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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
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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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Personally I don't use either. I've been so many times that I basically just go on the basis of I avoid MK on Mondays because most people will arrive on Sunday and they make MK their first park on Monday. Then I try to avoid whatever park will have morning extra magic hours for the day because resort guests will usually flock to that park. Unless of course I'm going for those hours myself. Other than that, I just go with whatever I feel like.
Personally I don't use either. I've been so many times that I basically just go on the basis of I avoid MK on Mondays because most people will arrive on Sunday and they make MK their first park on Monday. Then I try to avoid whatever park will have morning extra magic hours for the day because resort guests will usually flock to that park. Unless of course I'm going for those hours myself. Other than that, I just go with whatever I feel like.
I was thinking of doing the morning EMH for AK and HS, then heading back to the resort for some pool time and then to another park at night. Are the morning hours usually busy?
I was thinking of doing the morning EMH for AK and HS, then heading back to the resort for some pool time and then to another park at night. Are the morning hours usually busy?
Morning hours are only available to Resort guests and guests of select non-Disney hotels like the Swan and Dolphin. You can do a fair chunk of things during those hours but not everything will be open. We were at WDW over Christmas (Dec 23-26) and we hit MK for their early morning hour from 7am - 8am and only Fantasyland and Tomorrowland were open. We basically were able to get on everything in Fantasyland with the exception of Seven Dwarfs Mine Train in that hour. And that was over Christmas when the crowds were high and the resort hotels were at capacity.
Our crowd calendar is the ParkHopper. If we get to a park and find it too crowded to suit us (usually MK), we go to another.
I looked at a couple of crowd calendars before our Christmas trip a few years ago. They didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t already guessed. A couple days proved to be way wrong (or our sense of crowded didn’t match that of the estimator.)
As Mystic and your past trips list suggest to me, too, you’ve enough WDW experience to guesstimate where it’s likely to be most crowded when.
Unless you prefer to do more detailed plans than we (hardly any), I suspect you can do fine ignoring crowd calendars and simply winging it.
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“People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.” —Winnie-the-Pooh
Morning hours are only available to Resort guests and guests of select non-Disney hotels like the Swan and Dolphin. You can do a fair chunk of things during those hours but not everything will be open. We were at WDW over Christmas (Dec 23-26) and we hit MK for their early morning hour from 7am - 8am and only Fantasyland and Tomorrowland were open. We basically were able to get on everything in Fantasyland with the exception of Seven Dwarfs Mine Train in that hour. And that was over Christmas when the crowds were high and the resort hotels were at capacity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Her Dotness
Our crowd calendar is the ParkHopper. If we get to a park and find it too crowded to suit us (usually MK), we go to another.
I looked at a couple of crowd calendars before our Christmas trip a few years ago. They didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t already guessed. A couple days proved to be way wrong (or our sense of crowded didn’t match that of the estimator.)
As Mystic and your past trips list suggest to me, too, you’ve enough WDW experience to guesstimate where it’s likely to be most crowded when.
Unless you prefer to do more detailed plans than we (hardly any), I suspect you can do fine ignoring crowd calendars and simply winging it.
Park Hoppers are a must for us, for pretty much the same reason lol
I'll stick with my plan of making a few morning EMHs, and then just seeing where the day takes us. We did that on our last trip and it worked out pretty well.
Honestly, we've never been early morning hour people but because of when we were there we felt it was a necessity for MK since it WAS Christmas. I think we're now early morning hour people given how easy it was for us to get through the rides in Fantasyland. I can't remember the last time we practically walked on Winnie the Pooh, then the carousel, then Peter Pan, all the span of 15 minutes. And this was Christmastime. We used to do evening hours but with how easy it was to do the mornings I think we're converted.
Honestly, we've never been early morning hour people but because of when we were there we felt it was a necessity for MK since it WAS Christmas. I think we're now early morning hour people given how easy it was for us to get through the rides in Fantasyland. I can't remember the last time we practically walked on Winnie the Pooh, then the carousel, then Peter Pan, all the span of 15 minutes. And this was Christmastime. We used to do evening hours but with how easy it was to do the mornings I think we're converted.
Awesome that makes me feel even better for doing morning emh and then hopping
DH and I rarely do either, but we took two teen nephews to WDW in ‘04.
The younger one got back late one night from Disney Quest (a big deal then) and talked me into MK EMH until nearly 2:00 a.m.
I’m tellin’ ya, Space Mountain shortly after midnight with hardly anyone else riding it is incredible. We came out going, “That was so COOL!” Went right back on.
