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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Oh this is great, I was wondering when this TR would pop up!! I love Paris and I love PP, so this is bound to be a great trip for all of you!!!
I know I have mentioned this before, but I think I must move to the UK.....skipping to Paris for the weekend..............so jealous.
I'm jealous of you guys too - especially the ones who are close to WDW or Disneyland. Mind you, we have done weekends only in Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna and Sorrento and day trips to Paris, Amsterdam (see a pattern here? ), Edinburgh and Dublin...
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So, uhmmmm, hey.....I'll be in Barcelona next year on May 31st
Oh what a shame. I'd love to meet up and pop over for the weekend, but that's the week of half term in the UK and a Bank Holiday, which means that there's no way we'd be able to get a cheap fare over to Barcelona. Any chance of you flying up to Paris?
Pre-trip report – part two: I have a cunning plan…
Now I had a very cunning plan for the Friday night…. I wanted to spend the night at the Disneyland Hotel, as we love that place, but there was no way we could afford it. So how was I going to do it? Well, I’m a member of Hotels.com’s Reward Nights, and I was about to get my first free night’s hotel stay, which you get after 10 hotel stays. Sorted – we’ll go for the Disneyland Hotel that night then.
When the free night came through, I had a nasty shock. Hotels.com were wise to my plan – bear in mind, the Disneyland Hotel was about £700 (c. $1,050) for the night. Anyway, what they do is they average out your 10 night’s worth of stays and that’s how much you have to spend on your free night. Ok. I think it came to something like £60… well, that’s not going to work for the Disneyland Hotel. I did think about the Sequoia Lodge, as that was about £250, but sadly while I was making my mind up, the resort sold out for the night.
I had a look at some of the other resorts, and using Sabine’s excellent PassPorter’s Disneyland Paris (trust me, if you are planning a visit over here to Disneyland Paris, you need this book! ) I opted for the Dream Castle Hotel. It’s not a Disney hotel, but it is one of their partner resorts, and having driven around them on a previous trip, we really liked the look of this one, so it seemed perfect for us.
I still needed to find a hotel for the Saturday night near La Defense ( that’s right, three hotels in three nights! ) and eventually I opted for the Renaissance Paris La Defense, as it appeared to be very central to where we wanted to be, and best of all, they had rooms that included breakfast in the rate. I was keen on that, as I knew how much the hotels in Paris charge for breakfast, and I did not want to have to pay their rates.
So we were pretty much all set with accommodation and our rough plans. The next thing to work out was what we were going to do during our day at Disneyland Paris. I will be honest, I didn’t look at the park opening hours until quite late on – I think Melanie may even have been on board her cruise by the time I got round to it. The parks open at 10:00am that day, and sadly because we’re not staying at a Disneyland Paris resort, we don’t get early access to the park, but that works out Ok, because we’re all going to be in the same boat, and it won’t be that early a start.
I spoke to Melanie to find out what she and Meri wanted to see, as they’re the first timers here. For ourselves and Hazel, it’s a bonus trip, and certainly one I wasn’t expecting. She told me that Tower of Terror was a must-do for them. Ok, that settles it then. Let’s start with the Walt Disney Studios Park that morning, and that can be their first port of call, although they will definitely be on their own with that one.
We’ll spend the first couple of hours there, then head over to the Disneyland Park at some point. I discussed with Hazel whether there was anywhere good to eat in the Studios Park, as we’ve never found anywhere that’s wowed us, and she suggested Annette’s Diner over in the Disney Village, which worked for us, so that’s the loose plan for lunch that day. If we head there, it’ll be a new one for us, so it’ll be nice to try somewhere new.
We’ll spend the afternoon in the Disneyland Park, well until we’re shattered and have had enough that is, then we’ll head back to the hotel for a break. We’ll probably drive over in the morning, then catch the bus back in the afternoon, as Hazel has kindly offered to drop us back to our hotel that night. The plan is to see the evening parade at 7:00pm, then we’re off to Walt’s An American Restaurant at 8:00pm with Hazel and her husband, which I’m really looking forward to, as we had such a superb meal there last time. As they’re driving, it also means we can enjoy a nice bottle of wine. Heck, it’s a nice treat to be able to enjoy alcohol on Main Street, and especially if they have the same stuff we had last time.
So those are our plans for our day at Disneyland Paris. As for the rest of our weekend, about a week before we were due to leave, I made a decision that we’d pay a supplement, which ended up only being £14 (about $20), to change our outgoing train time. I was going to leave later from the office, but I ended up with so much time owing to me that I decided I’d take a half day. Now we’re heading out on the 2:20pm train, rather than the 4:20pm train we were originally booked on. Yay – more time away!
