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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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 so glad you guys made it on your intended flight! I can't even imagine what would've happened if you had tried standby to Hawaii! You might still be there! LOL!
Let's see...I know I had a bunch of questions/comments from your last day....
Love the rock pics...I don't know what it is with little girls and smooth rocks. Sophia was SO into rocks when she was Meri's age! I still find little smooth rocks around the house every now and then!
I wonder if the food was especially good on the flight because it was the first day for the new catering company, lol! I love it when captains are funny on flights...even though I'm not a nervous flyer, it still makes the flight seem so much comfortable when I know the guy or gal has a sense of humor!
How was John Carter? I still haven't seen it but hope to at some point. It sounds interesting/entertaining to me, but it was such a flop at the theaters!
Oh boy, Obama flying into O'Hare! He just visited So Cal recently, and traffic was snarled on all the freeways and surface streets because they had to clear everything out for him to get from his hotel (or wherever he was) to the airport. I remember one of the first times he flew into LA and they closed traffic...apparently it was done so poorly (and I'm sure extremely carefully), that traffic was closed for a super long time on a LOT of streets plus the freeway that commentators on the radio were joking about his losing popularity/votes because voters would remember how badly they were inconvenienced, lol!
Anyhow, glad you made it home. Bummer you encountered inefficiency in Little Rock. It's kinda "funny" because I've actually seen the same thing at LAX. I've met my parents coming back from an overseas trip, and while waiting I've seen people walk out with their luggage and then walk right over to another conveyor belt and just plop their luggage down with no check of tickets or whatever. And then those travelers have to ask where to get to their next gate, which is usually in another terminal!
Ok, enough yapping, looking forward to your final thoughts on this fabulous trip!
__________________
Huge Disney Fan...Always Have Been...Always Will Be!
Disneyland 60th Anniversary Celebration TR here!
2013 WDW trip here!
2011 trip to Hawaii here!
US Customs are a hoot aren't they! When we flew back in to the US (through Atlanta) from the Dominican Republic the first time, we were appalled that we had to give up our water bottles and stuff that we had bought after going through security in the Dominican. And the duty free liquor also had to be put into our checked luggage. In the US they don't trust anyone else's security I guess.
We were so scared about having too much liquor in our bags when we came home from Scotland, and they don't even really check your bags in Atlanta for that, whatever you put on your customs form they seem to accept, unless you look guilty I guess.
So glad you had a great time! Love all the pictures!
__________________
Donning my Wellies to cut Peat in Scotland
Melissa
Glad you made it onto the flight!! What a pain the the neck in customs! How ridiculous that you had to carry your bags the 20 feet to the conveyor belt. I hate stupid things like that that don't make any sense and are completely inefficient!
When I saw how stupid it really was, that's when I got really teed, lol.
Quote:
Originally Posted by disney_duke
Whew! I know you made it home and all, but still that seems a bit stressful not knowing if you'll make it on to the flight or not! (I've flown standby before too, but the flights were always open.) The food on your flight actually looked yummy! Yeah, gotta love Ohare. It's easy to navigate, but it sure is BIG. They changed gates on me once too at Ohare, when I was flying to XNA (NW Arkansas!) to visit a friend!
Flying standby can be really easy (when flights are wide open) or heart-in-throat stressful. It's never dull!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Colexis Mom
Congrats on all the Kinder eggs! And glad you all managed to get on the plane! What a great trip you guys had! Looking forward to your final thoughts!
LOL love those stupid eggs. Tomorrow Meri gets to open another one! She opens a new one every Saturday (we're down to 4 now, because we gave a number of them away, plus I let her have 3 on the trip).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dlandmom2
I'm so glad you guys made it on your intended flight! I can't even imagine what would've happened if you had tried standby to Hawaii! You might still be there! LOL!
Let's see...I know I had a bunch of questions/comments from your last day....
Love the rock pics...I don't know what it is with little girls and smooth rocks. Sophia was SO into rocks when she was Meri's age! I still find little smooth rocks around the house every now and then!
I wonder if the food was especially good on the flight because it was the first day for the new catering company, lol! I love it when captains are funny on flights...even though I'm not a nervous flyer, it still makes the flight seem so much comfortable when I know the guy or gal has a sense of humor!
How was John Carter? I still haven't seen it but hope to at some point. It sounds interesting/entertaining to me, but it was such a flop at the theaters!
Oh boy, Obama flying into O'Hare! He just visited So Cal recently, and traffic was snarled on all the freeways and surface streets because they had to clear everything out for him to get from his hotel (or wherever he was) to the airport. I remember one of the first times he flew into LA and they closed traffic...apparently it was done so poorly (and I'm sure extremely carefully), that traffic was closed for a super long time on a LOT of streets plus the freeway that commentators on the radio were joking about his losing popularity/votes because voters would remember how badly they were inconvenienced, lol!
Anyhow, glad you made it home. Bummer you encountered inefficiency in Little Rock. It's kinda "funny" because I've actually seen the same thing at LAX. I've met my parents coming back from an overseas trip, and while waiting I've seen people walk out with their luggage and then walk right over to another conveyor belt and just plop their luggage down with no check of tickets or whatever. And then those travelers have to ask where to get to their next gate, which is usually in another terminal!
