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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
Welcome! We're happy you've found the PassPorter Community -- the friendliest place to plan your vacation to Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Disneyland, and the world in general! You are now viewing the PassPorter Message Board Community as a guest, which gives you limited access. As our guest, feel free to browse our messages by selecting the forum you want to visit from the list below.
To post messages and ask questions, join our FREE community today and you'll get access to tools and resources not available to guests, such as our vacation countown timers, "living" avatars, private messaging system, database searches, downloads, and a special PassPorter discount code. Registration is fast, simple, and completely free. Just click the Join Our Community link.
If you think you've already joined, log in below now. If you don't remember your member name or password, please visit our Member Name and Password Recovery page. You are also welcome to contact us.
I decided to try a trip report for our recent Disneyland/California trip. It was awesome and I feel it deserved to be reported!! I will try to include some pictures but I am not very good at the uploading picture things so it may or may not happen.
I'll start by saying this was a trip that was planned very quickly!!! We have been to Walt Disney World several times and I never had any real plans to visit Disneyland although I always wanted to see California. I've thought about it before, but I was always drawn back to Disney World. For some reason, I always had this thought that Disneyland wasn't as nice or was somehow less (boy was I wrong!)
In my mind I thought maybe we would try to visit in 2-3 years and incorporate a visit to other California sites (which has always been a dream of mine).
The trip came about in a sad way. My mom has suffered from COPD/emphysema for the past 5 or 6 years. She was getting slowly and progressively worse and we all knew what the eventual outcome would be. In March, she really started going downhill fast. By the middle of the month, she was bedbound and we knew it was time for hospice to come help. She suffered greatly those weeks and it was one of the most difficult times of my life. However, during those weeks, when she knew she was passing away, she wanted to give my family a gift. She gave us a sum of money and told me to pick somewhere very special to take the kids to and remember her by. It was a wonderful gift and even though it was very sad to take the trip in a way, it was a very wonderful too. She passed away on Easter Sunday (April 5). She was only 64. Having this wonderful trip to look forward to was helpful during the grieving process.
We asked my dad to come along and at first he said no. But he eventually came around and agreed to go. So we set the dates for June 16 to June 25. We would fly from Pittsburgh to LAX and stay in Anaheim for 5 nights. We would do 3 days at Disneyland and 1 day a the San Diego Zoo. Then we would drive up the coast and stay 2 nights in Monterey and then 2 more nights in San Francisco. We would fly from San Francisco back to Pittsbugh on the 25th.
The crew on the trip was me(41), DH (42) my dad (68), and my DS(12), DS(10), and DD(7). My DD has mild autism spectrum disorder and sometimes can be a challenge on trips.
I didn't start planning this trip until mid to late April so I had about 6 weeks max to plan. Luckily, DL does not take as much planning as WDW and things came together pretty easily.
I had a credit card with Southwest that came with the bonus points so I had 50000 points to put toward airfare. I wanted to fly into Santa Ana, because LAX seemed to big and difficult to me. But, the fares were much cheaper into LAX so the points were less. So I went with LAX and our points covered all our fares on the way out. I was very excited. The fares back out of San Francisco were not as nice and I waited around too long and ended up paying more than I should have for those flights. I even looked into San Jose, but went with San Francisco at the lowest rate I could find.
I also wanted to stay at the Disneyland Hotel. But, my dad is a Hilton diamond member and was able to get some perks at the Hilton and we got a very great rate there, at 150 per night for each room (we had 2 rooms). The cheapest rate I could get at Disneyland Hotel was 450 and Paradise Pier at 350. I just couldn't justify spending a minimum of 2000 more just on hotel rooms for the first 5 days, so we went with the Hilton at the Convention Center. I was a little concerned about the distance, but several PPers reassured me it was doable.
The rental car was a little more complicated. I originally planned to pick it up at Anaheim at the end of our Anaheim stay and take a shuttle from the airport to the Hilton. It was expensive as there was a 200 dollar charge to drop it at a different location. Then I checked into the cost of picking it up at LAX (to save shuttle cost) and to my surprise there was no drop charge if I picked it up at LAX and returned it to the SFO airport. It was actually cheaper to do it this way and have it the whole 10 days than to just have it the last 5 and pick it up in Anaheim. So I reserved a minivan for 10 days from LAX and saved about 300 dollars including the shuttle savings. I was happy about that.
Next I had to plan the other part of the trip. I wanted to spend a day at the San Diego Zoo and now that we had the rental for the entire time that became easy. I ordered a Behind the Scenes Koala and friends tour for our day there. I had read very good things about their tours, and I was super excited. My 10 year old loves zoos and animals, so he was super excited as well.
We booked the Hilton Garden Inn in Monterey for 2 nights and then the Holiday Inn Express Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco for 2 nights after that. My dad also had Holiday Inn points so we got both rooms on points for one night there. That really helped.
