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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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For those of you who are a D23 member is it worth it? What sort of things do you gt besides the magazine? Also do you get any discount offers for anything Disney? Sorry for all the questions, I'm just thinking of being a member, but want to know everything first
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Every quarter, you get a new magazine, and they usually send you some kind of tchotchke. This year, they've sent out a patch featuring old rides, a "fan" of swatches featuring rides that were open on DL's opening day, a Christmas Card that Walt sent out, and something else that slips my mind. Subscribers also received a lithograph of Mickey drawing a smile on the world.
To my knowledge, there haven't been any discounts available (other than a discounted rate for D23 convention tix) if you use your D23 membership, but there have been special opportunities (that almost always cost $) available for D23 members to sign up for. These include movie screenings of the Princess and Frog and UP, special tours of the Burbank studios, a holiday backstage tour of the parks at WDW that included a trip to Cinderella's Suite and dinner...etc. A lot of these opportunities take place in or around Disneyland, in CA, and I believe that Disney has said the next 2-3 D23 conventions are going to still be held there before they move them to the East Coast.
There are plenty of people on the boards who'll definitely recommend D23 to you. Personally, however, I don't think I'll be renewing my membership. It wasn't worth it for us, and I really wasn't that impressed with the magazines, although the pictures were nice to look at. Mainly, I was disappointed that, like I stated above, almost everything cost money to do, and most of that stuff wasn't cheap . I also know that Disney's servers had a lot of problems with traffic for sign-ups - we tried to sign up to do one of the free events taking place at the end of May at Epcot, and the server was down almost all day as a result. I've got a friend in CA who's had several similar problems trying to sign up for any of the DL-related events.
Again, though, this is just my opinion. I'm sure you'll find many more here that really like D23 and feel it's a good value! I noticed that they've discounted the cost of joining up for new members (I'm wondering if that has anything to do with membership being less than optimum). I definitely think it'll be interesting to see what they do in the 2nd year of D23 - especially if they find that a lot of "charter" members aren't going to be renewing - if I were you, I just might wait until after March to sign up, just to see what Disney does.
I just got my renewal notice from D23, & for this year you can buy either a gold or silver membership. The gold is obviously the more expensive choice at $75, which includes the magazines, or the silver is $35, with the main difference being no magazines. The D23 Fanfare e-mail this month also offers discounts to members at DTD in DLR, you just have to show your card. Hopefully this will extend to WDW in the near future.
I bought a membership last year, & plan on renewing again. I enjoyed the magazines, & the few little extras, plus the option to buy exclusive merchandise was nice. I bought DH some fun Christmas shirts that were D23 exclusives, & he got lots of great comments on them in the parks.
We plan on renewing when the time comes. I enjoyed the magazines (I think the librarian in me wishes I could work in the archives) and DH and I both love the little keepsakes that they sent throughout the year. Yes it's a lot and yes it sucks that you have to pay for all the D23 stuff once you're a member, but oh well...once I've spent the money I don't miss it for a year.
I'm so not going to tell you how long it took me to figure this out. . ."choch-key!" Oh. . .I had no idea that's how you spelled it!
It's ok to laugh at my expense, sometimes it's necessary!
However, Molly, I'm glad you wrote what you did because I've been wondering if the membership has been worth it this first year.
DH and I didn't sign up initially because 1) I've been unemployed and that's an expensive "unnecessary" and 2) a lot of the stuff was for DL and we're exclusively WDW fans/visitors here (for now! ).
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[T]his year you can buy either a gold or silver membership. The gold is obviously the more expensive choice at $75, which includes the magazines, or the silver is $35, with the main difference being no magazines.
And that kind of rubs me the wrong way too. . .now you can opt for or against receiving the magazine, however, by the feedback from many members, the magazine was the only real "free" highlight. So the silver would not seem appealing to many members would it?
Well, again, I too appreciate all the pro/con comments as if I ever get a job, it was something I might have considered. Thanks!
I don't understand the Silver, either. Why would you want a membership without the beautiful magazine? Do they really send out invitations to that many events or discounts? I wouldn't want to pay 35 bucks just for the "privelege" of buying branded merchandise.
Anyhoo, I just got my own D23 membership yesterday! My husband apparently bought me a membership as a Christmas gift (which certainly took a long time to arrive!!) I pined for a membership all last year, but simply couldn't justify the cost with the economy/our budget. I'm excited to see what I'll get from D23 in 2010.
I've been a member since day one and just renewed at the gold level for this year - I absolutely love the magazine and we all read it cover to cover! There is also an email newsletter and lots of DTD-DL discounts at about 20 stores with your card.
I'd essentially be paying $75 for a year's subscription to the magazine, because we live so far from either DL or WDW that we can only manage one or the other about once every five years.
I bought the winter issue when we were just at WDW and found it fascinating and well worth the price. As a former librarian and major history buff, I'm hugely disappointed that you can't simply subscribe to the magazine. I don't need more this's and that's to clutter up our apartment further but would really enjoy the magazine.
Can you buy each issue as it's released? That would be all I'd actually want, but I'm guessing it's a membership-only thing except for the enticement of being able to buy at the resort gift shops as I did.
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We haven't any Disney store near us as far as I know but sure do have nearby B&N stores. I'll definitely check them for future issues as I love the winter issue. It's a lovely magazine with tons of interesting info.
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. I also know that Disney's servers had a lot of problems with traffic for sign-ups - we tried to sign up to do one of the free events taking place at the end of May at Epcot, and the server was down almost all day as a result. I've got a friend in CA who's had several similar problems trying to sign up for any of the DL-related events.
Reese
I'm so not going to tell you how long it took me to figure this out. . ."choch-key!" Oh. . .I had no idea that's how you spelled it!
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