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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Hi everyone....Mom and I had a wonderful trip. Didn't take notes but here it goes:
Day One: We left the Radisson Hotel at 5:15 am to catch our 6:45 am flight at the Indianapolis airport. It is a new airport and very nice. I had flown in from Memphis the night before. I booked on NWA vacations luxury so we had First Class seats. We flying First Class! The flight was uneventful and great. All the coffee we could drink and a very good breakfast was served. It was an almost 4 hour flight, we landed in Vegas at 7:53 am. Bill the driver of our private sedan was waiting on us at baggage claim(driver is included in the package). A little over the top with First Class and a private sedan, but my mom loved it. She is so worth the extra cost to please like that. We checked into Mandalay Bay we were given room keys, but no room number with assurance that they would call as soon as our room was ready. At a little after 8am I was not surprised that the room was not ready, but it was just a little after lunchtime. In the interim, we played a few slots and got ourselves familiar with the hotel and grounds. At last our room was ready, the rooms at Mandalay Bay are so nice. Floor to ceiling windows overlooking the pool and the mountains was great. separate tub and shower with a tv to watch while I soaked in the tub......yay! The beds were so comfy too. It was great..... We went down and gambled a little and ate dinner at the buffet. The buffet was very disappointing. The food was just ok and the service was awful. We went next door to the Luxor and gambled a little in there. Then called it a night. We had been up since 4:45am Indy time and were wore out to say theleast.
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We woke up kind of early for Las Vegas but the 2 hour time difference for me and the 3 hour time difference for my mom it was inevitable I guess. We found the b'fast buffet at Excalibur. Then explored the south end of the strip going into everything at that end. MGM Grand, Luxor, Excalibur, Tropicana, New York New York. We had lunch where I don't remember, but soon after we caught the bus to downtown. The bus called the Deuce is a great thing 'specially when touring. The price was up this year from last year but for $7.00 a 24 hour period it was much cheaper than a taxi. It was very hot the entire time we were there and Mom being 70 years young would not have lasted touring as long as she did each day without being able to ride the bus from time to time. So we went downtown we had reservations for the dinner theatre at Four Queens. Neither of us had ever been to a dinner theatre before so we weren't sure what to expect. We toured Fremont Street until time for Dinner. We arrived what we thought was early, but almost everyone was there and waiting to get in. The dinner theatre is a great show. It is a "who done it", we were sat with 6 other people at the table given a form to keep track of who was "killed", who we thought did it and why. I won't spoil the entire show but some of the characters were sitting at our table! They pretended they were tourists or locals who had come to see the show. It is great fun. The food was not bad. We had a salad, steak with vegatables and twice baked potato and cheesecake for dessert. There was also a choice of salmon or chicken entree. The show changes every three months. After the show we toured Fremont Street stopping and watching the tribute to Queen that they did on the overhead screens. It was amazing. We caught the bus back to Mandalay Bay stopped at a couple of slots on the way to the elevators and went to the room. Another full day in Vegas!
