showing. Planning on catching Osborne in-between. The third one? Maybe GMR or Tower of Terror. We couldn’t work it out to see Indy and Beauty and the Beast anymore. I know Rockin Rollercoaster was out for the day, but everything else was still available, just maybe not for times that worked with each other. (this was at 4pmish, I’m not sure when they ran out.)
Anyway, we settled up our bill (TIW blacked out again for the holiday) and headed over to Star Tours to catch our FP window. It wasn’t too bad of a wait, and we were thrilled to see Leia on the screen, as we never get her! (We think because we had a female spy, but I have no idea)
We were out quick enough to catch the 4:30pm showing of the Comedy show, so we checked to see if we could move our FP+ earlier, not a problem at all! We walked through the still day-lit Streets of America looking for the theater and enjoying the decorations.
Okay, how cute are these pups?!
The Gumdrop
We discovered we were allowed to take beverages into the theater and there was a pop-up bar with the holiday specialties to offer, so I grabbed a Gum Drop and my mom got a beer while we waited for the FP+ window to open and we headed right in. We definitely didn’t need a FP+ for this, but the people who had them got to sit in the front of the theater, so it was a nice perk. If anyone is wondering, it IS the same troupe that used to be at DTD before they closed the Comedy Warehouse there. They introduce themselves with this fact and say how this is a 2 week show. My question? What do they do the other 50 weeks?! Bring back the Comedy Warehouse Disney! We love their improv! (And it is a family-friendly show for this version, but you could tell they were trying hard to censor themselves as the DTD location was 16 and up I believe)
Loved the stage setup!
The crew!
It was a hoot and we were so glad we made this a priority this day! I would even consider doing it twice if I was ever back at this time of year again, since it's all improv you never know what you will get!
Up Next: The Great Christmas Light Fight - Disney Edition
How neat about the Comedy Warehouse - something else I didn't know was going on. I must get more with it!
What a shame about your experience at Mama Melrose's, and it's exactly the same experience as we had in November. We weren't convinced the food made up for the wait either. They really need to get their act together.
Far too many reports lately with bad reviews of the front desk at Mama Melrose. Hope they get it together-- not good! I always choose Brown Derby at the Studio's also. I just enjoy the atmosphere and food better there, in addition to the service. How great to see the Comedy Warehouse gang again! I wonder, too, where they go the rest of the year.
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) and I love how they celebrated the New Year as well. Wonderful photos of the fireworks and I'm so glad you had your own area to watch it, even if you didn't get the view from your balcony you'd originally hoped for.
Great pics of the fireworks! 
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So suddenly there will be more pics from my iPhone as I wasn’t risking carrying around my camera… (note to self, order yourself a new lens cap before your cruise!)
*Melissa
PassPorter Guide Author
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