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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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So for Thanksgiving we decided to take a Road trip to Charlotte since it is one of the areas we are considering moving to. What a great adventure so I thought I'd give a little run down on how it went in case anyone else ever is as crazy as me!
Wed, Nov.23. Laundry, packing, dropping dogs at kennel, loading iPod and programing TomTom. 3:30 the teens girls come home and grab their last minute needs, clean litter boxes and feed cats and fish. 4:10 pre-teen boys come home, grab their entertainments, lovies and drinks. 5:00 pull out of garage. 6:30 Dinner at rest stop outside of Buffalo and realize that not only did I not take my medication that day, I forgot to pack it! Teen daughter takes over driving while I use phone and tomtom to find CVS on route, call order meds and plot course. 7:30 CVS in PA! 8:00 back on track and back at the wheel..... 11:00 Hotel in Morgantown, WV. All 6 of us crammed into one room. Teen girls fighting over which side of bed. 1 boy in chair with footrest, the other says he needs to sleep in closet to dream of Narnia.
Thurs., Nov 24 (Thanksgiving) 8 AM: shower while hubby wakes monsters. 9AM breakfast for all. 9:30 load up car. 10:00 wondering if TOMTOM is intentionally giving us the longest, most twisted route back to highway. Ok, at this point I stop keeping track of exact times but we have great fun going through tunnel and yelling out the windows! We stopped for Lunch somewhere in Virginia and pulled up the Turkey song by Adam Sandler on my phone to listen to while we ate whoppers. After lunch we continued on to Charlotte arriving around 4 PM. My kids wouldn't let me put on the Christmas Carols yet so we listened to Alice's Restarant and Rocky Raccoon! We had enough time to unpack the car and freshen up then made our 5:30 reservation at the Liberty Restarant. Food was amazing but we were the last seating so my hubby did not get roast beast and the desserts were pretty picked over. We then drove back to hotel, valet parked the car and checked out the rest of the 22 stories of the hotel. We were on the top floor! 8:30 we left the hotel and walked two blocks to night club area of Charlotte where we went to this amazing theater/bar and watched MUPPETS! We walked back to Hotel and then the teens and I decided that they had never experienced Black Friday shopping. We kissed the boys good night and got back into the car to drive to this huge indoor outlet mall for their 12 AM Black Friday opening.... I know we are crazy and we should have turned around when we realized all roads leading to the malls were temporary parking lots! We didn't though and shopped for a few hours (that was mostly just trying to get into the 5 stores we were interested in). We got back to hotel around 4 am.
Fri., Nov 25. Fred and boys got up at 10 and had gourmet breakfast. They woke teen and walked to Discovery Place. Other teen and I slept until 11. We showered, dressed and headed out to explore Charlotte. She wanted to find a sculpture of a hand we had seen the night before. First we found the all important Starbucks and got coffee and scones! We then walked for blocks and blocks looking at funny "plop" art, beautiful buildings, occupy Charlotte, homeless people, gang members and bag ladies.... We did find the Hand Sculpture and she was able to sit on it for a picture. One of the gangsters told her she had "Cool Hair" so her day was made! We took a short trip to Target for some essentials and then met back up with hubby and kids. We went on a carriage ride through Charlotte and got some pictures with Christmas art. Then we went to dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings attached to the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Can I tell you how much fun my kids had with us driving 16 hours to eat Buffalo Wings!!! We made it an early night.
