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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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I wasn’t planning on writing a trip report. In fact, I’ve only written one before and it’s sooooo time consuming!!! For those of you who are so faithfully dedicated and write one with every trip – kudos to you!! I don’t know how you do it. I completed this trip over 8 months ago, but I keep reminiscing about it – you know, like when I have those “Calgon, take me away!” moments?! So I thought I’d write it down and try my best to remember it. So here goes!!
A little background to my trip:
I first had a brief sampling of a semi-solo trip in January 2008 for the Half Marathon. I ran and shared a room with my friend, but she travelled with her family on different dates. So I flew alone and had a few alone moments here and there which I thoroughly enjoyed! Flash forward 7 months and another spark in my mind occurred on our WDW family trip in September 2008. I thought to myself, “what if – just WHAT IF – I didn’t have the whole fam damily with me, I would have time to squeeze in a quick ride on Thunder Mountain.” And then later I thought again, “I could sit down and enjoy my meal from start to finish without interruption.” And again, “I would just love to sit on this bench for about 10 minutes and soak it all in!!” To all the Moms out there – I think you may have heard this voice too from time to time. Am I right?!
A seed was planted. Upon return of that trip, the seed started to sprout. The kids are still little enough that it’s OK if I’m gone for a few days. My mom is recently retired and happy to watch them while I’m gone. My DH had gone on 2 week long fishing trips (one per year), so I figured it was my turn now. I imagined a solo trip and all the things I could do without worry of making sure the rest of my family was happy all the time. I imagined a resort I had yet to try, maybe a behind the scenes tour, and if I timed it right, even a special event. The wheels were turning and a trip was beginning to form. I originally planned on mid-November 2009, a long weekend trip so I could “pre-test” Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party for a future trip with the kids. Value season hotel prices, it all looked good.
But then I remembered the free admission for your birthday promo and tried to plan around that. My birthday is November 3 and it fell on a Tuesday in 2009. That would make a long weekend even longer. Instead, I decided on Nov. 1-5, Sunday-Thursday, still like a 4 day weekend but during the week. It would be too early for MVMCP, but I would catch the end of the Food and Wine Festival. Sounded good to me! Once the F&WF events were announced, there was one thing that really appealed to me. OK, more to my sweet tooth – the Sweet Sunday brunch. Two of my favorite things, breakfast and dessert!!! The only problem was that it’s on Sunday morning. I wasn’t planning on arriving until late Sunday morning, after the brunch. So my sweet DH said sure, go ahead and leave on Saturday night. Even if it is Halloween!! (that man took all 3 kids trick-or-treating by himself. Love him!)
Dates were now set, airfare purchased (actually, I used hotel points for that), park hopper purchased, and hotel was booked. I decided on Caribbean Beach Resort after much debating between a split stay at POP as well. Again, my DH said why bother switching. Just pay a little bit more and stay at the bigger place. (did I mention I love that man?) I booked the AAA discount as soon as I could and started to plan my days!
Coming up: Planning fun or Planning obsession?
__________________
Tanya
Every click helps feed .6 bowls of food to rescued animals. Give a quick click every day and help animals in shelters! www.theanimalrescuesite.com
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Great start!! I love hearing about solo trips...trust me you will take one and you'll be hooked!! I'm planning number 3 next year! and im really excited to hear your thoughts on CBR it's on my list of places to stay...
As it all started getting closer, I plotted out my days with park hours and best/worst parks per the touring guide. There were two restaurants I’ve always wanted to try but wasn’t sure if forcing 3 kids under the age of 5 was ever a good idea to try in the past. So this was the best shot at that! I decided on Sci-Fi (movie clips could scare my little ones) and Le Chefs de France (maybe too fancy for the kids?) for my two solo meals. I figured many more of my meals would be snacking around at F&WF and then quick service meals. The Keys to the Kingdom tour was also a definite on my list. With all this running around back and forth I was planning on, I knew I’d need a rental car to save some time. So I booked that as well. What can I say, I’m an impatient person, so to pay extra for a rental car is worth it to me. To each his own!
Then one day as I was leafing through my trusty PassPorter, I realized there are so many attractions/rides that I haven’t seen since my days of coming to the World with my parents when I was little, or that I haven’t ever seen at all!! Shocker, yes indeed! So I promptly sat down and made a list of these rare sightings and figured out how many minutes they would require (thanks again PP) and added it all up. I learned not to write in pen anymore too! I had to start all over with plotting my days because it appeared as though DHS and AK required much more time than I had allowed for! Can you believe I had never walked the Pagnani Exploration Trail? Nor had I enjoyed One’s Man Dream? *please don’t hit me, duck and cover* How could such a self-proclaimed Disney Nut have missed out on such attractions is beyond me. I blame it on my past travelling companions!!! Anyway, I re-worked out my days and came up with a pretty good rough draft. And definitely made sure to pencil in some pool time as well!
