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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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 know this may be a stupid question for someone who has been to WDW every other year for decades, but we are DVC members and haven't booked a WDW hotel room in forever...
How far in advance do room reservations open? We are planning a trip for my milestone birthday in 2020 and want to be sure we make the reservation as soon as they open to be sure we are there the right week. Also - is there a required amount that needs to be deposited at the time of booking?
I think you can book up to 500 days out. The original reservation will require a deposit of one nights stay at the current rate. You can't book packages that far out, but I'm almost certain you can book a room only reservation that soon.
You can room only and package reservations at 499 day from your departure date. If you attempt to book 499 days from your arrival date you will only be able to book your arrival day.
I know this may be a stupid question for someone who has been to WDW every other year for decades, but we are DVC members and haven't booked a WDW hotel room in forever...
How far in advance do room reservations open? We are planning a trip for my milestone birthday in 2020 and want to be sure we make the reservation as soon as they open to be sure we are there the right week. Also - is there a required amount that needs to be deposited at the time of booking?
in advance for any advice you can give!
Room only reservations can be booked upto 499 days before the DEPARTURE day of the stay. A deposit of one night is required.
Sometimes the dates are not yet released for booking through the website, in which case you have to call to do the booking and the rate is not guaranteed as they won't have released the prices for those dates yet - your deposit would be based on the current year price and then when they release the next years prices for your dates would be adjusted up or down accordingly.
For example: we are traveling in December 2019. They released 2019 prices earlier this year. So if you wanted to book for spring 2019 for a while you could only do that by calling and would not know the final price since the prices were not released yet. But for us with december dates, when they released 2019 prices we were not yet 499 days out, so when it came time to book our trip i could book it online at 499 days out from departure and book it with 2019 prices.
Note that there will not be any deals that far out, it is all rack rate.
Our strategy is to book a resort and room category we will be happy with if we have to pay rack rate no discount. We know we will have that room. Then, we stalk the boards and the website looking for when they release deals for our dates, if any. We change to the deal if we can. BUT, there may not be availability -- that happened for our December 2017 trip. While the resort did have special rates for our dates, there was no availability, so we were stuck with the original rack rate we had booked, which we were fine with though a little disappointed.
Now, another thing to consider is that the 499 day rule only applies for the hotel side of WDW. If you want to book a DVC room for "cash" from Disney, those don't become available until anywhere between 8.5 to 10.5 months out and inventory varies and new rooms willbecome available in batches, even into 6 and 7 months out and then other batches much closer.
There are reasons for this, and other well inexplicable reasons. We actually want to book at Copper Creek for part of our stay so for our last trip I stalked the site as we figured out when we could book it and since i have been stalking it to figure out when they become available and if there is a discernable pattern. You can do this too if you are interested in DVC rooms... look at dummy dates and see what is available and you will see a pattern emerge for your resort [i.e. they start to show up with 1 bedroom villas only X months out and then a few weeks later the rest of the room types suddenly pop up, and they come in and out of availability for X more weeks then settle in to more consistent availablity at Y months out until they all get booked up and then Z months out another batch appears...]. The pattern varies from one resort to another but seems to be consistent from time to time at the same resort, as far as I can tell.
Anyhow, what we did is book the HOTEL room we would be happy with, at rack rate, 499 days out. If there is no DVC villa availability to change to, we will be happy with that hotel room. If there is availability when they are eventually released we will change our reservation to what we "really" want. Either way we will be happy and going to Disney ! :-) And then, we look for deals, which are released even closer to the travel dates and getting harder to find.
I know this may be a stupid question for someone who has been to WDW every other year for decades, but we are DVC members and haven't booked a WDW hotel room in forever...
How far in advance do room reservations open? We are planning a trip for my milestone birthday in 2020 and want to be sure we make the reservation as soon as they open to be sure we are there the right week. Also - is there a required amount that needs to be deposited at the time of booking?
in advance for any advice you can give!
Don't worry, not a stupid question at all - I had no clue, as I don't remember the last time we stayed at Disney without being in a DVC room... probably before we joined DVC back in 2000!
Our strategy is to book a resort and room category we will be happy with if we have to pay rack rate no discount. We know we will have that room. Then, we stalk the boards and the website looking for when they release deals for our dates, if any. We change to the deal if we can.
Don't worry, not a stupid question at all - I had no clue, as I don't remember the last time we stayed at Disney without being in a DVC room... probably before we joined DVC back in 2000!
Lol!! Exactly! We figured out the last time we had a non-DVC trip was at least 20 years ago!
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in advance for any advice you can give!
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