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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Thank you all for all the compliments to Miss Bri!
I found my notebook lurking in a closet today, so if I can break away from packing for an hour or so tonight I am hoping to get a new entry up tonight or tomorrow! Finally going to finish this thing!
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I love your TR. Can't wait for more. Briana is beautiful! I know how hard it can be to move with a baby as we moved when Aidan was 2 months old. Don't put unnecessary pressure on yourself is the only advice I have. If the house is messy, so be it. Don't try to do it all because you will wear yourself out. Just enjoy your baby and enjoy being a mommy.
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Just joining in. Can't wait to hear more about your trip!
Briana is such a cutie! Love the pictures of her!
Thanks for coming aboard! And thank you for the compliments on Briana. We're pretty taken with her.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Russi01
Glad you found your notebook. Can't wait to read more about your trip!!!
I'm determined to get a new entry up soon. Possibly tonight!
Quote:
Originally Posted by lissybri
I love your TR. Can't wait for more. Briana is beautiful! I know how hard it can be to move with a baby as we moved when Aidan was 2 months old. Don't put unnecessary pressure on yourself is the only advice I have. If the house is messy, so be it. Don't try to do it all because you will wear yourself out. Just enjoy your baby and enjoy being a mommy.
Thank you! I'm trying to relax, lol. It's hard though. Since I have Briana, I don't have nearly as much time to devote to packing. We're moving on the 15th, and I've only packed two boxes of books. So now I'm freaking out that we won't be packed in time! I'm sure we'll get it done. There's a couple weekends between now and then.
Today was a strictly enforced (by David) sleep-in day. So I woke up at 7:00, and rolled over and went back to sleep. Then I woke up at 9:00 and asked David if it was late enough to get up yet. His answer was to throw his arm around me and pull me close in a death grip, so I took that as a no. We woke up again at 11, and dozed until 11:30, when David finally agreed we could get up now.
The fact that it was a no park day made it easier for me to laze around in bed, but I was still chomping at the bit by the time he "allowed" me to get up. And then I was trying to hurry him along while he took his time getting ready. We are so opposite while on vacation...if I had my way we'd be up at 6 every day and on a bus by 7...we balance each other out, though, so it's all gravy.
I ate a Debbie's Chocolate Chip Muffin for breakfast (so nutritious!) while he showered, then called the front desk to ask how to get to the Fantasia mini-golf course, because I had absolutely no idea. The happy sounding lady at the front desk told me that we would have to take a bus to DHS, then catch a boat to the Swan, and then walk across the street. (I suppose we could have caught a cab, but we figured we weren't in a hurry, so why spend the cash?)
We were ready to walk out the door when David remembered that he needed to call into work because they had screwed up and not approved three days of his vacation...right in the middle of it. How can you approve days one through three, and then days seven through fifteen, but not days four through six? Ugh. Stupidity! Rant over...
By the time David was ready, it was 12:40, and we went in search of food in the food court.
We both settled on a "create your own salad" which was very tasty. I think I had chicken and parmesan cheese and....bacon bits? I seem to remember chipotle ranch dressing and pita bread as well. And maybe some hard boiled egg and cheddar cheese. Any way, it was a wonderful salad, and we went back to get several more before the trip was over.
After our salad, we caught our bus to DHS so we could catch our boat to the Swan and Dolphin, so we could walk to the golf course. (We were joking about the complicated nature of this excursion, so there's lots of repetition about it in my notes. ) We accidentally went to the Dolphin (because I wasn't really paying close attention to the giant DOLPHIN statues as we walked into the hotel () but a CM at guest services there pointed us in the right direction, and a bellhop at the Swan finally got us headed there.
Side note: when I'm not pregnant, I have an excellent sense of direction and almost never get lost. I discovered on this trip that being pregnant totally messes that up. I felt lost half the time, and even got turned around in the parks a couple of times, which is just ridiculous. It was actually really frustrating me.
As we were walking over to the golf-course, I was getting very hot. I don't remember how warm it was that day, but it was VERY warm, and even before we started golfing, David was worried about how red my face was. We had a blast golfing, though! I got two holes in one! Woot! And David got one, too.
After golfing, walking back to catch a bus from Swan to DTD, David started to get really concerned about me. He said "Your face is bright red, honey. Should we find somewhere to sit down? Do you feel sick?" I felt fine (aside from my ankle/heel bothering me a bit, but not enough to mention to him yet), but drank the remainder of my water bottle to make him feel better, and I honestly probably needed the water anyway.
