A Maria and Ben “Mousefest” TR: The Greatest Gift of All Update Finished 5/3 - Page 15 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
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We were definitely in a zombie-like fog on our way back to the rooms! And Maria, your mother should've told you you get no where in this world unless you ask, so next time, don't assume we know you want a piggyback, unless I've got my mind-reading goggles on!
BTW, watching you drop pretty much your entire meal on your lap was pretty hilarious, but entirely tragic, since you were still wearing your pretty dress from tea. I think my favorite was watching you try to demurely get the pasta out of your cleavage!
We woke up at about 9 AM and after a quick stop at DD’s we were on our way. I sent Molly a text and found out that they were at AK.
We arrived at AK and it was really windy.
As we entered we took our time in the Oasis area…we seriously looked at this warthog for like 20 minutes.
We headed to EE and got in line the wait was like 30 minutes…Ben didn’t want to wait so when Molly sent us a text that they were at the Yak and Yeti stand… we headed out of line to meet em.
We saw Joey and Handley (Joey and Molly’s friend who works at Figment)…not sure where Molly was?
Ben went up to the get us two Yak Attacks (it would have been our firsts) …I say would have been because our debit card was rejected. I started to freak out even though I knew that we had the funds. So I spent the next couple of minutes on the phone with my bank…they let me know that I we have the funds and that they had no idea why the card didn’t work. Huh…I tried it again to buy a water at a cart and it worked…Oh well…maybe the FAB gods didn’t want me to have the mysterious Yak Attack.
I met back up with the rest of the group and we chatted a bit. Molly gave Ben and I two FP’s for EE because they were going go on some animal trail and then pick up their picnic in the park meal.
We headed over to Everest which was fun but made us both a little dizzy …we stopped at a cart and got a pretzel and a sprite.
Ben decided to go find a place to get some fresh air (cigarette break).
I stayed put on my bench and enjoyed the beautiful AK until this little girl started yelling at her dad about not getting a stuffed dinosaur…this is where I came up with the ipod shutout …I turned up my ipod… watching this little girl scream with lady gaga playing was almost as good as the Nemo Show.
After snacking and bathroom breaking we decided to head over to Dino Bites to watch Molly and Joey eat their picnic. When we were crossing the bridge into Dinoland we ran into Chantel and Betty Sue and family. They were so nice and it made me really excited about the gospel brunch we were all going to the next day. We said goodbye and we continued on our journey.
We met up with Molly and Joey and chatted with them while they ate. A CM came up to us while eating desperate to give us a a celebration pin…between the 4 of us the only celebration we could come up with was Ben being ½ way through law school. So Ben got a pin that said “Congratulations on being a ½ lawyer”.
We headed out of the AK and drove Molly and Joey back to the Saratoga Spring for naptime. We decided to spend the rest of the afternoon looking at the different Christmas decorations in some of the hotels.
Soon to Come…I love Christmas Trees!
omg...you have made my morning...the visual of molly and joey carrying you and ben piggyback is TOO much. oh and the demurely removing the pasta from your , um, party dress? i can just see it...ha ha ha. wonder what was up with the debit card, though. did you ever get that Yak Attack?
Nice morning at AK! We got fascinated by the warthog this past October, but I only got backside shots of him. EE makes me dizzy every time, so I usually only make one ride on it a trip.
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When you found us for Yak Attacks, I was on the phone with CM's at OKW, trying desperately to recover lost Rufus. (Rufus is my stuffed bear that I got the first time I flew, and he rides with me on every airplane trip - he's sort of my talisman against crashing). I left him at OKW, and never did manage to recover him. Just wanted to let you all know if I'm ever flying, and my plane crashes, you'll know why!
When you found us for Yak Attacks, I was on the phone with CM's at OKW, trying desperately to recover lost Rufus. (Rufus is my stuffed bear that I got the first time I flew, and he rides with me on every airplane trip - he's sort of my talisman against crashing). I left him at OKW, and never did manage to recover him. Just wanted to let you all know if I'm ever flying, and my plane crashes, you'll know why!
Awww... that is a bummer you didn't get the bear back!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by debrabrown
Awww... that is a bummer you didn't get the bear back!
I'm not going to lie - I was pretty upset about losing that darn bear. I was a little more upset at the fact that if I couldn't seem to connect to a CM at OKW Mousekeeping who was familiar with the English Language. I have a sneaking suspicion that somewhere, on a Mousekeeper's cart, there's a little brown Gap bear named Rufus hanging out, since it took me 3 tries to get the woman I was talking to to understand that I was trying to find a bear, and not a lion. But whatever. I'm over it...
I'm with all of you about EE - don't tell Maria, but our fit of generosity in giving her and Ben our FP's was less charitable than you might think...and more selfish in that we'd already ridden it once, and were less than excited to get nauseous again.
BTW, Maria - I thought you guys eventually DID get Yak Attacks? I thought we were bonding at one point over our mutual hatred for the paper straws in the AK. I might just be making that up...and hoping for a fellow-paper-straw-hater in the midst. Plus, we definitely determined that the reason your card didn't work was because the CM who tried to swipe it also had a tenuous hold on the English language as well, which may or may not have included being able to read the directions on swiping credit cards.
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I think my favorite was watching you try to demurely get the pasta out of your cleavage! 
Deb
PassPorter Guide Author
I'm prone to dizziness anyway. Looking forward to your tree pictures.
Susan
Just wanted to let you all know if I'm ever flying, and my plane crashes, you'll know why!
But whatever. I'm over it...
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