The only ADRs I made was for Big Thunder Ranch BBQ and Goofy's Kitchen. I thought about doing a World of Color package. But, my daughter is very unpredictable and not always able to hang on for late nights so I didn't want to be tied in if she melted down at 7:00 and we couldn't make the show anyway. So we just took our chances on the shows.
Everything was planned and now all we had to do was wait (luckily the wait was only a few weeks compared to many many months on our WDW trips)
Your plans sound great, especially the behind the scenes tour at San Diego Zoo. Weird about getting the rental car for the whole time cheaper than for a shorter period of time.
Way to work the system with the rental car. Good for you! I'm especially excited to hear about your parks days and your experience with BTM BBQ, as this is something I have planned for my upcoming trip (no ADR yet).
Thanks for sharing your trip with us. I love seeing more DLR trip reports on here!!!!
Registered Message Board Members save 30% off PassPorter guidebooks! When you register you'll have access to a discount coupon good for 30% off the list price of PassPorter books in our online store.
Finally our departure day arrived! We stayed in Pittsburgh the night before since our flight left at 6:30. We stayed at an Embassy Suites by the airport. I have never stayed at an Embassy before. I was impressed. None of us slept more than 2 hours for various reasons so I knew we would be starting out tired. Especially since it will be 3 hours difference in time when we arrive.
The airport was a little hectic that morning which surprised me considering we got there at 4:45 am. But, we made it through the long security line and had time to grab a quick bite at McDonald's before boarding. We all got to sit together in 2 separate rows and the first leg of the flight to Phoenix was smooth and enjoyable.
My husband just started flying last year after 17 years of refusing so I was glad it was another easy flight. We are both nervous travelers. I love to travel, but I also worry about things. He was worried about the flight and I was worried about a big earthquake, so we were quite the pair We didn't have much time in Phoenix so we boarded for LAX about a half hour after getting there. We got a snack and were on our way. It was also an easy flight. LAX is so huge. But we navigated it easily, got our bags and caught the shuttle to pick up our rental without a hitch. At this point I only had a brief taste of California weather but I already knew I was in love with this new place!!!!!!!
We ended up with a Toyota Sienna minivan that I was very happy with. We were on our way to Anaheim and I was a bit apprehensive about the LA freeways. It was crowded (it was about noon on a Tuesday at this point), but nothing crazy and we made it to the Hilton in about 40 minutes with no problems thanks to Google Maps on our phone. It worked better than our GPS we left at home in my opinion. The kids fell asleep and I was in awe of my new surroundings. Luckily my husband drove so I could soak in the sights.
Our rooms were not ready so we walked to the Garden Walk to eat lunch. We chose the Cheesecake Factory. None of us had ever been to one, and we were all happy with the choice. We enjoyed it so much we didn't even have room left for cheesecake. I don't remember exactly what we ate, but we all loved our meal and by the time we got back our rooms were ready.
Your plans sound great, especially the behind the scenes tour at San Diego Zoo. Weird about getting the rental car for the whole time cheaper than for a shorter period of time.
The Behind the Scenes tour was spectacular. I highly recommend it. The whole car thing was weird, but I'm glad I found it. It was nice having the car the whole time. I guess there isn't a drop charge from airport to airport but there is from a satellite location to an airport. I'm not sure if that is just Enterprise, or applies to all companies
Way to work the system with the rental car. Good for you! I'm especially excited to hear about your parks days and your experience with BTM BBQ, as this is something I have planned for my upcoming trip (no ADR yet).
Thanks for sharing your trip with us. I love seeing more DLR trip reports on here!!!!
I was happy to find a cheaper deal with the car! I can't wait to share our park days!!!!!
Registered Message Board Members save 30% off PassPorter guidebooks! When you register you'll have access to a discount coupon good for 30% off the list price of PassPorter books in our online store.
I ❤️ The Cheesecake Factory! I always get one of their salads, lunch size as they are HUGE! I usually don't have room for cheesecake either, but I get it to go and have it later.
Registered Message Board Members save 30% off PassPorter guidebooks! When you register you'll have access to a discount coupon good for 30% off the list price of PassPorter books in our online store.
About This Page: 
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
PassPorter Guide Author
What a wonderful thing she did for you and what a great way to remember her by though. 
Weird about getting the rental car for the whole time cheaper than for a shorter period of time. 
We didn't have much time in Phoenix so we boarded for LAX about a half hour after getting there. We got a snack and were on our way. It was also an easy flight. LAX is so huge. But we navigated it easily, got our bags and caught the shuttle to pick up our rental without a hitch. At this point I only had a brief taste of California weather but I already knew I was in love with this new place!!!!!!!
Linear Mode
