You can take the girl out of Disney, BUT……… - Page 16 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Awesome! A day at MK! Can't wait to read the rest! I have a bed hog too, and his toes seem to get extra pointy. The other one is a tornado and if you don't get smacked in the face, the covers will be wrapped around him.
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Wow, it was crowded that day. We've done the resort monorail trick on busy days as well. I'm always relieved more people don't know about it, it's a nice trick to have up your sleeve.
I am so happy that others aren't wise to that too. I think many think like Skip, you can't ride it unless you are staying there.
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Originally Posted by rhinohunter
Nice start to a magical MK day.
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Originally Posted by dutchdisneyfamily
Awesome! A day at MK! Can't wait to read the rest! I have a bed hog too, and his toes seem to get extra pointy. The other one is a tornado and if you don't get smacked in the face, the covers will be wrapped around him.
Claires toenails seem to grew several inches while in bed too....then she retracks them when I go the next day to cut them!
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Originally Posted by mommapants
Great update - what are the skrims up around? I didn't realize they were re-doing anything.
My son is a bed hog too. I usually end up being his pillow and then he stretches sideways across the bed.
I think they are refacing Main Street Bakery. I hope it's gone now, but I haven't seen any recent pictures.
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Originally Posted by pamcarey
I find it so funny that Skip hasn't learned by now to take your word for it when it comes to all things Disney... LOL!
I think he likes to argue for the fun of it.
I thought I would have a slower week to get caught up on things and work on more updates, but for some reason the days are flying by and I am just as busy....I will try to get back tomorrow if I can and post another update.
We are now on our way down Main street, but I have to take a few pictures first…..like you are surprised by that? LOL
Skip said he wanted to stop at a smoking area before we headed to pirates, so behind the castle we went.
Claire decided to map out our route while waiting.
And I took a few pictures.
As we left the area we saw that Philharmagic was letting people in and Skip said we should go in there….OK. Funny thing is, he had no idea what it was. I know Claire and I have done it in the past, but I am not sure if Skip ever had. I kept telling him he had, but the more I think about it I do remember the one year Claire and I did it he had gone back to the room because he was in so much pain, which after months of testing we found out he needed a new hop…which still isn’t right after 2 surgeries. Anyways, I “might” have been wrong……but we’ll keep that secret from Skip.
This picture cracks me up.
One picture inside and then I put the camera away.
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After we enjoyed Philharmagic, I went to get a Fast pass for Peter Pan. I had “thought” that when you got a Princess FP, you could still get a regular FP as well. Well I was wrong, or this rule has changed because it would not allow me to get one. Oh well, I would come back and get one when the time was right.
We headed off to Small World next. I know many people really aren’t fans of this, but I will always love it. The line was long, but it moved fairly fast.
Soon we were on our boat and off to the land of singing.
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We decided now would be a good time for lunch. It was a little after 11 and we hoped to beat the major lunch rush. We decided that we would try Pinocchio’s Haus. It’s been MANY years since I have eaten here……. Probably 1997. We got in line and checked out the menu. I decided that Claire and I should share since I wasn’t at the point of starving and I knew she wouldn’t eat a whole meal. I asked her what she wanted….big mistake…..she wanted chicken nuggets. UGH. I tried to convince her that pizza was the way to go, for something different, but she wouldn’t budge, so chicken nuggets is what we got. Skip got a meatball sandwich if I remember right. As we were ordering I noticed they had chocolate cake. I am not a huge fan of chocolate cake, but in years past I always loved the Disney version as it was so fudgy and I loved the frosting, so I added that to our order too. I waited for the order while Skip and Claire went in search of a table and then Claire came back to wait with me so she could show me where the table was. It was very busy now. I’m glad we hadn’t waited any longer or we wouldn’t have found an empty table to easily.
As I have mentioned before, I tend to attract pushy people. There was a girl waiting in the out line and she kept trying to get in front of me. I’m not sure if she had ordered or what, but she kept trying to push her way through me and some other families. It was taking them awhile to fill orders and hers never did come before ours, so I am not sure what her deal was, but it was kind of annoying.
We sat down and filled ourselves up.
I had to get the picture fast because they were going to devour it before I had a chance.
I must say the chocolate cake was a bit of a letdown. It’s not as good as it used to be. They changed the fudgy frosting. It was OK, but I won’t go out of my way to order it now.
After we were well fed and full, Claire and I headed back up front for the Princess meet. Skip said he was going to find a bench and rest. He did say his feet were doing much better with the new inserts, but his legs were still tired.
I think I was able to grab the Peter Pan FP before we headed that way as well.
I took pictures on our journey back towards the front.
We met a few “characters” on the way too.
We got in line and it looked long…but hey, this is the Fast pass line and it will move quickly…right…and not nearly as long as the stand-by looked.
We were given one of these too. .
And soon after we got in line we realized that Skip had the backsack with the pillowcase for signatures. There was no way we were about to go back and get that, and Claire said she was Ok without autographs since she has seen the princesses before
And then we waited …and waited…and waited. We didn’t move much at all. But at least we did move, while the stand by line…was pretty much at a complete halt.
I’m not sure what the problem was, but this seemed to take forever. And part of the feeling was from the people behind us…yes again, the pushy people that like to get behind me.
This family didn’t speak much English from what I could tell. The kids were antsy, I can understand that, but they kept bumping into people all around. Every time we did move, the mom would shout something in her language and the kids would take off up ahead of several people….every time. I don’t know if she was trying to get them to cut or what, but then they would come back after people would kind of send them back or no one would let the parents by to catch up with them. It was just kind of strange.
I think we waited over 20 minutes in the line before we got to make it to the next room to wait. It seemed longer than that. Even Skip had called and asked what was taking so long.
We were the last family to go in the room. The pushy people behind us didn’t make the cut. So we had a breather from them for at least a few minutes. Claire kept commenting to me how bratty the kids were. LOL….like she is a perfect angel all the time.
I took some practice shots while we waited.
I don’t know what Aurora was doing, but she looks like a posed mannequin here.