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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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For starters, let me say I have had a blast reading others' TRs and it really helps when planning gets bogged down in details to know that there's some place to go and gather ideas or just forget about it for a few and read about the fun others are having.
So, hi! I’m Keith and this is my first ever PTR, and actually the first trip I’ve ever planned so I am sure it’ll be a learning experience on both fronts (it has been so far!). For now though, let’s get this party started… right.
As I said, I’m Keith and I’m 32 and from New Hampshire. My Family has been to Walt Disney World four times before. I’m probably the biggest Disney fanatic in the Fam, and that’s partially how this trip came about. You’ll get to hear all about that later though. Let’s move on.
Going with me on this trip is my DGF Beth. She’s 29 and also from New Hampshire. This’ll be her 7th trip to WDW, and our FIRST together. The last time she went she had a blast with her whole Fam, just like I did, so that’s something great that we have in common!
Now, this trip… this trip is something of a tale to tell. The story of how this trip happened starts almost a year before the trip itself is planned for. Last January we got the news that My Mom and Dad were going to be at WDW for a Business meeting and Mom suggested that we plan a family vacation for the week after the meeting, since they’d already be there. I thought, “Awesome! Disney!” and I was all for it. My sister on the other hand…
The week mom wanted us to go was the week before my nephew Jack’s April vacation, so that was a big NOPE! It was also the beginning of Karting season, and missing out on the beginning of the season would put Jack at the back of the pack with lots of catching up to do. So that idea fizzled out pretty quickly.
We all got together right after Mom and Dad got back and tried to figure out when we could all go. September? Nope. Go-Kart season. October? Nope. Karting. November? Nah Thanksgiving.
"I know! Christmas! Let’s do Christmas in Disney!" It’ll be perfect! We can ship Jack’s presents to the resort and the rest of us will just use the trip as our Gift to ourselves! To my surprise, everyone agreed!
This was all about a month or so after Beth and I had gotten back together from a small break in our relationship. Details aren’t really important, but yes, we had been officially back together for less than a month at the time and I asked Beth if she wanted to come along. Of course she did! She loves Disney as much as I do! So I started doing research with her for the trip. She had stayed on property with her family and had done the Dining Plan for her last trip, so she had a bit more experience and advice for us since we haven’t stayed on property since the Disney Inn back in 1988.
She and I started doing the research for the trip and bought books ( my PP!!) and visited many websites and that’s when we hit more snags about the dates…
I hope that you and your family have a magical time at the world
__________________
Heather - "I'm Tinkerbell's biggest fan!"
WDW - August 1997 Off Property
WDW - January 2005 AKL
WDW - May 2006 Pop Century
WDW- november-dec 2007 pop century
WDW- dec/jan 2009/2010 pop century
WDW- oct/nov 2012 art of animation
WDW- sept 2013 port Orleans riverside
WDW- july 2015 beach club
Going with family is great...but it stinks when you have to take others into consideration. But after that little snag it looks like you're off to a good start.
At the end of my first post I mentioned more snags, and BOY were there snags.
My original idea about going between Christmas and New Year’s seems like it was almost doomed from the start. Ever since the HGTV “Behind the Magic” special last Winter I have wanted nothing more than to be in Disney World for Christmas. About 3 minutes of research told me that was a bad idea. It’s the busiest and most expensive week of the year? OK. We can work around that. It’s a couple of Snags, but we can still make it work.
So what was it that put the final nail in the coffin and almost made my chances to go to Disney World this year into the 1000th ghost at the Haunted Mansion? I’ll tell you what it was. My Brother-in-law is out of Vacation time for the year. There goes the family trip to Disney. All three of those snags killed our trip. We were sunk. “Oh well, there’s always next April.”
Oh, OK! Sure! But, I’m still in Disney mode. You people have been teasing me about this trip since January. I’m going!
“Hey Beth, Want to take a Long Weekend trip in early December? I hear it’s slow and inexpensive at that time of year. It’s after Black Friday, so you should be able to get the time off. Let’s do it!”
And that’s exactly what she said yes to!
“Can you do that AND the family trip in April?”
Uhhhh. Yes!
That does it. We’re going!
So, our plans now including two trips, we had to get down to business and figure out the finances, the logistics, and what we’d be able to do. I took it upon myself to do some preliminary research and found numbers for tickets, rooms, dining plans, annual passes, and everything in between. Beth did the same, and when we pooled our info together we decided that yes, we can do this!
Once we figured out that we could do it, we picked some dates and started the actual planning. We had never done so before, so it was all brand new to us. We spent an entire Sunday, from about 10:30 AM until about 8PM sitting at the computer looking things up, writing down ideas, calling WDW and asking questions. We took some time and picked our restaurants from a list on Allears.net, and got reviews of the same from here at Passporter.com.
We whittled our list down until we had decided on which restaurant we wanted to go to when we were in which park. We went back and forth over resort choice a few times. We swapped from Port Orleans French Quarter to the Yacht Club, to the Caribbean Beach Resort, to Coronado Springs, to the Pop Century and back around the horn a few times.
We wrote down our list and picked and chose three Table Service meals over the course of our short trip. We waffled on the Dining plan or Tables in Wonderland. We went back and forth on which parks we actually wanted to go to during the short trip, going so far as to pick and choose which attractions in each we wanted to see, didn’t care about seeing, or didn’t want to see at all.
We finally came down to our plans and wrote it all down for reference when we called to book it.
Dates: Dec. 2-5 2010 Vacationers: Just the two of us! Keith and Beth! Resort: Coronado Springs with the Dining Plan. Tickets: Annual Pass (makes sense in the budget because of the trip in April) and MVMCP for Dec 3.
Dining? Well I have to give you SOME reason to come back!!!
Awesome! We are going to be staying at CSR for Christmas time too. That special was the same one that made us decide we were going to Disney for Christmas too! And like you said after about 3 min of planning told us that was a bad idea...but we can't give it up lol!
About This Page: 
I’m Keith and this is my first ever PTR, and actually the first trip I’ve ever planned so I am sure it’ll be a learning experience on both fronts (it has been so far!). For now though, let’s get this party started… right.
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I'm enjoying reading your PTR and can't wait to read more.
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