Solo-on-a-Scooter AbD DLR and DCL Alaska! (7/21-8/7/2012) - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
Solo-on-a-Scooter AbD DLR and DCL Alaska! (7/21-8/7/2012)
Solo-on-a-Scooter AbD DLR and DCL Alaska! (7/21-8/7/2012)
This trip, which involves a week in California, 3 days in Seattle, followed by a week-long Alaska cruise, will be posted in two forums: Disneyland Trip Report Forum and Disney Cruise Line Trip Report Forum. This portion, which is a mini-pre-trip-report, will be in both places.
I’m very excited about this trip, but didn’t start out that way…. This was supposed to be my once-in-a-lifetime trip to South Africa with Adventures by Disney! I had been told on several phone calls to AbD that my scooter would be no problem on this trip and thought I was all set. I was on cloud nine with excitement and anticipation. Then, when my TA Marisa went to make the final booking, it was denied. They said not only was the trip NOT accessible, but that very few of their trips were. The reasons they gave were vague and I figured that some guest(s) had had issues and legal forced them to stop offering accessible trips. I’ve since found out that the reason is that one part of the trip involves a flight on a small plane with a per-person weight allowance of 40lbs. Since my scooter is 35 lbs, that would put me over the limit. Still disappointing, but least I have a reason. I’m not surprised that many of their trips can’t accommodate mobility devices—the world is not Disney World and can’t be retro-fitted, but I do wish more of the trips were available to me. Marisa worked VERY hard to try to find a trip that would be spectacular enough to take the place of this dream trip and we ended up with the AbD “Backstage Magic” trip which involves tours of Disney Studio, Imagineering, Muppet Studio and backstage tours of Disneyland and California Adventure. Sharon (PrincessSharon) did a trip report a few years ago of this trip and it sounded AMAZING! Then, as if that wasn’t enough, I’m flying to Seattle for the 7-night Alaska Cruise on the Wonder! Thank you, Marisa, for all your work on this! It’ll be a challenging trip to pack for, that’s for sure. Since I’ll be doing my usual solo traveling I wanted to go the luxury route, with all transfers and baggage-handling done by others! By doing the combo of AbD and DCL, this will work just great!
So, the bare outline of the trip is:
7/21/2012 fly from Boston to LA.
7/22-27 Backstage Magic, Adventures by Disney
7/27 night-time flight to Seattle
7/27-7/30 explore Seattle
7/30-8/6. DCL Alaska on the Wonder
8/6 fly from Seattle to Boston
I have plans to meet up with Jeannie (Dlandmom2) and her kids in Hollywood and, I hope, will also see Sharon and Karen (Zacksmom) at DLR at some point. As Sharon has mentioned in her AbD trip reports, one of the “problems” with AbD is that you don’t get a whole lot of details about each day’s itinerary, which makes it kind of hard to plan meetings. I know there’s a lot of free time built into this tour, though, so have no doubt that we’ll figure something out. I’m hoping to do live reports, at least for the California and Seattle days, but internet access is so slow and expensive on the Wonder, I may have to write the days up live but post them when I return.
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.
Sometimes real-life rudely affects pre-trip excitement and planning and that hit me big-time this year. On June 5 my mother had to be placed into a nursing home. Her mental decline happened so rapidly. It’s hard to believe that 3 weeks ago she was living on her own and now she’s in a locked facility, sometimes not knowing what decade it is or who I am. This procedure, along with closing up her apartment, has completely taken over my life. Since even when she recognizes me her short-term memory is pretty much gone, she never remembers who has visited her even a few hours before. This makes it easier, in a way, because whether I visit or not she won’t remember, but I still feel I need to check in several times a week. I’m cutting back, though, and have people to take over for me during my trip. The big problem is the mind-shift involved to tell myself it’s ok to relax and enjoy myself.
Today the trip has forced itself back to my notice—Cruise Documents and luggage tags have arrived!! I’ve really not planned out what to pack or anything yet, although I have filled out the on-line registration. I still don’t have the Adventures by Disney luggage tags and packet yet, but I imagine it won’t be long now. So, somehow, probably without much help from me, I’ll get myself to the airport in 28 days with a full suitcase!
(Again, until I get to LA, this report will appear both in the Cruise TR forum and the DLR TR forum)
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 am so sorry about your mom...I work on two secured memory care units and I see how difficult it can be on the families....so I am sending a few extra hugs! . It definitely more than okay to relax and enjoy yourself and I am sure that is what your mom would want, too.
Congrats on the Disney Mail...that is always a nice package to find in the mailbox!
danielle
__________________
~Shoot for the moon, if you miss, you will land among the stars~
I am so sorry about your mom...I work on two secured memory care units and I see how difficult it can be on the families....so I am sending a few extra hugs! . It definitely more than okay to relax and enjoy yourself and I am sure that is what your mom would want, too.
Congrats on the Disney Mail...that is always a nice package to find in the mailbox!
danielle
Thank you, Danielle, for the hugs and for the work you do! My mother is in amazingly good physical health for 84, so it's likely to be a long relationship I have with the nursing home and caregivers. It does seem to be a very nice, caring one.
Oh Laurie, I'm so sorry to hear your mom is going through this change in her life, and it also affecting you. Please know you are both in my thoughts. Sending you extra hugs.
Relax and enjoy your well-deserved getaway. Congrats on the cruise mail, which always helps to brighten things up a bit.
Can't wait to hear all about your adventures Laurie!
I'm sorry about your mom, but like others have said it's ok to relax and have fun while on vacation. for packing!
6/25/2012
My AbD pre-trip packet arrived and, boy, do they know how to ramp up the enthusiasm! If you’re thinking of doing an AbD trip and don’t want a sneak peak at the surprises, you probably should stop reading now because I think there are many spoilers ahead from this point on. They do vary the trips, though, so it’s possible that even if you’re doing the Backstage Magic your trip surprises will be different from mine.
Here’s what the outside box looked like:
And when you open the top:
And what’s inside:
1. Very nice, small backpack. (Now I have to decide if I should use this as my flight carry-on instead of my new Vera Bradley backpack!)
2. Pre-Departure Handbook and checklist. (tips for packing, more daily itinerary details, phone numbers to leave with folks at home, details of meals, gratuities, laundry, accommodations, weather, etc)
3. luggage tags and how to use them.
Presented beautifully. So, now I have my AbD documents AND my cruise documents. YIKES! I really need to give packing some thought!
Laurie - you are going to LOVE the ABD! I did Backstage Magic last August and was blown away. I actually know some people on the same adventure so I know you will have a good group! It sounds like a much deserved trip.
About This Page: 
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
PassPorter Guide Author
. It definitely more than okay to relax and enjoy yourself and I am sure that is what your mom would want, too.
for packing!
Disney Magic - Oct 2015
It sounds like a much deserved trip.
Linear Mode
