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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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
Best wishes for a wonderful and magical new year!
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02-05-2015, 08:20 PM
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#1
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PassPorter Guide
 Community Rank: Globetrotter 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 3,041
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Feature Article: Make Your Own Welcome Gifts - A Walt Disney World Planning Article
Make Your Own Welcome Gifts - A Walt Disney World Planning Article
by Lisa Smith-Lester
This story needs a bit of background first.
While planning for our 2010 trip, I found the Disney Florist website, http://disneyworld.disneyfloralandgifts.com. They have some amazing products on here and I purchased a lovely gift basket for my then twp-year-old daughter, which was delivered to our room at Walt Disney World's Kidani Villas. With tax and shipping costs added, this cost between $60 and $68 (I don't have the exact figure). I looked at buying again for our October 2013 trip and found the same gift basket was now $103.95 plus tax and shipping! Far too expensive, especially as I now have two daughters. I thought about Mickey's Grand Welcome, but decided that as well as being too expensive, the items included meant this was really geared as a gift for one person; so I ruled this out. I made the rather crazy decision to make my own!
As my parents, siblings and nieces were all vacationing with us, I couldn't just do this for my two daughters, so I started planning a Grand Welcome for five! (The ages of the children were 5, 4, 2, 18 months and 6 months on our vacation.)
My original plan was to do a themed gift box based on the Fab Five plus Daisy, so this would have been six gift boxes (Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, Pluto and Daisy) for each child, making a total of 30 gift boxes! (Did I mention I am from the UK so would have to get these there via airplane?!) This all started about 18 months before our trip so I asked in every shoe store I went past for empty children’s shoe boxes, and managed to get more than enough over quite a period of time. I bought red, blue, black, white, purple, green, orange, yellow and pink colored wrapping paper, tissue paper, ribbons, bows, and card to be able to make the boxes.
I bought loads of little bits to go in the boxes. Things like crayons, notebooks, items from the Disney Store including little flip phones, magnets, purses, little Princess dolls and playing cards, small toys, teddies, stickers, and a ridiculous amount more! Almost everything I bought was on sale or was fairly inexpensive.
It was a bit harder getting items for my two youngest nieces, but we managed to get enough for them in the end. My Mum helped with the buying and was also on the lookout for inexpensive, small items.
A couple of months before our vacation, I made gift tags to go on each gift box, then I started wrapping all of the gift boxes over a period of a few weeks, doing a few each night. I had decided on five gift boxes for each of the girls, instead of the original six, so made up five each of Mickey-, Minnie-, Donald-, and Daisy-themed boxes, along with three Pluto-themed gift boxes and two Goofy gift boxes. I also made some banners that said WELCOME HOME that included each of the girls’ names.
Obviously, 25 gift boxes were a lot! As the gift boxes were different sizes, I was able to fit some boxes inside of one another so ended up with 12 empty boxes that I had to pack in our luggage. When the time to pack came around, I also had five gift bags full of all the items for the girls, one for each of them. Everything I had took up a whole suitcase, plus a few of the boxes went into one of the other cases. Thankfully, we were able to check four cases with the airline and had already planned on taking an empty case for souvenir shopping!
Fast forward to our arrival day. Once my daughters were in bed sleeping, I got busy unpacking all of the boxes and presents. The tissue paper needed to go inside each gift box and this was very difficult to cut without scissors (there were none in our 2-bedroom villa at Saratoga Springs Resort), then we put all the gifts into each box. We stacked them in piles, one for each girl, and then hid them behind the TV in the master bedroom so that my daughters wouldn’t find them in the morning.
The next morning we were up early as normal. We got dressed and gave the girls some cereal. My sister took my daughters to the second 2-bedroom villa that the rest of the family were in and then came back to help my husband and I set everything out. This didn’t take too long to do and we were soon on our way to Animal Kingdom for the morning.
We left the park at 1:30 pm and made our way back to Saratoga Springs. My husband and I went in to get the video camera set up and then everyone else came to the room to surprise the girls. They were excited coming in as we had put a big Mickey banner on the door and they were even more excited when they saw the piles of presents.
They loved opening all of the gift boxes and showing us everything they had, and had a really fun time.
I really enjoyed doing this for my daughters and nieces. It took a lot of time and quite a bit of money but it was completely worth it. It wasn’t too difficult to do either. The girls loved it and my daughters enjoyed playing with their gifts and the boxes for the rest of the holiday. And though I spent quite a bit on everything I bought, it was still a lot less expensive than the Disney Florist version!
I would tell anyone interested in items on the Disney Florist website, but not at the prices quoted, to consider making their own.
Added to PassPorter's Article Collection on 02-04-2015 10:02 AM
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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