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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
Even if the mousekeepers were getting "the tip" included in my daily room fee, I would still tip as I am sure the amount they are getting paid is not a lot and cleaning up after others is not a fun thing to do.
We generally leave $5/day for the 4 of us. I don't feel that it's expected, but I do think the housekeepers appreciate it. We have had several housekeepers leave the envelope behind with a thank you note written on it!
Now I feel guilty. I'm pretty sure my family never left tips on our previous trips. Well, that's something else to add. I'll have fun decorating envelops for them, then. Do you normally have a new envelope every day, or do you reuse the same one?
I know! That's how I felt the first time I saw on here and in my Passporter that others tip. I would have a new envelope for each day. What I do is prepare them with the money ahead of time at home and take them with me.
I'm going to go ahead and leave the $5 and do it daily. I know we've had the same Mousekeeper all week before, but with a longer stay this time, there may be different ones on the weekends.
Thanks everyone for your ideas and responses.
....normally there is either 3 or 4 of us that will stay at POP...and we just do $5/day. On our last day...we have always left a $10 tip with a little hand-written thank you note. The housekeeping staff puts up with A LOT...and DOES A LOT to make the stay special....so I think a little extra "thank you" isn't really too much to do for them.
We typically leave $5/day for our family of three. I agree that housekeepers generally work very hard and are probably not well paid. They also spread the magic with countless little special touches (this has been our experience every trip, from towel animals to rearranging the stuffed animals in interesting poses, to making sure there are plenty of toiletries, etc.) We have been left notes of appreciation from our housekeeper and we have also been thanked in person. They way I look at it, if I can afford to spend the $ to take a trip to WDW, I can afford the $35-$40 to tip our Mousekeeper .
Now I feel guilty. I'm pretty sure my family never left tips on our previous trips. Well, that's something else to add. I'll have fun decorating envelops for them, then. Do you normally have a new envelope every day, or do you reuse the same one?
We do up envelopes ahead of time and "pre-stuff" so we are not scrounding for small bills as we are trying to leave in the morning and we do a different one for each day. I have never had the envelope left behind (but I seal them, so they have no choice but to tear it open) I also date them (to help me stay organized). One year we were there for DS 8th birthday and I marked on his date that it was RJ's 8th birthday - Yay! We came back to a room that was decorated with a toilet paper garland around the ceiling fan and across his headboard...very very sweet!
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.
For 4 of us, this year will be 5, we leave 10.00 a day. I live in a resort town and know how it is for Mousekeepers here in my area. We do put notes on the out side to the Mousekeeper for extra stuff. Every day the tips were gone and the extras was there. Only one time that the tip was left. When this happened I went right down to the front desk and talked to the manager and had him find out who our mousekeeper was that day so that she/he got that tip. Another time it was early on the day we were leaving and needed towels for 2 rooms and I asked the people doing the pool for some and they got them for me, tryed to give them a tip and they would not take it so i went right to the front desk and talked to the manager and left it for them to get it because they did not have to do it for me. The day we leave we know there is a bigger mess to clean up so we will leave 20.00 for mousekeeping that day.
We leave 10 dollars a day. My wife and I work with folks with limited means who do similar jobs. We know how hard they work and we feel if they are taking care of us, we will do something small to show our appreciation.
__________________
Planning for summer of 2017. 3rd week in August. We will get blown away by the rides, or a hurricane. Either way it should be alot of fun
Location: A little over 1000 miles from my happy place!
Posts: 1,628
Post Thanks / Like
Likes (Given): 6
Likes (Received): 1
Thanks (Given): 7
Thanks (Received): 0
Pixie Dust (Given): 0
Pixie Dust (Received): 0
Quote:
Originally Posted by JerseyDad
....normally there is either 3 or 4 of us that will stay at POP...and we just do $5/day. On our last day...we have always left a $10 tip with a little hand-written thank you note. The housekeeping staff puts up with A LOT...and DOES A LOT to make the stay special....so I think a little extra "thank you" isn't really too much to do for them.
Totally agree with this. We've always had friendly and helpful mousekeeping staff on our trips, and actually enjoy leaving a tip with a little thank you note. This latest trip with just me and mom, we left $5 a day even though it was only two of us as the room (CRB) was immaculate and we had a few small towel animals, and also I always leave a little extra as we tend to ask for extra towels/washcloths/pillows, and are always accomodated. As a few have stated, mousekeeping is probably not the easiest job in the world, and if we have enough money to take a vacation, then we certainly have enough to tip/thank those who make our vacation special!
I think it is common to leave tips for housekeeping and I don't know why a CM would say its not a tipping position, unless they mean that the Mousekeepers make minimum wage as opposed to $2.60 per hr. for myself I tip $1.00/2.00 per day and if I have one of the kiddoes with me, then i tip $2/3 per day. I have been stopped by a "mousekeeper" at POFQ and thanked for leaving a tip. I know they appreciate it and honestly having to clean up after people is not a nice job
__________________
Aug,1978- LBV;Apr,1987-Disneyland;March,1993-offsite;Jan,1997-offsite;Aug,1999- CBR;Sept,2000- ASMo;Aug,2001- ASSP;Aug,2002- ASMU/AKL;Jan & July 2003-POR;June,December 2004- PC;January 2005- ASMU; Aug 2005-PC;Dec 2005-AKL;Jan 2006-CBR ; July/Aug-Saratoga springs; Dec. PC;April 2007- Disneyland;Aug 2007-Disneyland & So Cal;Dec 2007-POFQ; Aug2008-POFQ & Nov 2008 PC,Y&B May 2009 ASmu, June 2009 PC ; Nov 2009 WL & POFQ;Jan 2010 BW & WL; June 2010 POFQ ; Aug 2010 Poly ;Oct 2010 WL; Jan 2011 PC
For those of you who make pre made envelopes, do you just leave them out somewhere when you leave in the morning?
Yes! Make sure and label the envelope with "Mousekeeping" so they know it is for them. I have left ours on the little table in our room in plain sight.
Yes, you absolutely have to make it unmistakably plain that it is a TIP, or they won't take it. You can't simply leave a fiver on the table; they won't touch it. Disney policy, and it's a firing policy to boot - they don't want to take even the smallest chance that a guest ever thinks the Mousekeepers are thieves.
Hence why the envelopes are such a popular idea around here.
I always leave $5 a day, even if it's just me and DH. I am always so excited to be there, that I want to share my happiness and excitement with a good tip
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: 
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
Well, that's something else to add. I'll have fun decorating envelops for them, then. Do you normally have a new envelope every day, or do you reuse the same one?
.
Guess where we were headed??
Kimberly
HOOKED ON DISNEY!!! 
Katie's graduation
Linear Mode
