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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Jill, your girls are so beautiful and they always seem to be so brave and ride things my boys will not go near yet. Your little Maddie's smile and silliness reminds me very much of my youngest. Love the TR, more please.
Today was moving day! We packed up and filled one suitcase with just what we would need for our last few days. While Thom waited for the bellman to transfer our luggage, I took the girls ahead to Contempo Café for a late breakfast.
We had tons of CS meals left that probably weren’t going to get used today, but we were going to try! The girls and I all had French toast. Thom then joined us and somehow had a mystery combo platter with his actual order of eggs and oatmeal. It cost us an extra CS credit, but we had them to spare.
After we ate, I had to go downstairs to check out since apparently I had not checked “express check out” when I did online check-in. This had never happened to me before, so I thought it a tad strange.
The official check-out took about a minute, so we were soon on the monorail to GF. Once there, we went downstairs to the check-in desk and the CM called someone from club level to come after us. While we were waiting, I asked her about the “express check out” and she said that they assumed at the GF if you placed a credit card on the room then you wanted express check out. Take that BLT!
Ryan soon showed up and took us up to the Royal Palm to do our final check-in which only consisted of me signing my name. Our room wasn’t ready yet, but the girls were already eating snacks and sitting at their beloved table and chairs. Karen and Zack were back in their room after an early DHS morning, so they met us in the lounge and then we all went over to DHS together.
Karen and Zack had gotten up at the crack of dawn for FP’s for Billy Dee Williams and then had gone to MK for Zack to get a mohawk. It was quite a shock to see Zack with a Mohawk and the girls were definitely intrigued by this new Zack!
Sha was off doing her own thing that morning, but we were able to meet up with her at DHS. As soon as we got there, Maddie had to watch the end of HSM 3 so Karen and Zack took shade while I went to the bathroom. After it was over, we found them outside the entrance of TSMM and we all rode together. Although we hadn’t seen TS 3 at this point, Mary Devall was so excited about the new additions to this ride!
We then headed over to Animation Academy to draw a character. As soon as we saw Lotso from TS 3 (or Huggy bear, as we like to call him ) without a line, we scurried over to meet him. Now keep in mind that this was before TS 3 premiered. Had we known what we know now, we would have been blowing Big Baby raspberries at him instead of hugging him. We did love the smell of strawberries in the room and it was so great to see the children being enveloped in his big hug (even Zack ).
Maddie enjoyed showing Lotso her Baby Woody that she had wanted all week. We had been having problems finding one when Maddie was actually having good, consistent behavior, but the time had finally arrived right before we entered Animation Academy.
The girls then saw the Incredibles before we headed to the waiting area for the next drawing.
We had a long wait so the CM posted there suggested trivia which thrilled Mary Devall. His questions were way out of her league . . . and ours too. Apparently we had a group of young CM’s with us because they knew some amazingly hard questions. The CM ended up being our drawing instructor too, so there was a lot of continuity there!
The class voted to draw Stitch which was pretty hard but I ended up doing okay. Maddie immediately was frustrated, but I just kept urging her on and she made it through without going into full meltdown.
Mine and Mary Devall's drawing (I think she did very well!). You saw Maddie's on Sha's tr since she helped Flat LeeNee a bit!
Sounds like a great morning at the Studios! I can sympathize with Maddie's frustrations at the Animation Acadamy; my ds got so frustrated last time with his drawing that we may be skipping that attraction next time
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Next we rode ToT while Thom and Maddie had some snacks. This was Mary Devall’s first time every riding with Sha so she was pretty excited!
Thom returned a sleeping Maddie to me while everyone else went to ride RnRC. Mary Devall was going to give it another try.
At Thom’s urging, I took Maddie to the bathroom after they left us since she had just had a frozen lemonade, but it ended up waking her. The sky was filled with dark clouds and the thunder was rolling, so I parked Maddie and me under the Kidcot station at RnRC. She played with stickers for a while and then was ready for a snack. We used our last snack credit on ice cream from the kiosk right there and took refuge under a tree. Other than a few drops, the storm never materialized.
When Thom showed up holding Mary Devall, I knew that her second attempt at RnRC hadn’t gone well. Apparently she had worked herself up before they even got in line and Karen ended up taking her out. We keep telling her that she’ll ride it when she’s ready.
