A 40th celebration to end the world! THREAD 1 COMPLETED 2/16 - Page 17 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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I'm a no way jose kind of gal too. In fact Claire and I shared one for lunch one day. Best lunch of the whole trip.
I found the wifi frustrating at times too. It kept logging me off, but at least I could get on.
I love your early morning pictures. We missed the Christmas decor there by a few days. I was hoping they would jump the gun, but no such luck.
I love all the pictures of BC as it is such a beautiful resort. One of my favorites is the one taken outside looking back into the sitting room, making it look so warm and cozy. In reading about your wifi problems and contacting the technician, I told Luke I had a found a job for him. He is already a very good IT guy.
Your cheese and onion sandwich sounds like a pimento cheese sandwich with onions instead of pimentos. I love homemade pimento cheese and usually put grated onion in mine. It is very easy to make and keeps in the refrigerator quite well.
Love the early am photos. Our oldest DS and his wife and kids just told us they are planning a trip early next December and I am so excited for them. There is just nothing like being at WDW during the holidays.
What a great welcome on your first day...dinner with Heather and yummy B&C, I would say the perfect way to start off this trip.
I love getting up early and just wandering around the resort, especially the Epcot Resort area....it looks just so amazing in the early morning. Sorry about the internet woes, we found last summer we had some loss signal a lot of times in the resort.
Great start Cheryl!! I'm still getting ught up, but I'm not too far behind thank god!
I so need to fly on Virgin one day soon, the planes look so lovely........hmmm, where to go, where to go. I'm sure I could find someplace.
Well, there are lots of flights from the States to London on Virgin...
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Love seeing the christmas decorations up, but I have to tell ya, I am really anxious to see the ship all dressed up for the holidays!!!
I am still trying to get some "highlight" photos up from both the cruise and Disneyland. When I do, I'll post here, as they'll go into the relevant forum and they will definitely include the holiday decs from around the Fantasy.
Jet lag is the pits. Since I spent most of last year travelling from Paris to Brisbane for work I went to the pharmacy and bought tablets to help me sleep. These are mainly antihistamine but they knock me out and I find if you get a proper sleep that first night then the effects are far lower.
Well, I'll let you into a secret - I have to take tablets now to help me sleep to deal with my chronic fatigue. They work most of the time, but not for jetlag. As for antihistamine, I've yet to meet one that knocks me out....! I always seem to be absolutely fine with all of them!
I think Beach Club should give you some sort of reimbursement for finding their problem early for them.
That would have been very nice...
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Jet lag=no fun, especially when you have it to look forward to on the way back.
Ugh. Tell me about it! Not a great night's sleep Friday night - awake at 5:00am on Saturday then 13 hours sleep Saturday night, then five hours sleep Sunday night. At least last night was a decent night's sleep. Hopefully we're now finally clear of the jetlag - they reckon it takes a day to adapt for every time zone you cross, so given that theory, we're just about at the end of the adjustment now.
Friday 7 December – part two: well Epcot isn’t open this way
We headed out, checking at front desk, that we would be able to get in through International Gateway this early for our Segway tour, having had problems before, and they assured us it would be fine. It was still pretty misty outside…
By the time we got to the pathway to Epcot at the end of the Beach Club, we realised that this wasn’t going to be an option for us today. The gates were stubbornly closed, so we had no option but to go back to the car, and drive over to the front parking lot of Epcot.
When we arrived, there was an event going on, although the Cast Members didn’t seem that sure what it was. It could be a Cast Member event for the re-opening of Test Track was the best they could tell us. Because we were so early, we were literally right behind the handicapped parking, which worked perfectly.
However, it was more of a challenge to get our Annual Passes. None of the ticket booths were open, so we had to find a Cast Member, who told us to go over to the turnstiles and explain our position. They in turn told us to go and wait for the character breakfast line, which we did.
Some of the shots Mark got with his new camera on maximum zoom while waiting to go into the park
About 7:30am, a guy came to get us, and took us to the one open ticket booth, and there we were served by a lovely Cast Member, who sorted them out for us, even if our British address did give her one or two issues…
By the time we were done with that, the rest of our group was already inside, so we headed towards Guest Relations, getting a few photos on the way…
When we got there, we discovered that we were with four other couples, all of which seemed to be Disney fans, given what they were wearing. At least a couple of them were also in DVC Member attire. It was a nice sized group, although I was surprised that there were so many of us, given the early hour.
We walked over to Innoventions, and settled down for our tutorial. We had a great trainer, Ed, who really knew his stuff. Considering we’ve done about four or five Segway tours before now, I’ve never once felt that comfortable getting on or off the darned things. Well, today that changed. He took us through an easy four point plan of how to get on them, and I mastered it straightaway. As I said to him later, if only the other trainers we’d had had explained it so well. I honestly thought Disney had changed this aspect, as obviously the tour’s been modified, and now has a new name, new length etc. In fact it really is a new tour, but when I spoke to Ed, he said it’s down to how trainers do it, so you may or may not get this advice…
Then it was outside to get to grips with your Segway, and before we got on to them, we got a few photos, as there would be none once we got on the things.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the images in this area – they’re quite eerie…
We seemed to do a lot more training this time around, something that the trainers confirmed at the end. Apparently, they now have to do an hour’s training. It was a bit tedious, lots of turning on the spot, going forwards, and then slaloming, before going up and down a hill. We got the impression that there must’ve either been some accidents or some near misses, as they also kept testing us on people walking out in front of you suddenly.
It was at this point that both trainers worked out that Mark was going to be their problem child. Having been on a Segway a few times before and loving these things, the second he gets on one, he’s very confident, and ends up going faster than others etc. One of the other women in the group said his name should be “danger”, not Mark! A few asked me if he was always like this, and I told them
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As for antihistamine, I've yet to meet one that knocks me out....! I always seem to be absolutely fine with all of them! 
then 13 hours sleep Saturday night, then five hours sleep Sunday night. At least last night was a decent night's sleep. Hopefully we're now finally clear of the jetlag - they reckon it takes a day to adapt for every time zone you cross, so given that theory, we're just about at the end of the adjustment now.
The gates were stubbornly closed, so we had no option but to go back to the car, and drive over to the front parking lot of Epcot. 
when I spoke to Ed, he said it’s down to how trainers do it, so you may or may not get this advice… 
A few asked me if he was always like this, and I told them 
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