Ok, enough yapping, looking forward to your final thoughts on this fabulous trip!
Great comments - and never too long! Let's see...
Meri loves rocks. She's absolutely obsessed. She brought about 20 rocks back to Andrea's from Neuschwanstein, and I had to "disappear" them. Fortunately she has a short memory for certain things, lol! We had a 'rock garden' at the old house, where she put all of the rocks she found in various places. We need a new one here at the new house.
I love pilots with a sense of humor. They really do make a flight.
I actually enjoyed John Carter very much. I almost didn't pay attention to the movie because it flopped so badly, but then it reeled me in, and I just liked it. It was fun.
I can only imagine people were annoyed that day. Because So Cal doesn't need the help with traffic being snarled, lol.
Just to clarify, so Little Rock doesn't get a bad rap - it was O'Hare that was inefficient. Little Rock is a fabulous airport. Makes me want to move to Arkansas just so I can use that airport all of the time. LOL! LAX sounds similar. Stupid stupid stupid. Oh well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezp
Glad you all made it on the same flight - what a great journey back, although not the greatest greeting in the States with the luggage.
Yeah, annoying greeting, but otherwise, the flight was fabulous, and aside from being really tired, it wasn't a bad journey all told.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Grammy Grumpy
Once again I am so impressed with your ability to handle whatever comes before you. You must have not only "Plan B" but "Plans C - Z"!!!!
Welcome home!
Thanks! Yeah, flying standby my entire life has taught me to have lots of backup plans, and to be flexible and prepared for anything. Meri doesn't even get fazed anymore at airports by things. She just knows how it works.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MGW
US Customs are a hoot aren't they! When we flew back in to the US (through Atlanta) from the Dominican Republic the first time, we were appalled that we had to give up our water bottles and stuff that we had bought after going through security in the Dominican. And the duty free liquor also had to be put into our checked luggage. In the US they don't trust anyone else's security I guess.
We were so scared about having too much liquor in our bags when we came home from Scotland, and they don't even really check your bags in Atlanta for that, whatever you put on your customs form they seem to accept, unless you look guilty I guess.
So glad you had a great time! Love all the pictures!
I've flown internationally since 9/11, but never through a connecting airport - I've always flown in and out of Dulles, so going through customs, I just got my bags and left the airport. I've never had to deal with the nonsense before, but now that I know, I'll be better prepared for next time.
Yeah they didn't check my bags or ask me anything. I guess because all I listed were mostly postcards, magnets and some chocolate, lol. They probably figured I wasn't a big-ticket shopper.
Yes, I hate that bag shuffle when you get back to the US - especially when it's clear they aren't randomly pulling any luggage to check it.
Great trip, and glad you made all your flights on the first try!!
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I Kinder Eggs, I'm a little jealous of your jackpot!! Glad all of you made it on to the flight. Sorry about the hassle at customs, it sounds really annoying, especially when you had to recheck your bags.
What a contrast between the airport experience in Germany vs O'Hare. Nonsensical, bureaucratic run-around. All costing more in time, money and annoyance. BUT you all got home together and all-around it was a FANTASTIC trip! (I loved Meri's silly photos of the rocks-- and I had to google Kinder eggs.)
Yes, I hate that bag shuffle when you get back to the US - especially when it's clear they aren't randomly pulling any luggage to check it.
Great trip, and glad you made all your flights on the first try!!
Exactly. There seemed to be no point to the additional step, since it's not like they were checking ownership or anything else. I could have handed off anyone's bag!
Quote:
Originally Posted by KMB733
I Kinder Eggs, I'm a little jealous of your jackpot!! Glad all of you made it on to the flight. Sorry about the hassle at customs, it sounds really annoying, especially when you had to recheck your bags.
I love those eggs, too, lol. Meri doesn't care much about the chocolate, so usually I get the chocolate and she gets the toy. Win-win situation, as far as I'm concerned! I just checked and we have 5 left! Wahoo!
Quote:
Originally Posted by lauriep
What a contrast between the airport experience in Germany vs O'Hare. Nonsensical, bureaucratic run-around. All costing more in time, money and annoyance. BUT you all got home together and all-around it was a FANTASTIC trip! (I loved Meri's silly photos of the rocks-- and I had to google Kinder eggs.)
The difference in general in efficiencies between Germany and the US is astounding. I wish they would come over here and really show us how to do things, in every aspect of life (except for food, lol). They are logical and efficient, and we are neither. Ah well. It is what it is!
OK, I've got a lot of catching up to do, but got to the Neuschwanstein update and just had to post. It brought back SO many memories! Bummer the scaffolding was up though. I'm SO glad you enjoyed it. We bought that same book too! What else did you get in the gift shops? We got a picture - that is hanging at the top of the stairs surrounded by pictures from other parts of our trip and then we got a paper model (3D) of the castle, which still isn't put together - it's only been 6 years.
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What a great trip you guys had! Looking forward to your final thoughts! 
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They changed gates on me once too at Ohare, when I was flying to XNA (NW Arkansas!) to visit a friend!
Let's see...
LOL! LAX sounds similar. Stupid stupid stupid. Oh well.
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