We hung out a little longer waiting for Maddie to finish her ice cream, so I took this picture of Zack's mohawk to send to Eileen. I had been trying to send her pictures all afternoon, but they never went through.
Sha had to leave to pick up her camera at the GF business center, so the rest of us went to greet the Jawa’s again. I was worn out and hot, so I sat in shade and drank water while Thom took pictures of the girls. They visited a couple of cars first.
Karen and Zack stayed at DHS for more Star Wars action while the four of us left to go check into our room. Thom got off the bus at the Contemporary because he had left our battery charger in a plug and they were holding it at lost and found while I continued on with the girls to find our room.
The girls and I stopped by the lounge on the fourth floor first to grab a glass of wine for me and then we took the stairs down to the third floor to search for our room.
We were thrilled when Mary Devall stopped at a room right on the atrium. The funny thing is that I had paid extra in February for a MK view, but this time hadn’t bothered. We loved this room so much more. It was so convenient and it overlooked the beach pool, the Poly, the WL and the monorail! It was so much more spacious than our BLT studio, so we felt like we were in heaven.
While we waited for Thom, I took the opportunity of a clean room to take a few pictures.
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Sometimes words aren't needed . . .
Last edited by Jillybean; 07-16-2010 at 08:13 AM..
I even let the girls play their favorite bed jumping game and Maddie was thrilled that she could now compete in the bed jumping Olympics. It seemed like yesterday that she was still a baby watching her big sister jumping beds at the Poly.
When Thom returned to the room, we called for our luggage and then headed upstairs to the lounge for dinner. After some delicious and filling appetizers, we returned to the room to unpack and settle in for a while.
After a full week of non-stop park action, we had decided to slow down the next day and stay at our resort. While in the room, I had checked out the resort activities and had asked the girls if they would like to do either a Pirate Adventure the next day or the Wonderland Tea Party on Monday morning. Hands down, the Pirate Adventure won even though Mary Devall had done it before. Maddie even added “Who wants to go to a boring tea party?” That statement will come back to haunt her later.
While looking at the activities, I also noticed that the GF also had cabanas that could be rented for a half or whole day. We could even see them from our room. If there was availability, we decided to give one a try.
While Thom and the girls hung out in the room, I went to the concierge desk (which was right across the atrium from our room) to discuss adding the girls to the pirate cruise in the morning and booking a cabana for us. This turned out to be a very long process since the CM had never done either one and had to be helped. Both CM’s were very nice though and I came away with two reservations for the Pirate Adventure and a half day cabana rental.
With our Saturday booked, we went up to the lounge where Karen, Zack and Sha met us for dessert. Afterwards, we went to MK for the night where we first rode BTMRR. I was surprised when Maddie was more than willing to ride Splash Mountain for the first time (this was the only ride last September where she hadn’t measured at 40”).
I sat beside her and tried to hold her tight on the big drop, but she knocked my arm off. She absolutely loved the theming of the ride and earned her first SM pin. After next riding PotC, we ran into Monica, Kim and Macy in front of the dole whip stand and chatted with them for a while.
We split up for our last ride of the evening with Zack, Mary Devall, Thom and I riding Space Mountain and Sha, Karen and Maddie riding TTA. I’m pretty sure that it was after midnight at this point, so we headed out of the park. There was a boat waiting to go to the GF which Karen, Zack and Sharon took. Maddie was already sleeping in her stroller, so we took the monorail which all but deposited us right in our room! We were so looking forward to our day of leisure tomorrow!
I've never heard of not doing express check out if you already have a credit card on file. BLT must operate on a different system. Weird! Sounds like a great morning at DHS, but sorry that Mary Devall didn't make it on RnRC. When it's right, she'll have no problem. Your room at GF looks so wonderful! And I like the sound of your leisure day!
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Waiting to eat with Goofy - DLR May 2010
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The girls and I all had French toast. Thom then joined us and somehow had a mystery combo platter with his actual order of eggs and oatmeal. 
It cost us an extra CS credit, but we had them to spare. 
Apparently we had a group of young CM’s with us because they knew some amazingly hard questions. 
Apparently she had worked herself up before they even got in line and Karen ended up taking her out. We keep telling her that she’ll ride it when she’s ready.
and then we took the stairs down to the third floor to search for our room. 
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