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We woke up and decided to go to the Luxor for the b'fast buffet. It was good I am not a big b'fast person so it was okay. After b'fast we went upstairs and played a few slots, then we upstairs again to check out the Titanic exhibit and Bodies exhibit. We bought our tickets and decided on the Titanic first. We gave our ticket to the attendant, she gave us "boarding tickets" that near the end you were supposed to look for the name of the actual passenger on the list of the lost and the survivors and they had us pose for a picture. Then we went inside and it was sooooo interesting to see the things that they actually brought back up from the wreckage. This is a great display with great descriptions of what they are showing you. There are also audio players that you can rent but our ticket person did not give us that option we found out about them about halfway through the exhibit, but I really don't think we lost anything by not getting them. Really young children will probably not be entertained by this but anyone that knows what the Titanic was will be very pleased by the presentation. They have everything in there giant part of the ship, personal belongings, dishes, how the rooms would have looked, too much to spoil for you here. At the end of the exhibit, like almost all the major rides at WDW it ends in the gift shop....lol....but waiting for us was the author of one of the books of the Titanic and he was doing a book signing. The book is 1912 facts about Titanic. I have read about half of it and it is very interesting. He was very knowledgable about the Titanic and he answered our questions very well. About halfway through the exhibit they take your picture on the Grand Staircase and it is here in the gift shop that you can view your pics and buy them if you want. Mom wanted so I bought...When we left there we went to the Bodies exhibit. Gave the tickets to the attendant, same girl wanted to take our pictures but we begged off this time. The exhibit is set up by various areas of the body skeletal, muscular, nervous system, fetal gallery, internal organs. There are 10 cadavers(sp?) all men but one. Stood up like statues in various poses. It sounds very bad but they really did it with respect and dignity for the people who donated their body to do this sort of thing. It was very interesting, like the bones of the ear are small, I knew that but just how small I never realized. I had never seen real ear bones before. It was all done very tastefully. The fetal gallery was very interesting, but knowing that all of the exhibit showed real things there was a bypass area if a person did not want to go through to see the fetuses. It is really hard to explain how the cadavers, body parts, and organs are preserved. Very very good. This also ended in a gift shop. We left there and went to Nathan's hot dogs in the food court and got ice cream next door. We then walked to the strip by way of Excalibur then New York New York doing all the casinos mid strip and shops up one side as far as Treasure Island crossing the street and heading back down the other side. We had dinner in House of Blues at Mandalay Bay gambled a little more then went to the room. By this time we had made our money back and were happier tonight.
We loved both exhibits! But especially the Titanic. My DD8 and I both lived, while my husband (who was 1st class) died. My daughter bought the fact book, so cool that you got to meet the author!
Both exhibits sound fascinating - I don't think the bodies one is for me though. :
That is what I thought at first too and had no plans of going into it at all....but....when we were standing in line for Titanic tickets Mom and I discussed it and decided that it couldn't be all that gross or tummy turning or they wouldn't be able to stay open. So we decided to get the tickets(we thought what the hay we are in Vegas!!) and see for ourselves, they told us there were several exits if we needed to take one.....with that said there are some people who this exhibit will not interest at all. I have several family members and friends who would not go no matter what and that is fine.
We loved both exhibits! But especially the Titanic. My DD8 and I both lived, while my husband (who was 1st class) died. My daughter bought the fact book, so cool that you got to meet the author!
Titanic was our favorite too.....Mom and I were both first class passengers and we both lived. Meeting Lee Merideth was very cool and interesting. He seemed very nice and very informed. He did not rush us through and would have answered several more questions if we had asked.
We awoke and decided to go to the House of Blues for b'fast since we had gotten a buy one get one offer by eating there the night before. There b'fast is so good and I am not a b'fast person. So we decided on our last full day we would do the north end of the strip. By the time we left Mandalay Bay after hitting our favorite slots the temperature was climbing. Remembering that my mom is 70 and walking from the end of the south strip to the end of the north strip was not going to work this year. In years past that is exactly what we had done each day, start at our hotel and walk up one side and down the other. Just strolling stopping where we want. Last year I was concerned before we went how we were going to do it as my mom is not able to walk like she used to. Then we found the bus system!! So we boarded the bus at Mandalay Bay and rode toward the south end of the strip. We did all the casinos down that way. Still couldn't talk Mom into doing the ride on top of the Stratosphere though..lol We ate lunch at the McDonald's next to Circus Circus and then hit some of the other casinos that we wanted to go back to on the bus ride back toward the hotel. We ate dinner that night at buffet at Wynn. Then walked the strip a little doing some last day shopping before heading back to our room.
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flying First Class! The flight was uneventful and great. All the coffee we could drink and a very good breakfast was served. It was an almost 4 hour flight, we landed in Vegas at 7:53 am. Bill the driver of our private sedan was waiting on us at baggage claim(driver is included in the package). A little over the top with First Class and a private sedan, but my mom loved it. She is so worth the extra cost to please like that. We checked into Mandalay Bay we were given room keys, but no room number with assurance that they would call as soon as our room was ready. At a little after 8am I was not surprised that the room was not ready, but it was just a little after lunchtime. In the interim, we played a few slots and got ourselves familiar with the hotel and grounds. 
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