Then the Wishes Dessert buffet was announced. This was absolutely, positively something I HAD to do!!! I looked over my schedule, picked the 3 days it would work out the best, and hoped it would be offered and available on at least one of them. I waited and waited and waited (with lots of you guys too) for them to announce the extension of this event into the fall. FINALLY it was announced and I called up immediately. SCORE!! I got the first date I asked for, easy peasy. And I was thrilled!! (I believe some jumping around may have happened when I hung up the phone.) My trip was really coming together now.
Then came the hard part. Waiting. All of you Tom Petty fans know the tune – sing along with me – “The waiting is the hardest part!” All summer long, when the kids were driving me nuts (“she started it,” “but she’s bugging me”), I would think about how awesome this trip would be! And then I got a coveted pin code offer!!! Oh yeah, I was all over that and saved mucho dinero on the hotel. That made the trip that much more exciting and that much further away!!! I tell ya, for an impatient person such as myself it even got so bad at some points that I would sit down and look at my schedule and literally try to time everything down to the minute to figure out where I would be to enjoy a counter service place I would eat at for my meals! Oh my, if my family knew, I’d be in the loony bin for sure!
Coming up: D-Day, can I say goodbye?
__________________
Tanya
Every click helps feed .6 bowls of food to rescued animals. Give a quick click every day and help animals in shelters! www.theanimalrescuesite.com
Last edited by home4us123; 08-02-2010 at 09:37 AM..
Reason: fp106
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My original flight time was for departing around 5pm with an arrival about 8 or so. There was a schedule change sometime in August to that flight and it was now departing at like 7pm or something – way too late! I wanted to do some shopping at DTD that night! But there was an earlier afternoon flight around 2pm. So I called AirTran and asked if I could switch to the earlier one and they said yes. This meant I would be missing trick-or-treat at home though. But like I said earlier, my DH took it all in stride and handled everything while I was gone.
So we headed off to the airport and the kids were a wee bit sad to say bye to me. I admit, I was a wee bit sad too. I just kept trying to focus on my plans (by now they were engraved into my brain) and the fun that lay ahead of me. As my DH stopped the car, I got out to climb in the back and give everyone a big goodbye hug and kiss. If I remember correctly, I think only 1 of 3 was crying and that would be my baby girl. She was 5 at the time and she is the middle child, but she’s my girly girl. She cries about everything! I reminded them that they had to hurry home for trick or treat and I would call them later to say goodnight. A big hug and kiss for my DH and I was off.
Seeing as how it was Halloween (and the second time in my life that I’ve flown on that day), there were a handful of airline employees dressed up for the occasion. That always makes it more fun! Everything went real smooth at the airport. I had a big lunch before leaving and I didn’t plan on eating until I got to CBR so I just purchased a bottle of water for the plane. I had a window seat (something I don’t get when travelling with kids!) and was really stoked for this trip!!
After a mostly uneventful flight where I actually got to read a book (another something I don’t get to do on a plane with kids), I proceeded to get my suitcase and my rental car and started driving to the resort. With my Frank Sinatra on the CD player and nice warm weather, it was a heavenly drive! And I managed to snap a few nice shots of the sunset along the way.
A little blurry, but it's the entrance sign for Caribbean Beach Resort! Hey, I'm driving and taking pictures at the same time!
Coming up: DTD on Halloween, what was I thinking?
__________________
Tanya
Every click helps feed .6 bowls of food to rescued animals. Give a quick click every day and help animals in shelters! www.theanimalrescuesite.com
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But like I said earlier, my DH took it all in stride and handled everything while I was gone. 
She was 5 at the time and she is the middle child, but she’s my girly girl. She cries about everything! I reminded them that they had to hurry home for trick or treat and I would call them later to say goodnight. A big hug and kiss for my DH and I was off. 
Everything went real smooth at the airport. I had a big lunch before leaving and I didn’t plan on eating until I got to CBR so I just purchased a bottle of water for the plane. I had a window seat (something I don’t get when travelling with kids!) and was really stoked for this trip!! 
Waiting to eat with Goofy - DLR May 2010
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