Stepping into a new continent – a week in Hong Kong COMPLETED - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
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.
Stepping into a new continent – a week in Hong Kong COMPLETED
Stepping into a new continent – a week in Hong Kong
Dates: Thursday 14 February – Saturday 23 February Adventurers: Me, Cheryl (35) and DH Mark (42) Resort: City Garden Hotel Celebration: Visiting a new Disney park and a vibrant city and using up our grocery vouchers!
Pre-trip report – part one:
Anyone who knows me will know by now that I’m never happy unless I’m planning a vacation – Disney or otherwise. It’s just something I love doing and somehow, you always get better value for money out of a vacation when you’ve been working towards it for months. Well, that’s my excuse anyway!
Somewhere near the beginning of 2007, I realised that the vouchers that we’d been collecting from our major grocery store, Tesco (actually never mind grocery store – they’re probably our major store full stop in this country, as apparently £1 in every £10 we spend here goes to their coffers, but I digress..) would need to be used by the summer. You get vouchers that are valid for two years and the first set dated from August 2005, so we’d have to use them by August 2007. That got me thinking. What could I put them towards? A city break wasn’t going to work this time. Previously, we’d had free breaks to Disneyland Paris, Oslo and Stockholm and finally Stockholm using them with Bridge and Cresta, but neither of these companies participated in Tesco’s rewards programme any longer.
It took me ooh all about half a millisecond to decide that we should use our vouchers with Virgin Holidays, who fly all around the world, with brochures covering Florida, the Caribbean, Dubai and Worldwide. Yes, you read that right – Florida, but unfortunately that wasn’t going to work for us. To qualify, you have to stay for seven nights (OK that would work) and your package has to include flights (that would work too) and also accommodation. OK, that’s where it’s not going to work. We’re DVC members, why on earth would we spent our vouchers staying somewhere else on Disney property? And we are talking a heck of a lot of money here with their prices!
So Florida was out. I debated for a long time and thought about the Caribbean, then lingered on Dubai for a long time, but a friend of mine went out there and stayed at the hotel we were looking at. She told us it was good, but not wonderful and also said that five nights out there had been plenty. Hmmm, we would have to be out there for seven nights. The killer was when she told us about the prices and how much it would cost to eat there. This is meant to be a cheap vacation! OK, cross that one off the list then...
Back to the drawing board – I had a look through the Worldwide brochure and happened upon Hong Kong. A few calculations later, it turned out we’d got about enough vouchers to cover a holiday out there and, from a little bit of research, food prices seemed fairly low there. I later discovered that had something to do with the Hong Kong dollar being tied to its American neighbour of the same name. That meant, with our exchange rate against the American dollar as it was, we’d be looking at something like $15HKD (Hong Kong Dollars) to every pound! Suddenly anything that was $200HKD looked very cheap to us!
The brochure only ran up until April 2008 and we wanted to go before then anyway, as we knew that it started to get very hot in Hong Kong from May onwards. According to the brochure, there were lots of deals for people going in February, so we settled with flying out then. We also discovered that the Spring Lantern Festival (part of the Chinese New Year celebrations) would take place on 21 February and I liked the idea of being out there for that, so we ended up going with dates that took that in. Our flights would both be overnight, so we’d have to fly out on a Thursday, stay seven nights to qualify to use our vouchers, then fly back on a Saturday, arriving about the same time we’d leave Hong Kong. Yep, travelling through a lot of different time zones is mindblowing...
It was about this time that Mark started to ask me if we could go Premium Economy instead of Economy. Now remember this was going to be a very cheap trip, with the vouchers covering everything? Not if we flew Premium Economy, as that would cost another £1200! I couldn’t justify that, but told him I’d do a deal – if it meant that much to him and he could find the money, then we’d do it. It didn’t take him long to assess the money situation and to tell me that he’d take the deal. We called up and booked our flights, snagging the last two Premium Economy seats on one of the legs of our flight and enquired about one hotel. We were told that Virgin had no more rooms left there, so they’d check with the hotel. We then had an agonising wait to see if we’d be able to get in there.
About three days later, they called back... with the bad news. The place was fully booked. Fortunately, the person booking for us had had a long chat with someone in her department who’d been to Hong Kong and she advised which hotels to go for and which weren’t in a good location. Armed with that information, soon we were booked at the City Garden Hotel in Causeway Bay, which we were assured was a good location. We took the last room there, so I’m glad I made that decision quickly. It had a pool (not that I was sure I’d be swimming with temperatures at that time of year averaging in the 60’s, but you never know!) and was near to a Metro station, which I always figure is very useful. There’s nothing worse than getting a hotel that’s miles away from the nearest public transport stop. And best of all, it was cheaper than the hotel we’d originally gone for by about £150, so we did save some money – to put towards the Premium Economy flight upgrades!
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.
Registered Message Board Members Get Our Free Newsletter! When you register you'll have the option to sign up for our weekly PassPorter Newsletter. It's chock-full of feature articles; news; tips; contests; photos; and special offers in our online store.
Wow!! wish we had something like those grocery vouchers here!! I'd be traveling to Europe sooner if so! I can't believe the exchange rate is that good for HKD...i didnt realize they were tied to the american dollar. I cant wait to hear more!
Don't keep me waiting. I have never left the US (Canada doesn't count) and I am far too chicken to try something as exotic as Hong Kong! I can't wait to see the pictures.
Registered Message Board Members Get Our Free Newsletter! When you register you'll have the option to sign up for our weekly PassPorter Newsletter. It's chock-full of feature articles; news; tips; contests; photos; and special offers in our online store.
About This Page: 
PassPorter Guide Author
Yep, travelling through a lot of different time zones is mindblowing... 
I couldn’t justify that, but told him I’d do a deal – if it meant that much to him and he could find the money, then we’d do it. It didn’t take him long to assess the money situation and to tell me that he’d take the deal. We called up and booked our flights, snagging the last two Premium Economy seats on one of the legs of our flight and enquired about one hotel. We were told that Virgin had no more rooms left there, so they’d check with the hotel. We then had an agonising wait to see if we’d be able to get in there. 
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m83/kazzamcgazza/dlp-1.jpg
Linear Mode
