Going Outside My Comfort Zone [planning for WDW and Disneyland trips] - Page 2 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
Welcome! We're happy you've found the PassPorter Community -- the friendliest place to plan your vacation to Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Disneyland, and the world in general! You are now viewing the PassPorter Message Board Community as a guest, which gives you limited access. As our guest, feel free to browse our messages by selecting the forum you want to visit from the list below.
To post messages and ask questions, join our FREE community today and you'll get access to tools and resources not available to guests, such as our vacation countown timers, "living" avatars, private messaging system, database searches, downloads, and a special PassPorter discount code. Registration is fast, simple, and completely free. Just click the Join Our Community link.
If you think you've already joined, log in below now. If you don't remember your member name or password, please visit our Member Name and Password Recovery page. You are also welcome to contact us.
Today I will talk about the Disney World trip. This trip is to take place March 21 - April 1 as of right now. Yes I am still waiting on my husband to finalize the end portion of the trip. I do have air finally bought for the trip down. I have been watching Southwest, but unfortunately it is sky high with them for some reason. I ended up going with Delta on the way down. Even paying for bags with them will be cheaper than SW. It was about $300 for the 2 of us to fly down before bags, total. On SW it was going to be almost 300 a peice, so I couldn't justify that cost. I have also reserved a 1 night stay at POFQ for the 21st. It feels good to have a few more things in place. I let my mom know I have this in place and if she wants me to book her flights and come in the same flight as us, or if she rather come in Sat. Yesterday I did a bit of shopping. Mainly I just wanted to get out of the house, but I did want to get some shoes. I wanted something comfy but would look ok with a dress or skirt for my conference trip. I ended up getting 2 pairs of Sketcher GoWalks at the recommendation of a friend. so far they seem decent, but I will put them on again today and walk on the treadmill to test them further. I have such awful feet that I tend to blister ins weird places. I also bought some shorts and a dress to take. I had a coupon that could be used all day so I went around JC Penney's and trying things on. Mostly it was just nice to be away from home for a few hours. But I did like what I found and everything was on sale or on clearance. Today I am catching up on work and hopefully can make a few more plans about the WDW vacation, or at least get it sorted out on how many days I want to be at the parks!
DW and I are arriving at our timeshare on 3/28 and are staying for two weeks. I see that our trips have a few days of overlap. Perhaps we may run into each other.
DW and I are arriving at our timeshare on 3/28 and are staying for two weeks. I see that our trips have a few days of overlap. Perhaps we may run into each other.
Oh wow! If all goes well, we will be getting on the Magic on the 29th. But we will be having a blast at one of the parks on the 28th!!!!
DL News I talked to my friend Stacy today. She is the one who lives in CA. She will be picking me up from the airport and we will spend the day together. She says she will drive me around to see some places and then we'll head to Venice Beach area. I looked it up and it looks interesting. I read Sundays are a great day to go and see all sorts of different people and many vendors. I can't wait to take pictures. Stacy asked me if I was traveling with just a carryon or a suitcase too. I had a good laugh. I told her I was trying to figure out how to fit it all into ONE suitcase. LOL She said she better clean her trunk out then as it is full a junk. A little bit about Stacy. We have been friends forever. She came to my school when we started 3rd grade and became friends right away. We went to school from 3rd to 8th grade. When it came time to go to high school, my parents sent me to an all girl Catholic school and Stacy went to the public school. Even then we remained friends and I still mostly spent my weekends with my friends at that school rather than my own. Especially once we could all drive. Stacy was the maid of honor at my first wedding (to my sons father). She went to college at Kent State, which is a few hours away, so as I was a new mom and newly married, she was going to college. Not long after she graduated she moved to Chicago, where she eventually started working for MTV. Her dream has always been, even since grade school, was to move to California and do something in the movie business. After a few years in Chicago she decided it was now or never and made the move. I believe she has been in California now for close to 20 years, but I could be off on that. She eventually started working for Paul Verhoeven, who had directed Robocop and Total Recall. She was kind of his personal gopher and right arm when she started I think. Her first movie with him (I think) was Starship Troopers. All of our friends went to see it just to see her name in the credits. She also had a cameo in the movie where there is a news flash and she is the person they showed for it. Stacy also worked on the movie Showgirls, which was kind of a flop for the amount of money and time they put into it. And sadly I never have seen it to this day. She later went on to co produce Hollow man with Kevin Bacon. Pretty neat to find your friend listed on wikipedia.
