Feature Article: Organizing Your Travel Planning Information - Digital software to help organize your online information - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Feature Article: Organizing Your Travel Planning Information - Digital software to help organize your online information
Organizing Your Travel Planning Information - Tips to Help Organize Your Vacation Plans by Humberto Ruiz
I consider the planning process of a vacation to be as important and as much fun as the vacation itself.
During the planning of a vacation you get to visualize the places you’ll visit and all the things you’ll do. But at the same time, that planning can become stressful and get out of control if you don’t have an organization system for all the information you will collect. I do almost all my research online, so I need a centralized place to store and organize everything I capture for future reference.</p> That might sound complicated, but it isn’t. All you need is an application like Evernote. Evernote is a free notepad-like software application that can be accessed using your web browser; as an iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, Palm, or Windows Mobile app; and as a standalone application on Mac and Windows computers.
Every time my family and I start planning for a Disney trip we end up with an information overload. We collect tons of information and pictures of things that we consider important. It might be an interesting blog post about a restaurant, a tip in PassPorter’s forums, an article in our local newspaper, or maybe a picture of a dessert that we want to try. The amount of information that you can find on the Internet might be overwhelming if it’s not properly organized, making the information useless.
Many people prefer printing-out hard copies and saving them in paper folders. We prefer everything to be stored digitally, because it’s easier to search and find. For every trip I create a notebook in Evernote where I store everything I find interesting and important for my future trip. I tag each item captured, to assign a category like restaurant, ride, tour, or tip. Those tags help to classify the content and help when searching for a specific type of information. This simple content capture process offers the convenience of having everything in a single place instead of having it spread across the web. When, like me, you are subscribed to at least 12 Disney related blogs, participate in three forums or more and receive at least five newsletters, the amount of good information is huge. That’s why you need to have a central hub for content storage that is accessible no matter where you are or what type of gadget you use.
For those who prefer to work with pen and paper, or simply find themselves with a lot of papers and no way to scan them into a computer, a simple folder or notebook is a lifesaver. Keep all your papers together in one, central location so you can find everything easily. This is also where you'll want to keep your hotel confirmation letters, Disney's Magical Express documents and tags, cruise documents, related financial records, and so on. The world is not paperless yet, and it's easy to accumulate quite a stack! If you prefer to keep your print guidebook with your papers, PassPorter's Walt Disney World -- or a simple a PassPorter binder and a set of pockets -- is a winner.
Another way of organizing and planning your travel is to use a large whiteboard, or simply a large poster board with sticky notes. You can put the board up in central location in your home so everyone can share in your planning. Use it to create an itinerary, record dining preferences, post tips, display notes, and get excited about your trip!
Finally, let's not discount one of the simplest ways to keep your travel information in one place -- your e-mail box! The best way to do this is to create a special folder or label (as it is called in gMail). When you get something trip-related, move or copy it to your special folder, or place your special label on it. Find something online? Mail it to yourself and organize it. This way you can access your e-mail from nearly anywhere. If you happen to have an e-mail account that isn't easily checked online, sign up for a free gMail account and you'll be able to check it anywhere you have Internet access.
There's really so many ways to organize and plan -- have fun finding the way that works best for you! Happy planning!
What do you think? Please add your own comments, experiences, or news related to this article in this thread! Reader feedback is welcomed and encouraged.
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Great article. I am not totally in the digital world at this point but some of your ideas we will implement in the future. The whiteboard we found our life saver when planning a family trip in 2008. There were 18 of us comprised of 9 adults and 9 children. In order to plan out for group meals and separate family meals prior to calling for adrs we had 2 family meetings with whiteboard mapping out who wanted to eat where and with how many, making 2nd choices at the time in case our "ideal" plans didn't pan out. Some changes of course had to be made once the adrs were attempted but it worked out well and then we transferred to computer spreadsheet so that we could print. Every family member then got paper copies and we knew where everyone was once there.
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