Sat., Nov 26 9AM wake up and breakfast. By 10AM we were standing outside the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Now you have to know that I am the only sports fan of any type in our family so they agreed to spend an hour at the HOF to appease me.... If you ever get the chance to go... DO IT! We got to be pit crew, engineers, designers, announcers, and of course drivers. Everything you do is programed onto your card and you can access your points and results from home later! 2PM Dragged hubby and kids out of HOF so we could make our White Water Rafting appt. TOMTOM must have felt ignored being left at valet because he got us lost heading to the US National Whitewater Center. It's only about 20 mins outside of Charlotte but we were late. We got instructed, bundled, and put into a raft with our guide TARZAN (or Dreads). The next hour was one of the best family events ever. Our guide had an awesome sense of humor and great skill. None of us fell out of the raft but it was close sometimes. We were all soaked and laughing hysterically by the time we had done the course 2x through. Again, if you ever have the chance to go... DO IT! Here is where my kids refusing to allow me my typical hyper planning backfired on them. This place was more than a white water rafting facility. They offered ropes courses, zip lines, canopy tours, rock walls, mtn biking and hiking trails as well as kayaking. There were picnic areas and lots of just plain walking and viewing spots. Unfortunately, they closed at dusk.... We basically had the last raft ride of the day and by the time it was over and we were realitvely dry it was time to leave.... 6PM. entered Charlotte Motor Speedway, tuned our radio to their station and began a nice leisurly drive through Christmas lights with drivers sharing their favorite Christmas memories and carols. 6:45 actually drove onto the Charlotte Motor Speedway track on the back straight away!!! we slowly drove through turns 3 & 4 then entered pit road.... The lights stopped at the infield where there was a cute little Santa's village set up but my kids were too old and hungry to want to visit... We then drove to the closest Cracker Barrel for dinner. While waiting for our food we looked around and realized we were across the street from the MALL! You know the Black Friday nightmare mall! So yeah, we went there after dinner to see if it was always crazy and to take the boys to the LEGO store (we don't have those up here.) They also have a Disney Outlet so we did some shopping there too. 11 PM we were back at hotel and packing up.
Sun., Nov 27. 9 AM Breakfast (loving concierge lounge). 10 AM loading car. 10:30 saying good-bye to Charlotte. 12:30(ish) we arrived at North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro. We started in Africa. Unfortunately, all this travel was getting to my youngest (he is bipolar) so him and I had to sit in the car for awhile to cool off. We finally caught up with the others at the elephant exhibit. We then walked the rest of Africa and all the way to North America... Did you know that was possible?!? After walking the entire continent of North America we took the tram back to our car... Again, we have a very tiny zoo here so this was a huge thrill for my kids. 3:30 we get into the car to head to Maryland. We stopped for dinner and I let the teen drive just in time to get stuck in some holiday traffic outside of Raleigh... she wasn't too happy with me. I took over after that and many hours later we arrived in New Carrolton, MD.
Mon, Nov 28. 9 AM breakfast for oldest and Fred. They then headed to University of Maryland for tour. 10 AM breakfast for the rest of us and then the realization that since this is more of a Business person hotel their pool isn't open.... 12 PM Hubby and daughter return, not impressed, and we load up the car with everything except what Hubby needs for the week. We then drop him at work and start the drive home.... My brother lives in Delaware so made a short stop there. The last time we made this trip my car had been broken into and my TOMTOM stolen. The result was a wrong turn in Philly and me stuck in Trenton NJ and unable to find the exit out. This time TOM TOM stayed with us and we were able to safely navigate the can of worms that is Philly highways and make it home. We listened to Christmas carols good and bad the whole way. Of course Adam Sandler's Hannakuh song was also in the mix.... We arrived home about 12:30 and spent the next day sleeping, picking up the dogs and finishing up homework. My kids didn't have to return to school until today (Wed, Nov 30)
All in all I would say it was a great family trip and my kids are already rallying for a road trip to Tampa (another move consideration) for Spring break
What hotel did you stay at in Charlotte? I stayed at the Courtyard a couple of years ago. Very nice for what I paid! Plus parking was free (not the case at all the downtown/uptown hotels there).
If you make it back, there is a really cool upscale-ish bowling alley called Strike City in downtown/uptown (I forget which they call it!). It's over near Whisky River and Howling at the Moon (think that's the right name!) are. FYI if you are into NASCAR- Whisky River is owned by Dale Earnhardt, Jr. I am hoping to make it back to Charlotte for Speed Street in the next couple of years to check these places out since we didn't have time before.