She still works for Paul, but he lives in Europe now and mostly does movies over there. And he is pretty old now too. She does a lot of research for him though, but she knows that he can't go on forever. She is also working on writing a pilot for a TV Series. I don't know all the details, but when she was home over the holidays she said they were going in to pitch it soon. I believe she has made it through several steps so far. She says it takes forever to get anything on TV now a days. So many steps and you have to be in it for the long haul. So thats my friend Stacy and she may lead an exciting life to some, but she is still the same person I became friends with so many years ago. We can pick right up each time we see each other and I am super excited to see her again and this time on HER turf.
Just found this! You have some excitement happening!!! Coast to coast trips!!! . And yes - sometimes those minimal planned trips turn out to be the best. You friend sounds like she is pretty successful! And that is fantastic that you have been able to maintain the friendship over the years!!! Sounds like you will have a great time with her!
__________________
Lisa Co-Guide to Sharing the Adventure: Disney World Trip Reports
Just found this! You have some excitement happening!!! Coast to coast trips!!! . And yes - sometimes those minimal planned trips turn out to be the best. You friend sounds like she is pretty successful! And that is fantastic that you have been able to maintain the friendship over the years!!! Sounds like you will have a great time with her!
I am excited about both trips. We will be trying some new things and that is always exciting.
I am such a slacker here, but really I have been busy with work and home life. I have been working on my trips a bit as well. I was happy to have found a decent priced rental for the March trip. Originally I had booked last fall and got a fantastic rate with Firefly, but when we added days to the trip, I went in to modify it, keeping my rate code, but it more than doubled in price to add 4 days. Um, no thank you. So I have been looking on and off and finally booked a decent price with Hertz. Then yesterday I went in and found it about $40 cheaper and changed the booking. Today I found it $100 cheaper through Dollar and I went with that. And though Dollar is not high on my list for customer service. I can handle it for $100 savings. And the price actually came to less than $10 more than my original great rate I has in the fall with Firefly...and I added 4 more days. I am pretty happy about that and will just be on my toes at check in. Next, Skip and I (and Claire) talked about the trip a bit this afternoon and I think we will be booking the next part (cruise, after cruise hotel, and flights home) on Friday...or in the next few days. He told me he knows he will NOT enjoy the cruise, and that is just fine by me. He can be negative. LOL. But I know he will enjoy it and seeing Claire enjoy it will make him happy too. She is so excited to show him what Disney cruising is all about. Skip also shocked me and said he really wishes we were going to California instead! What??? He is the one who has griped about how long the flight is over the years. I did say he could come down at the end of the conference and we could spend a few days there and he said no to that. I do that that is mainly do to it being so soon and we are still living in an iceland of crud here. I am sure he is worried how his brother would handle it if he left him like that. I know the answer.....he wouldn't! We still have not gotten an itinerary for the DL conference yet and the word is we won't get it till next week. Nothing like waiting last minute. Oh well, I am just happy to be able to go and see new things.
More WDW news! I booked our after the cruise stay. Getting ahead of myself here, but when we get off the cruise, we plan to go to Legoland for the day. I debated on going back to Disney property or just getting another hotel somewhere.....but heck why not. I might be depressed and need that last dose of Disney. So I booked a new resort stay for us. I have had a chance to visit some great Dis Friends here...Kerin and Tom, but I have yet to stay here.
I just go a studio, as that is all we will need for the night. But I am excited. Another place to add to my list of stays. I am down to 10 day till my DL trip. As I said, my arrival day will be spent mainly with Stacy. I have a Dis friend who lives in the area and she will be at the parks that day as well, so I might have a chance to meet up with her in the evening. My room mate...who hasn't yet spilt the beans on her TR on Dis...so I won't give her name...I'll just call her T......... Will be arriving in the afternoon. My plan is to get to the resort by 7 or 8 PM. We are thinking we might go to the parks that night as DL is open till 11 that night. If all works out, we will do that for sure. T and I have never met in real life, but we work for the same company, so we have "known" each other for a few years. I am excited to meet her in real life. I am wondering how long I will hold up on this day since my flight is so early (Ohio) time and if I make it to the parks till 11, it would be 2AM my time. I also found out that Paige's boyfriend has to work the day I leave, so they cannot take me to the airport. I am planning on either having my Dad take me, or possibly still looking at a hotel. I am going to research that option today and see if I can come up with a good plan before the day is over.
Good choice on OKW. We have stayed there in a studio. We were on the ground floor and right across the street from one of the bus stops and we had pool at the end of our building.
Good choice on OKW. We have stayed there in a studio. We were on the ground floor and right across the street from one of the bus stops and we had pool at the end of our building.
I am excited to give this one a try too. I hear good things about it and have a few forum friends who swear it is their favorite.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lfredsbo
Nice booking OKW for the night!! It is a nice quiet resort - great for post cruise!