Noelle & Nicolaus's Adventures in Disney World : A PTR - Page 2 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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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.
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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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WDW - August 1997 Off Property
WDW - January 2005 AKL
WDW - May 2006 Pop Century
WDW- november-dec 2007 pop century
WDW- dec/jan 2009/2010 pop century
WDW- oct/nov 2012 art of animation
WDW- sept 2013 port Orleans riverside
WDW- july 2015 beach club
Never too early to start at PTR! I am thinking of starting one around the year mark...LOL!
I love how you called your grandparents Opa and Oma...my grandmother was Oma, too. I miss her so much at times.
Your wedding picture is beautiful.
I would totally read a PTR at a year out!! You know us passporters the planning is half the fun.
Oh yes my dads grandparents (both sets) had immigrated over from Germany so everyone on my dads side was Oma and Opa. I loved them so much and it hurts me greatly they were not around to see me get married or meet my babies.
My dad is now Opa to his grandchildren so that tradition continues at least.
Thanks you for the wedding picture compliment! I really am not a fan of my picture being taken but my wedding pictures are the few ones I actually like of myself.
Registered Message Board Members save 30% off PassPorter guidebooks! When you register you'll have access to a discount coupon good for 30% off the list price of PassPorter books in our online store.
NEXT! Tee hee time for another introduction to the crazy fun group of people coming with me.
My second travel companion is my husband (Richard, Rich, DH, daddy, da-da).
He is 34 (there is a 7 year difference between us but you would never realize it based on maturity ). He was not the born Disney lover like me. It was more something thrust upon him, by me .
He did confess to me that he never thought he would go to Disney World, and if he did it would only be once. He was as surprised as me about the gift of our honeymoon trip. His jaw dropped open when he got to the Grand Floridian (which is now his favorite place to stay). He was extra spoiled on that trip as we got the great gift of staying CL when there.
I will never forget we were pulling up on the monorail to MK right after we got checked in a GF. He took one look outside at the castle and the magic of MK and turned to me. Without any hesitation or prompting he went “We have to come back!” I don’t think I could have loved him any more then that moment! We had not even stepped foot into MK and he was already planning on coming back. He was hooked!
It was like taking a little kid to Disney. He did not know what his favorites were yet so I got to show him all I knew but still experience the joy of seeing someone do it for the first time. Everything about Disney seemed to excite him and I knew then we would make it. (Every marriage needs a strong Disney foundation )
The following year we went back and decided to try out AKL. It was this trip we also decided to humor ourselves and see about DVC. My husband had already told me that we should plan on going to Disney frequently (again he was hooked). I had laughed at him and quickly I had to become the Disney voice of reason which was SO uncharacteristic of me. Usually people (read my parents) had to talk me down from the Disney euphoria. So here we were after our DVC tour totally in love but of course I realized at our young age (or my young age) we probably should not. It was HARD for me to think that, but I was pretty resolved. My DH on the other hand was already picking out what resorts to stay at under our points! He was more pressuring then the sales people (honestly if you have not done a tour they really do not pressure. Family members might though ). We talked it out, went over the numbers a 100 times and even called my parents to get their opinion (they were still the logical voice of reason). However finally my DH looked at me and said “Do you honestly think we won’t somehow find a way to go to Disney every year? Why not save ourselves money and do this. It will be easier to do a payment plan a little bit then having to find that money every year.” Well with such a well-planned argument we took the plunge and bought into DVC at BLT. It was perfect. Our MK loving selves have never regretted it.
That trip was also the first time I surprised my DH at Disney. I know some people love AKL and perhaps we will give the Villas a try but that resort was just not doing it for us. I was not a fan of the locations and while the animals were neat there was also an issue where our room was always SO hot no matter what. We just were not our normal happy Disney selves there so I pulled a bit of a surprise. I changed our reservations for the rest of the trip over to GF without telling my DH. I will never forget the surprise. We were leaving Epcot so we could change for the MNSSHP, as we are walking to transportation my DH asks we have to take a bus right? I said no we can go monorail to monorail. He stopped right in the middle of the walk way and says “Monorail to monorail?” and simply keeps repeating it. I told him yes lets go. He finally goes “How?” and I said “Well that is the best way in my opinion to get to GF.” He was THRILLED and surprised, and its very difficult to get genuine surprised reaction from my DH. He is like a lot of men and hides his emotions well. This time he could not contain himself and I was thrilled I had surprised him.
All the rest of our trips have been awesome of course (and under our DVC points). I guess my DH was right in suggesting we just buy it!
Here are some of his favorites:
Favorite Classic Disney Movie: The Little Mermaid
Favorite Recent Disney Movie: Tangled
Favorite Live Action Disney Movie: POTC
Favorite Pixar Movie: The Incredibles
Favorite World: Magic Kingdom
Favorite Ride: POTC/Splash Mountain/Buzz Lightyear (he said he can’t decide)
Favorite Food: Pizza from Via Napoli
Favorite Resort: Grand Floridian
Great intro to your DH! Sorry AKL doesn't work for you all, but then that's why WDW has so many choices.
