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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Well if you remember I attempted a while back to make a pie... well I have mastered Apple Pie and I am almost a master at the Pumpkin pie now.
Well what happened a few minutes ago definitely WAS NOT my fault. My grandmother is over and well lets just say almost deaf and almost blind is not a good combination. She insists she can see and hear "perfectly fine" yet why am I stuck cleaning the microwave out after she set it to Incinerate while trying to soften the Butternut Squash??????????
I have never seen a vegetable explode before but yet there is always a first for everything
What kind of mishaps have you had while cooking a meal or preparing for a holiday feast?
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Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust! Studying Hard to Make a Difference!
Just Cleaned my microwave. NOT SURE what exploded, but with 3 teens in the house, who knows! The worst is I haven't looked in it since last Thursday (it was CLEAN then) and the kids have OBVIOUSLY been using it. YUCK! COOKED on mess. It cleaned up pretty easily though: Tip from a friend: Put a microwave save coffee mug 3/4 full of water and cook for 5 minutes. Some will spill out, but dont worry. Let cool for one minute then wipe down. Even the dried on goop came right off with one paper towel.
Oh and I seriously BURNED my first pumpkin pie years ago...but let's not talk about that (I can still "smell" it when I think of it!)
Not so much a mishap on my part, but one Thanksgiving I was getting the dishes together that I was bringing to my parents' house for dinner, when DS (who was about 4 or 5 at the time) decided to use my scissors and snipped a good size chunk off the top of one of his fingers. I still remember his little face as he was walking by me to go to the bathroom to get a bandaid. Needless to say, we ruined the kitchen towel and spent a good couple of hours at the Emergency Room, where they glued ( glued!) his fingertip back on! Good times! Good times!
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I had made a BIG batch of spaghetti sauce & was pouring it in to gallon size freezer bags. The doorbell rang startling me. I dropped the pan with all the souce on to the counter (of course the pan landed on it's side) knocking over the partially filled bag. I had spaghetti sauce everywhere. Counter, cabinets, floor, fridge, dishwasher, oven etc. It was a huge mess that took forever to clean up. I found dried spaghetti sauce in various strange places for months afterwards.
I almost lost a finger trying to make gingerbread men in a freak hand-mixer accident. I was mixing, and noticed some dry ingrediants near the lip of the bowl that hadn't been mixed in yet. With one hand, I pushed the "off" button on the mixer and the other, I stuck my hand juuuust inside the bowl to knock the flour mixture into the batter. Problem was, instead of "off" I pressed "high" which caused the mixer to go out of control and whirl over to the side where my hand was, and my fingers became stuck in the mixer. I screamed bloody murder, and it took three family members to get my hand out (with my hand in there, the "eject" button for the whisks was jammed). Not fun!
My dad decided to make bourbon pies one year and forgot to take the paper out of the pre-made pie crusts. That was fun!
okay, I did the xmas dinner from HE** about 40 years ago, trying to impress a boyfriend. I was 17 or 18. My parents went out visiting the rest of the family. I could not find the proper trussing kit for the bird and didnt even know that I could have 'sewn' it shut, so I did the next best thing and used b-b-que skewers. BRILLIANT!! (or so I thought)
After the turkey had been in the oven for a while, I checked on it and the oven was not even hot Everything was set properly, and no fuses were blown, so I called my Dad at my Aunts house. After following his leads to test for the problem, it turns out the baking element was busted. He suggested that I put the bird on the oven spit, turn the broiler on, and do it that way. My Mother (bless her heart) suggested I cook a ham as a backup. So, I put the turkey with the b-b-q skewers on the spit. Now, you gotta figure that anything that is hollow, but stuffed with bread and 'stuff' is not a good match for the rod. Remember, this is 40 years ago and it was a single rod, not with the multiple tines that would hold it secure. AAAANNNNNYYYYYWWWWWAAAAAAYYYYYSSSS..
the very first rotation, the very long skewers scraped the bottom of my mom's oven and put a couple of nice gouges in it. I adjusted the skewers so that this wouldn't continue to happen. I was soooooooo pleased with myself (remember 17 or 18). Close the door on the turkey and get to the other stuff. So this is all going on in a rather small kitchen with no counter space. Kitchen table was the prep AND eating area. There was no room for the ham as well as the bird in the oven, so out came the electric fry pan for the ham. I had to cook it on top of the washing machine in the basement. So now, I put the ham in some apple juice in the electric frypan downstairs on the lowest temperature possible. And so, its time to prep the veggies.....I can't recall the veggies, so perhaps there was no real catastrophe there.
After the prep time, it was time to check the turkey again.
All that fooling around with the skewers loosened the stuffing rather nicely, making it very easy to eject from both ends.
Thank God my parents came in just as I was about to shove my head in the oven. It only would have baked anyways, 'cause it was an electric stove
Dad checked the oven out much better than I did, because the bottom element was only loose (from Mom cleaning it a couple of days prior) and only needed to be secured a little better. NOW IT WORKS !!!!!!!!!!!
We are not even close to the conclusion of this saga, but I have errands to do. More on this later. ( If you want)
Well, my best friend from elementary school called me last night and said her son's favorite memory of Thanksgiving was the year "the turkey was bleeding when we took it out of the oven." Yep. That was me, and obviously, the turkey was not done.
My mishap this year was not that extensive. I took out DS's bright pink medicine, shook it, set it down, went to get his juice reward for takign the nasty medicine, picked up the bottle, shook it... and the lid went flying. I was covered in bright pink medicine! It was on my white shirt, and the white freshly mopped floor. DH, DS and I all laughed to beat the band. Good thing there was enough medicine left for the next 24 hours!!!
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Boogie down!!! __________________________________________________ ______ "Life's like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing. Keep pretending." from The Muppet Movie
seems like I'm the only long-winded one here. I apologize. This will be the "readers digest" version.
So..the ham is in the basement, the turkey in the oven. Dinner is going to be very late.
I decided to do shrimp cocktail served in half an avocado for each person. The veggies as I said, must have been okay. I am preparing the appies and a screeeeeeeeeeeching BEEP...BEEP....BEEEP. Forgot about the ham in the basement and set off the smoke detector. CHIT! After dealing with that it was time for dinner. Getting ready to bring the avocado appetizers to the table, I turned and two of them fell off the plate and skidded along the floor. I had cocktail sauce all over the floor and even a little up the wall. ALWAYS REMEMBER TO CUT A PIECE ON THE BOTTOM TO LEVEL IT OFF!!!
Needless to say, this one I will ALWAYS remember.
DH spilled the bowl of cranberry jelly all over my new tablecloth when he set the turkey platter down on the table. We had to hurry and take all of the place settings and food off the table and put on a new tablecloth before we ate.