National parks, natural beauty and a bit of Disney wonder! COMPLETED - Page 76 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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'm glad you got to the airport ok! I have found after several rental car trips that the ones closest to the airport are huge price gougers! The price tends to be at least a $1 more than the ones in the city--learned that near LAX
Thanks for posting those pictures of Denver. My sister just booked a hotel out there for her and her DH to visit his grandpa. I have never been, as far as I know.
PassPorter's Free-Book to Walt Disney World It’s hard to believe anything is free at Walt Disney World; but there are actually a number of things you can get or do for little to no cost. This e-book documents over 200 free or cheap tips to do before you go and after you arrive. You could save a considerable amount of money following these tips. Perhaps more importantly; you can discover overlooked attractions and little-known details most people whiz by on their way to spend money. Click here to see free sample pages from the e-book! Get this popular e-book free of extra charges when you join the PassPorter's Club for as little as $4.95. A club pass includes access to all our other e-books; e-worksheets; super-size photos; and more! This e-book is also available for separate purchase in the PassPorter Online Store for just $5.95.
My brother used to live in Aurora, so I never thought of it as being a touch of Disney - just a Denver suburb! Yep, that airport is in the middle of nowhere. Literally. When they first built it, there was nothing, not even those hotels! It's a really neat airport though, I think! Whew, glad you made it in time. Cutting it close is stressful, I know all too well.....
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I'm glad you got to the airport ok! I have found after several rental car trips that the ones closest to the airport are huge price gougers! The price tends to be at least a $1 more than the ones in the city--learned that near LAX
To be honest, the price wasn't too terrible - nowhere near as bad as I have seen before in some places, which was something!
Thanks for posting those pictures of Denver. My sister just booked a hotel out there for her and her DH to visit his grandpa. I have never been, as far as I know.
It was a lovely city and I'd like to go back, especially as there are another couple of national parks around that area... It's on the (now very long!) list of places to go in the future!
Friday 16 September – part six: now that’s how to deal with snow!
We each took a bathroom break and then I went to buy a Denver fridge magnet, just to prove we had been here.
When I came back, we probably had about 10 minutes or so before we started boarding. The plane at the neighbouring gate was going to Kansas City and I was supposed to depart before ours, but they were still on pre-boarding, as we started group A.
We headed on, very pleased to have our A boarding status, especially when we were told as we got on, that this was a completely full flight. A couple of bags wouldn’t fit in the overhead lockers, so had to be checked in as well.
We took off on time, with some great comedy from the crew through the safety demonstration. Gotta love that Southwest humour!
This is how to cope with winter!
Once we were in the air, we had lovely views of.... well, nothing-ness again. Seriously...
Soon though we were into the clouds....
We were served with our complimentary drinks and snacks, which were very nice and just what we needed and I settled down to work on the trip report. Of course, Mark got chatting to the person sat next to him, who was a girl heading to a wedding in Maine. Her boyfriend apparently hadn’t been invited, which had caused family issues, as some thought he should’ve been, and he was going to New York this wedding instead. Fair enough...
Before I knew it, we were coming into land and I tried to get some photos. It was getting pretty dark and it looked a lot more dingy and cloudy than when we’d left Denver.
We were at the gate almost before we knew it and, because we were in the fourth row, we were off very quickly. We made it to baggage claim with plenty of time to spare before anything came off the carousel, so I got some photos of the airport...
Look which flight we were sharing the carousel with!
Soon, the luggage started to come off and all four cases arrived very quickly one after the other. We headed outside to get a cab. We thought the taxi driver might have heart failure when we saw the amount of cases we had, but : he was very cool about it. The ride cost us $30 and it was lovely to see the Chicago skyline and soon we were seeing familiar parts of the city, saying “remember when we walked down there?” It almost felt as if we were back home, yet this was only our second visit here.
We arrived at the Club Quarters and I was glad to make it, if only because our driver didn’t recognise the name, which is never a good sign, but fair play to him, I showed him the address and he got us here fine.
Once we were inside, we were shown how to activate our own room keys and were allocated a room on the 7th floor. Up we headed. Mark described it as “compact but bijou”, but to be honest, I thought it was a good size for central Chicago and considering we hadn’t paid that much for it.
We were too tired to go out for dinner, so ended up ordering room service. Unfortunately, my notes get a bit sketchy here (something to do with not writing them at the time – always a big mistake! ) so it’s a bit of a guess as to what we had. The starter I seem to recall was squid:
.. followed by fish and chips...
... and finished up with a cake of some sort.
Trust me, there wasn’t much to remember from this meal, as it wasn’t particularly good. It filled a hole and that was about it, but that’s pretty much all we needed, so that was OK.
We didn’t last much longer before heading to bed. It was pretty noisy outside, but thankfully that did subside a bit, as I was worried I wouldn’t get much sleep when I first hit the sack, so I was very grateful when things did get less noisy outside.
The weather today was hot and sunny with temperatures in the mid 70s. The best thing today was our time in Denver. The worst thing today was how late we ended up being getting to the airport. The funniest thing today was Today we tried visiting Denver And the result was it was a beautiful city and a real revelation. The most magical moment today was seeing the Martin Luther King memorial.
The hotel looks adequate, but not much more, as does the food! Hotels in cities are so expensive, though, you feel lucky when the room is decent and clean. Looking forward to your day in Chicago and, I think, a PassPorter meet?
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Great pictures from your finish in Colorado. I was getting a little nervous that you weren't going to make it to the airport on time. Glad you did, and made it to Chicago safe and sound!
Ironically, we just stayed at the same hotel last Friday! Yep, the food from the restaurant next door was just... eh. No biggie. But it did the job! Same with the room, but for the cheap price, it's really nothing to complain about!
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Tanya
Every click helps feed .6 bowls of food to rescued animals. Give a quick click every day and help animals in shelters! www.theanimalrescuesite.com
PassPorter's Free-Book to Walt Disney World It’s hard to believe anything is free at Walt Disney World; but there are actually a number of things you can get or do for little to no cost. This e-book documents over 200 free or cheap tips to do before you go and after you arrive. You could save a considerable amount of money following these tips. Perhaps more importantly; you can discover overlooked attractions and little-known details most people whiz by on their way to spend money. Click here to see free sample pages from the e-book! Get this popular e-book free of extra charges when you join the PassPorter's Club for as little as $4.95. A club pass includes access to all our other e-books; e-worksheets; super-size photos; and more! This e-book is also available for separate purchase in the PassPorter Online Store for just $5.95.
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Yep, that airport is in the middle of nowhere. Literally. When they first built it, there was nothing, not even those hotels! It's a really neat airport though, I think! 
Whew, glad you made it in time. Cutting it close is stressful, I know all too well.....
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It's on the (now very long!) list of places to go in the future! 
A couple of bags wouldn’t fit in the overhead lockers, so had to be checked in as well. 
: he was very cool about it. The ride cost us $30 and it was lovely to see the Chicago skyline and soon we were seeing familiar parts of the city, saying “remember when we walked down there?” It almost felt as if we were back home, yet this was only our second visit here. 
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