I love all the choices. We are certainly open to trying AKL again in the villas. One of the big problems was our room was super hot. No matter what we did. Maintenance came by and said nothing was broken or anything but I'm telling you we were dying. I'm wondering if the villas would give me better thermostat control.
I interrupt this PTR with cute Halloween pictures from yesterday!
Since my children are still too young to voice what they want to be for Halloween I still get the pleasure of picking out their outfits. I decided I wanted to do coordinating costumes so here they are. Cinderella and her mouse Jaq.
There are more pictures of my little Jaq because Cinderella refused to stay still long enough to get a non-blurry photo.
Coming up an introduction into Cinderella.
You were posting the same time as I was so I missed the Halloween costumes.
They are so cute. I love little Jaq.
Cinderella is my oldest DDs fav too. She was like you and would carry the movie all over the place trying to get someone to play it for her. I think she was Cinderella for 3 or 4 Halloweens and we had several Cinderella themed birthday parties as well.
Great start!
Too bad I will miss you by a week. We are going May 17-24. I have been debating starting my PTR and think I probably will this weekend.
Boo that we are going to miss one another! I have been wanting to meet fellow PP but I always seem to be a week ahead or behind of everyone.
I say start that PTR I totally would read it! Its one of the things that gets me through the 183 day way until my trip.
Quote:
Originally Posted by disneydreamer33
You were posting the same time as I was so I missed the Halloween costumes.
They are so cute. I love little Jaq.
Cinderella is my oldest DDs fav too. She was like you and would carry the movie all over the place trying to get someone to play it for her. I think she was Cinderella for 3 or 4 Halloweens and we had several Cinderella themed birthday parties as well.
Thanks! Cinderella is totally the best. I actually wanted my son to be some sort of cute animal and quickly realized Cinderella was a perfect fit. I intend on making him wear the hat quite often.
On now to the sweet additions to our family, I will start with the princess. Noelle (Noelley, Boog boog, baby welly). She will be 2 in December. She is our miracle baby and has been basically brain washed since birth to love Disney. (Tee hee ).
My DH and I knew we wanted children right from the start. I stopped taking BC a month before we got married to ensure the medication was out of my system so nothing would be stopping us. Little did we know mother nature intended on stopping us.
We tried for 2 years to get pregnant. I suffered 3 miscarriages and had to have a D&C with hysteroscopy to try and diagnose why I could not manage to stay pregnant. We went through several rounds of infertility treatment using IUI as our means of trying to conceive. Finally in March 2011 the baby dust landed and stuck on us and we got pregnant.
We actually heard Noelle’s heartbeat right before out April trip to Disney. Our fertility clinic was the same direction we had to travel to get to Disney. We had decided we would schedule our u/s the day we were leaving. We figured if it was bad news and it once again was not a viable pregnancy then we had Disney to cheer us up. Even better if it was good news we got to celebrate it at the happiest place on earth! When we heard that little thump of a heart we were beyond thrilled and it made out April trip to Disney all that more special.
Noelle would get to go to Disney one more time before she was born in September 2011. It was our first DVC stay so she really has been a member since birth!
Noelle’s first actual trip was September 2012. She was absolutely infatuated with it. She never cried around any of the characters and really was a good baby the whole time. It was clear she was already a big Disney fan. Although she was only 9 months old and certainly won’t remember the trip it was memories for us. Disney really does change once you bring your kids, even if they don’t understand the magic yet you see the magic in a whole different way when it surrounds your babies.
We took Noelle again January 2013. Being a little bit older now we were nervous she might not react as well to the characters but once again our little princess surprised us. She still had no problem with the masked characters, not even a hint of a cry. Better yet the human characters she loved! I got some great pictures with the Princesses when we walked around WS in Epcot. I am hoping she does as well this time around as she did last time.
The facts about Noelle obviously won’t be the same as us since she does not quite understand enough to pick favorites. However I can give a little insight into my cute terror!
Favorite Disney Character: Princess Sofia and Doc McStuffins
Favorite World: HS (I say that because she is going to love the Disney Junior live show there. We took her to the Pirates and Princess show that Disney took on the road and she was mesmerized)
Favorite Food at Disney: Anything mommy and daddy will share! (Yay for her not counting on the meal plans yet)
Favorite Ride: She doesn’t have a favorite ride quite yet that we can tell. However she has been on PTOC, HM, WtP, CoP, Buzz, Nemo, and SE. She was a fan of all of them!
Favorite Fluffy: Marie from Aristocats (thanks to Cam22 we now have two of them in our house. Which I am so thankful for as I just got a chance to put the original one in the wash for the first time. That Marie is once again white!)
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