When we made it to DTD, we bought our traditional yearly Christmas ornament (personalized to say the year we went) and also bought a "Baby's First Christmas" ornanment, which we also had personalized with Briana's name. We arranged to pick them up, but I can't remember if it was that day or later in the day.
We wandered into a spice shop we had never been into before, and we both enjoyed smelling all the different spices in there. I asked David if he wanted to buy anything (he is a big spice guy), but he declined, saying he didn't see anything we couldn't live without. I wanted to go into Once Upon a Toy to look around, but while we were there, my legs started to feel really weak, and I started to feel faint and way too warm...I've never passed out before, but I'm pretty sure that I was about to!
I found David and told him I needed to sit down ASAP. We maneuvered our way into Earl of Sandwich, and he got me sitting down and went to buy me a cold water bottle. I ate some cheese cracker sandwich things, drank all my water, and just rested for a few minutes. I started to feel better and told David we could move on, but he made me wait five more minutes "just to be safe." Do I have a good husband who loves me, or what?
It was time to go AKL anyway for our reservation at Boma.We had checked what bus stop we would need when we got off the bus from the Swan, so we headed straight to stop #4 and sat on the bench. I was feeling much better, but pretty worn out, so I was pretty glad that there was room to sit down.
The bus arrived quickly, and the bus driver confirmed before we got on that we were headed for the Animal Kingdom Lodge. We found seats on the nearly empty bus, and then picked up more people at the Pleasure Island stop. As the driver pulled away from the second stop he played that "We're on our way" recording, except he didn't play it for AKL, he played it for AoA. Huh?! Of course, this was very confusing and stressed me out because I was very pregnant, and everything stressed me out. David kept telling me it was a mistake and not to worry, but until we passed the turn off for AoA, I was sitting on the edge of my seat.
We made it to AKL in the end, and made our way to the lobby. David and I both just kind of stopped and stared. It was so pretty! I told David we just HAD to stay there some day!
Another couple heading to Boma who had been there before showed us the way, and even allowed us to check in ahead of them. Just one of many little acts of kindness people showed us on this trip.
Our server was Ling. The chicken corn porridge soup and the mac and cheese were my two big favorites (I couldn't stop myself from going back twice for more...can I blame my pregnancy?), and David loved the butternut squash soup and the pork shoulder. We both really enjoyed the Zebra Domes, and Ling brought us a plate with a few different desserts on it for our anniversary. (Pictures will come later, I'm having issues at the moment with them.)
After our wonderful dinner, David said this was now officially on our list of "must dos" for our future trips, and I heartily agreed. We wandered over and explored the hotel store, not purchasing anything, but wishing we could afford some of the spendier items. If I remember correctly, I really liked a large wooden elephant figurine (I collect elephant figures), but it was way out of our price range. It's nice to dream though, right?
We decided to get on the first bus that showed up, figuring we would either end up at a park or DTD so that we could catch a bus back to our own resort. It happened to be a DTD bus that showed up, so we hopped on and had gone full circle back to where we started. We caught a bus back to Pop almost as soon as we stepped off the bus at DTD, and I was glad, because I was exhausted.
I fell asleep by 10, but David was awake until 11 watching Criminal Minds. I put in my notes that I woke up every couple of hours all night long. I was burning up, even with the thermostat set as low as it would go (68 degrees). David got up and pulled on a sweatshirt because he was cold, and I looked at him like he was nuts. Ah, the joys of pregnancy!
Coming up next (After my picture posts): Day 5 - Hollywood Studios, Epcot, and First Visit Pins
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Oh my goodness, I couldn't have slept in that late - I'd have been climbing the walls! Glad you enjoyed Boma, it's one of our favourites.
There's no way I would do it on a "normal" Disney Trip, but David made it quite clear to me that he was "in charge" of making sure I got enough rest since I was pregnant. And, to be honest, I run the poor man ragged on our run of the mill trips, so I think he was getting revenge...and enjoying his sleep!
There's no way I would do it on a "normal" Disney Trip, but David made it quite clear to me that he was "in charge" of making sure I got enough rest since I was pregnant. And, to be honest, I run the poor man ragged on our run of the mill trips, so I think he was getting revenge...and enjoying his sleep!
I am so not letting my DH read this - I don't want him getting any ideas!
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I'm sure we'll get it done. There's a couple weekends between now and then.
We woke up again at 11, and dozed until 11:30, when David finally agreed we could get up now. 
) We accidentally went to the Dolphin (because I wasn't really paying close attention to the giant DOLPHIN statues as we walked into the hotel (
) but a CM at guest services there pointed us in the right direction, and a bellhop at the Swan finally got us headed there. 
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