What hotel did you stay at in Charlotte? I stayed at the Courtyard a couple of years ago. Very nice for what I paid! Plus parking was free (not the case at all the downtown/uptown hotels there).
If you make it back, there is a really cool upscale-ish bowling alley called Strike City in downtown/uptown (I forget which they call it!). It's over near Whisky River and Howling at the Moon (think that's the right name!) are. FYI if you are into NASCAR- Whisky River is owned by Dale Earnhardt, Jr. I am hoping to make it back to Charlotte for Speed Street in the next couple of years to check these places out since we didn't have time before.
Also, you gotta check out Fuel Pizza!
We stayed at the Hilton in Center City, it's literally around the corner from the NASCAR HOF. The movie theater we went to was in the same area as the bowling alley and Howling at the Moon but we didn't get to that. We didn't have to pay for Valet or even our stay since my hubby travels so much he is a Hilton Diamond member and they pretty much treat us like royalty when we stay at Hiltons. Makes it nice when we can't stay on property at Disney.
So did you like the Charlotte area? Is it still on your list?
We liked the area and I can see us visiting there again but we haven't been able to find good schools in the area so we aren't really looking there anymore.
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Teen daughter takes over driving while I use phone and tomtom to find CVS on route, call order meds and plot course. 7:30 CVS in PA! 8:00 back on track and back at the wheel..... 11:00 Hotel in Morgantown, WV. All 6 of us crammed into one room. Teen girls fighting over which side of bed. 1 boy in chair with footrest, the other says he needs to sleep in closet to dream of Narnia.
We had enough time to unpack the car and freshen up then made our 5:30 reservation at the Liberty Restarant. Food was amazing but we were the last seating so my hubby did not get roast beast and the desserts were pretty picked over. 
We then drove back to hotel, valet parked the car and checked out the rest of the 22 stories of the hotel. We were on the top floor! 8:30 we left the hotel and walked two blocks to night club area of Charlotte where we went to this amazing theater/bar and watched MUPPETS! 
I know we are crazy and we should have turned around when we realized all roads leading to the malls were temporary parking lots! We didn't though and shopped for a few hours (that was mostly just trying to get into the 5 stores we were interested in).
She wanted to find a sculpture of a hand we had seen the night before. First we found the all important Starbucks and got coffee and scones! We then walked for blocks and blocks looking at funny "plop" art, beautiful buildings, occupy Charlotte, homeless people, gang members and bag ladies.... We did find the Hand Sculpture and she was able to sit on it for a picture. 
One of the gangsters told her she had "Cool Hair" so her day was made! 
We took a short trip to Target for some essentials and then met back up with hubby and kids. We went on a carriage ride through Charlotte and got some pictures with Christmas art. 
We made it an early night.
Our guide had an awesome sense of humor and great skill. None of us fell out of the raft but it was close sometimes. We were all soaked and laughing hysterically by the time we had done the course 2x through. Again, if you ever have the chance to go... DO IT! 
Here is where my kids refusing to allow me my typical hyper planning backfired on them. This place was more than a white water rafting facility. They offered ropes courses, zip lines, canopy tours, rock walls, mtn biking and hiking trails as well as kayaking. There were picnic areas and lots of just plain walking and viewing spots. 
Unfortunately, they closed at dusk.... We basically had the last raft ride of the day and by the time it was over and we were realitvely dry it was time to leave.... 6PM. entered Charlotte Motor Speedway, tuned our radio to their station and began a nice leisurly drive through Christmas lights with drivers sharing their favorite Christmas memories and carols. 6:45 actually drove onto the Charlotte Motor Speedway track on the back straight away!!! we slowly drove through turns 3 & 4 then entered pit road.... 
11 PM we were back at hotel and packing up.
This time TOM TOM stayed with us and we were able to safely navigate the can of worms that is Philly highways and make it home. We listened to Christmas carols good and bad the whole way. Of course Adam Sandler's Hannakuh song was also in the mix.... 
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