I had enough SM that very early morning to last my lifetime.
__________________
“People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.” —Winnie-the-Pooh
DH and I rarely do either, but we took two teen nephews to WDW in ‘04.
The younger one got back late one night from Disney Quest (a big deal then) and talked me into MK EMH until nearly 2:00 a.m.
I’m tellin’ ya, Space Mountain shortly after midnight with hardly anyone else riding it is incredible. We came out going, “That was so COOL!” Went right back on.
I had enough SM that very early morning to last my lifetime.
Yes, it totally depends on when you go and who you're with. I can just remember waiting on ME at All Stars on our last stay there and evening hours went until 2 (it was the summer) and people were getting off the buses at 3am because they had stayed until the bitter end and they were absolutely soaked! It was pouring rain and they were drowned.
I think it just depends on the person and the time of year and who you're travelling with. My mom and I used to only do evening hours but we've both gotten older and our touring style has changed. If we're going over New Year's you can bet we'll be in MK to watch those NYE fireworks on Dec 30 or 31. If we're there over Christmas we'll be in MK for early morning hours on Christmas Eve like we were this year. Any other time of year it would depend on our planned park days and if they coincide with any of the hours.
Although with our new favourite hotel being the Dolphin, it makes morning hours at EPCOT and the Studios much easier and more appealing.
I would love to do nighttime emh, but i doubt DD and DBF will last lol We'll see how they do with MNSSHP (fingers crossed they start them while we're there) and go from there
I would love to do nighttime emh, but i doubt DD and DBF will last lol We'll see how they do with MNSSHP (fingers crossed they start them while we're there) and go from there
If you plan it right for the party, you'll be surprised how easily they handle it. Plan for an out of park meal first then hit the party when it starts. You may find the energy that is generated by they party itself will give them the second wind they need to go the night. This happened for us when we did the New Year's fireworks a few years ago. We had done Animal Kingdom earlier in the day and then went to dinner at AKL. We were thinking of skipping MK and the fireworks altogether because we were so tired and it was taking a long time for the bus to come to AKL (phased closure = longer intervals between buses). But the minute we walked into MK it was a totally different story. The energy going on it the park was infectious. There were dance parties on Main Street in the castle hub, in Tomorrowland and in Frontierland. You couldn't help but get energized. It helped us last through Wishes and all the way to the midnight showing of Fantasy in the Sky and the 360 fireworks.
If you plan it right for the party, you'll be surprised how easily they handle it. Plan for an out of park meal first then hit the party when it starts. You may find the energy that is generated by they party itself will give them the second wind they need to go the night. This happened for us when we did the New Year's fireworks a few years ago. We had done Animal Kingdom earlier in the day and then went to dinner at AKL. We were thinking of skipping MK and the fireworks altogether because we were so tired and it was taking a long time for the bus to come to AKL (phased closure = longer intervals between buses). But the minute we walked into MK it was a totally different story. The energy going on it the park was infectious. There were dance parties on Main Street in the castle hub, in Tomorrowland and in Frontierland. You couldn't help but get energized. It helped us last through Wishes and all the way to the midnight showing of Fantasy in the Sky and the 360 fireworks.
That's great advice! I was thinking about LTT prior to the party, but maybe we'll do a pool day and an early dinner at Whispering Canyon.
The party will be on our 5th day, so a pool day and WCC may be the way to go. If we hit MK early for dinner and then stay for the party it may be too much.
If you’ll be at WDW the last week in August, you’ve a good chance of catching the MNSSHP as you may be aware.
(GMTA, here. )—What can work well to prep for it is a lowkey resort day. That way, you’re not using a park ticket, thereby saving an “extra” park day since you can enter MK as early as 4:00 on your party tickets.
Actually, we found it worked nicely to book an early ADR in MK. That way, you’re out of the way enjoying dinner while CMs have the unenviable job of escorting large groups of non-partygoers out of the park. That’s why we prefer dinner either at an MK resort or in MK around 4:30-5:30 so as to finish eating at about 7:00, official start time. We don’t feel we miss a thing, despite most insisting it’s better to get to partying at 4:00.
I agree with Mystic that the energized atmosphere of a party night can get just about anyone but Grumpy excited and eager to go and do. The atmosphere is electric!
__________________
“People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.” —Winnie-the-Pooh
Last edited by Her Dotness; 01-19-2018 at 10:13 AM..
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If we get to a park and find it too crowded to suit us (usually MK), we go to another. 
that makes me feel even better for doing morning emh and then hopping 
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