Disney Officially Retires The Lights of Winter Holiday Archway At EPCOT! - Page 2 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.

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Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.

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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!

Best wishes for a wonderful and magical new year!

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Old 11-11-2009, 10:01 PM   #16
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How sad! I wish that Disney would think about this....don't they know how much things like that make up the magic of being at WDW??
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Old 11-11-2009, 10:36 PM   #17
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I thought that they were very beautiful. I was hoping to get some more pictures of them with some different angles on this trip.
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Old 11-11-2009, 11:32 PM   #18
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I'm glad we had the opportunity to see them last year. They were beautiful and will be missed.
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Old 11-12-2009, 12:40 AM   #19
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Oh wow!! How sad . I'm so glad we got to see them a couple of years ago. They were so beautiful and magical. They will be missed.
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Old 11-12-2009, 01:46 AM   #20
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That's a shame.
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Old 11-12-2009, 04:35 AM   #21
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How sad! I was looking forward to seeing them again!
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Old 11-12-2009, 07:18 AM   #22
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Thumbs down

So glad I got the chance to see this last year. It's very disappointing that this is being removed.
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Old 11-12-2009, 08:12 AM   #23
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Originally Posted by DopeyGirl View Post
Well, I guess I am happy I was able to see them one last time last December.
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Old 11-12-2009, 10:31 AM   #24
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What a shame. Hopefully they will bring something else to Epcot to make up for this loss.
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Old 11-12-2009, 10:39 AM   #25
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I never even got to see them
Me either!
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Old 11-12-2009, 11:04 AM   #26
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Bad, bad, bad idea. That was one of the truly wonderful Christmas sights at Epcot. I don't buy the explanation either. Call it what it is
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Old 11-12-2009, 12:03 PM   #27
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I loved the arches, make it feel like a fancy Main street walk up to WS.. it were the perfect scenery change.. its a shame they're not going to be able to replace them with led... led can do the same blinking and chasing action as the old kinds..
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Old 11-12-2009, 01:14 PM   #28
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I feel a "my trip was lacking something" letter coming on....
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Old 11-12-2009, 01:24 PM   #29
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Anyone else a little put out by the way the message was delivered--I'm not sure I'm ready for corporate explanations coming from Twitter!
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Old 11-12-2009, 01:50 PM   #30
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It's hard to be diplomatic or overly informative in a 140-character Tweet! Question: "Will this display return?" Answer: "Nope." It doesn't answer the question, "Will there be something new?"

Holiday displays come and go. At some point (and anyone with their own string of holiday lights/displays should appreciate), it's cheaper to do something new than keep repairing something old, and as much as folks enjoy returning for favorite oldies, most folks still like to ooh and ahh at new surprises, too. Also, "tech" in the world of show staging can refer to anything requiring the attention of a stage technician, not just the underlying technology.

Some parts of human nature assume that change will be for the worse, and other parts of human nature hope that change will be for the better. Somewhere, in between those extremes, is reality. Let's see how folks feel after experiencing this year's holiday decorations.
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