I’ve had a quick look to see where we could eat when we get to our hotel, and at first I wasn’t finding much in the way of restaurants near to our hotel on TripAdvisor, but when I looked at the map, I realised that there was a shopping centre right next door to us. Of course, I had a look at their website and there are plenty of places to eat there, although they all close at 8:30pm, even McDonald’s. That seems very odd, as usually they’re open a lot later. At least with getting the earlier train, hopefully we should be there in time to grab dinner.
I’m hoping that our lunch at the café on Saturday fills us up, as I didn’t have much luck with restaurants near our hotel for Saturday night either. I guess if needs be, we’ll go to the hotel restaurant, but maybe after all that crème brulee, we won’t need much… At least on Saturday and Sunday mornings, we have breakfast included in our rooms, which is something.
I also had a quick look to see what time the Panoramagique balloon starts operating at Disneyland Paris, as we’ve never been up in it. I figured it would probably by 10:00am, like the parks, but it opens at 9:00am. Depending how quickly we get going, I might see whether that’s operating and, if so, maybe we can take a quick ride on it that morning. I’m not holding my breath though, as I don’t think I’ve ever seen it operating in all the times we’ve been to Disneyland Paris.
So I think that’s it – our plans are pretty much set. Now we could just do with some good weather, especially at Disneyland Paris. It seems every time we go there, it rains, and as of a week before our departure, what a surprise – the forecast is for rain again. Ugh! It’s been an appalling spring in the UK and it would be nice to have some warm, sunny weather for once, but we’ll have to see what happens…
Well, a couple of days on from writing that, and I’m still none the wiser about the weather, although it does look as if it’s going to be warm – with temperatures in the high 70s, so I guess I’d better make sure I pack the sun tan lotion to come with us. There are still some showers forecast, but right now, it’s for the Sunday. Who knows? I guess we won’t know for sure until we get there…
Our plans:
Thursday 6 June:
Take the Eurotunnel to France
Drive to our hotel in Torcy
Stay the night at the Kyriad Marne La Vallee Torcy
Friday 7 June:
Drive to the Dream Castle Hotel and check in
Head to Disneyland Paris for opening at 10:00am
Visit the Walt Disney Studios in the morning
Possible lunch at Annette’s Diner?
Visit the Disneyland Park in the afternoon
Dinner with Hazel and her DH at Walt’s An American Restaurant
Stay the night at the Dream Castle Hotel
Saturday 8 June:
Drive to Versailles and aim to be there for 10:00am
Explore the gardens and see the fountains show between 11:00am and 12:00pm
Lunch at a café that specialises in crème brulee!
Visit Bois de Boulogne
Stay the night at the Renaissance Paris La Defense
Sunday 9 June:
Visit La Grande Arche de la Defense
Drive back to Calais
Take the Eurotunnel home
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so jealous.
PassPorter Guide Author
Mind you, we have done weekends only in Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna and Sorrento and day trips to Paris, Amsterdam (see a pattern here? 
So how was I going to do it? Well, I’m a member of Hotels.com’s Reward Nights, and I was about to get my first free night’s hotel stay, which you get after 10 hotel stays. Sorted – we’ll go for the Disneyland Hotel that night then. 
I think it came to something like £60… well, that’s not going to work for the Disneyland Hotel. I did think about the Sequoia Lodge, as that was about £250, but sadly while I was making my mind up, the resort sold out for the night. 
) and eventually I opted for 
I will be honest, I didn’t look at the park opening hours until quite late on – I think Melanie may even have been on board her cruise by the time I got round to it. 
The parks open at 10:00am that day, and sadly because we’re not staying at a Disneyland Paris resort, we don’t get early access to the park, but that works out Ok, because we’re all going to be in the same boat, and it won’t be that early a start. 
The plan is to see the evening parade at 7:00pm, then we’re off to Walt’s An American Restaurant at 8:00pm with Hazel and her husband, which I’m really looking forward to, as we had such a superb meal there last time. 
As they’re driving, it also means we can enjoy a nice bottle of wine. 
Heck, it’s a nice treat to be able to enjoy alcohol on Main Street, and especially if they have the same stuff we had last time. 
That seems very odd, as usually they’re open a lot later. At least with getting the earlier train, hopefully we should be there in time to grab dinner. 
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