Halloween, Hawaii and holiday celebrations - return to WDW! COMPLETED - Page 11 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
We've stayed in a Grand Villa at Kidani - it was nice. As you say, no pool table. The balconies were also just regular ones - not larger like the one in the photo you showed. It was two levels, so there was some room for privacy as well.
I don't like hearing that the selection isn't as good at Boma. I haven't been there much since Sanaa opened, but I do love it there for the salads and soups. The Grand Villa looks pretty nice. I hope you get to see the Kidani one for a comparison.
Beautiful pictures of the Osborne Lights and I loved the Grand Villa at AKL!!! That would be perfect for a large family trip On our last trip we stayed at the Jambo House Studio room but asked to see the studio and 1 bedroom at Kidani Village to compare. We actually thought the studio room looked smaller at Kidani but we thought the savannah views seemed better there. They're both such beautiful resorts that you can't go wrong.
Sorry about the selection dwindling at Boma, we'll be eating there in two months so I'm hoping everything is back up to par! LOVE the balcony on the Grand Villa! I looks like it would be so wonderfully peaceful to sit out there and watch over the animals
I really cannot wait to do that, although given the large crew we'll be with, I'm not sure how peaceful it will be...
We've stayed in a Grand Villa at Kidani - it was nice. As you say, no pool table. The balconies were also just regular ones - not larger like the one in the photo you showed. It was two levels, so there was some room for privacy as well.
Interesting to get some first hand information about the difference in them.
I don't like hearing that the selection isn't as good at Boma. I haven't been there much since Sanaa opened, but I do love it there for the salads and soups. The Grand Villa looks pretty nice. I hope you get to see the Kidani one for a comparison.
Maybe on our next visit, we'll see if we can view one just to compare...
I was really hoping when I saw your teaser for today's update that it would be a Grand Villa at AKL. That is such a beautiful place to stay. I especially like the large bathroom. Gorgeous!
Thursday 14 November – part one: it would’ve cost you how much to stay at Aulani?
After very confidently declaring last night when we went to bed that we’d have no problem getting up this morning, but I insisted on setting a wake up call for 8:00am, I’m glad I did. I surfaced first at 6:00am, but I was so tired, I went straight back to bed, and slept through until 7:35am. Even then, I really didn’t feel like getting up, and in truth, I could’ve slept a lot longer, but I knew I needed to get going, and try and get my body adjusted to Florida time.
At first, the savannah was deathly quiet. Then, after about half an hour, these guys turned up – complete with a baby!
They stood there for ages, not moving. One of the keepers later told me it was probably because it was about to be feeding time, which explains it.
We set off just after 8:45am, which wasn’t bad for us, bearing in mind how long we’d slept. I couldn’t resist getting a photo of the back of Mark’s T-shirt, and we had a couple of Cast Members and a member of the public ask us about Aulani, as we were both wearing Aulani tops.
We were quickly at Animal Kingdom, parked up and applied the sun tan lotion, as it was going to be back in the 70s today. We headed inside, encountering some of the longest lines I’ve seen in some time for bag check.
We made our way towards Africa, stopping for some Photopass photos on the way.
Once there, we got ourselves some breakfast – a croissant for me and a Danish chocolate swirl for Mark – and then we were set to go on safari. We had Fastpass + for this, so we pretty much walked straight on. As we walked in, a guy turned round to us and asked us how much our stay in Aulani had cost. His face was a picture when I told him I genuinely had no idea, as we’d used our points. He told us he’d priced it up and for three of them, it would’ve been $8,500!
Our safari was excellent, with lots of great animal sightings. A lot of that had to do with the truck in front of us. She was a trainee, and as well as her trainer, she also had the area manager with her, so we think she kept stopping so long and so often to ensure that her truck got all the best views, and as we were behind her, we benefitted too!
Our driver, AJ, was wonderful and very knowledgeable. As we got off, I told him I absolutely loved his line about “we haven’t seen poachers here in about two years now”… hmm, I wonder why that is?
When we got off the safari, we had texts from Marci, who was heading over to Animal Kingdom to meet up with us. Luckily, she’d guessed right and headed to Africa, and we quickly found each other.
We headed off to do the Pangani Forest Exploration Trail….
The meerkats were very active today…
There were two big fat bunny rabbits sitting in their enclosure and I did get a bit worried when one meerkat went near one, but thankfully there was no rabbit killing today!
As we stood there, there was a really annoying guy whistling at the meerkats, obviously in a bid to get them to turn around. I was so glad when the Cast Member had a word and asked people not to do that. If you want a good photo, do what I do – be patient. I have a number I deleted, because the meerkats moved, but I was just persistent and lucked out in the end.
There was a fair bit of gorilla activity, but a lot of it seemed to involve postering by the males, who were running after each other, but sadly then they disappeared out of sight.
I did find this one in the distance with my 50x zoom…
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.
About This Page: 
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
Holly: 
On our last trip we stayed at the Jambo House Studio room but asked to see the studio and 1 bedroom at Kidani Village to compare. We actually thought the studio room looked smaller at Kidani but we thought the savannah views seemed better there. They're both such beautiful resorts that you can't go wrong.
PassPorter Guide Author
We headed inside, encountering some of the longest lines I’ve seen in some time for bag check. 
Linear Mode
