Is It July Yet? - A PTR - UPDATED 7/19 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
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Great plans! We too have seen AK at night back when they had evening EMH, but most of the rides weren't open at that point in the evening. We did love wandering around the park at night though.
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Great plans! We too have seen AK at night back when they had evening EMH, but most of the rides weren't open at that point in the evening. We did love wandering around the park at night though.
One thing we noticed was how dark certain areas were. We loved it but I've seen people not so thrilled about it.
Sorry it's been so long but I'm back! 2016 has continued in what seems to be it's regular fashion.
DD broke her tooth across the roots a couple weeks ago. She was hanging on a piece of playground equipment, thought she saw a spider, let go and fell hitting her front teeth on another part of equipment. The dentist said it either: 1) might fall out on it's own, 2) need to be pulled, or 3) not bother her much and leave it be. So far it seems to be option three. She's been really good about biting around it. All because she thought she might have seen a spider. Then she spent all of last week sick with a virus - fever, vomiting, and an eye infection which of course spread to the other. At least she didn't break an arm or leg then not be able to swim on vacation.
I on the other hand, did manage to break something. I broke my finger at work about three weeks ago. I have to tape it to it's neighbor for one month. My recheck is July 25, we leave July 30. Keeping my fingers crossed I won't have to tape them at WDW. If that's the worst that happens though, I'll take it. I have waterproof tape, I'm ready.
On the bright side, our MDE tags and vouchers have arrived along with our MagicBands! We're getting so close!
Now back to the plans!
Last time I mentioned we were going to have to get up early to meet Anna and Elsa. However since it seems the wait times have been pretty low, we don't really feel the need to get to Epcot super early.
Monday August 1: Epcot We plan on having breakfast in the room before heading out. I originally didn't schedule any fastpasses until noon but we moved them an hour earlier. We want to head to TT first thing since we don't have a fp for it on either of our Epcot days figuring most people will head to either FEA or Soarin'. We have fastpasses for SE at 11:00am, Mission Space for DS and DH at 12:00pm with DD and I heading to the Character Spot. She's too short for MS and I get motion sickness so no thanks. We then have FEA at 1:15pm. We'll fit lunch in either before MS or after depending on how hungry everyone is. We tried to schedule things on one half of the park so we aren't crisscrossing everywhere. We plan on heading to A&E after our FEA ride. We'll go back to the hotel at some point after our fp's are used to relax and probably swim. We're going to head over to DHS tonight just to watch the Star Wars fireworks. We won't be up late, tomorrow's an early day.
Tuesday August 2: Magic Kingdom Today is an early day because we want to hit MK opening. DH and I insist on going at least once every trip. DD loved it when she was a toddler and I'm sure she'll think it's fantastic. We have an ADR at 9:15 for Crystal Palace, one of our favorite breakfasts.
We're really trying to focus on one side of the parks per day this time around instead of bouncing all over the place. Not to say we're totally inflexible but that was the goal.
Today's fastpasses are Jungle Cruise at 9:55 giving us all the way until 10:55 to use it, BTMRR and 10:55, and Splash Mountain at 12:05. We'll just eat whenever we get hungry assuming it won't be until later after a big breakfast. The kids will probably be starving by noon anyway. We want to catch MSEP and Wishes tonight. We always try to hit them up early in our trip, you never know when a storm will cancel the nighttime fun.
Wednesday August 3: Day off with some MK fun. Originally this was going to be our Disney Springs day but that got switched to Saturday. We thought it would be fun to go to Be Our Guest and get fp's for Wishes and MSEP, plus whatever other ride we wanted. So we booked BOG dinner at 5:45 and waited to book our fp's.
In the meantime, DD saw the BBB on the vacation planning DVD. 'Look Mom! You can even look like a princess!' So after some thought it occurred to me, DH and I already set aside money for each kid to spend as they want. What's the difference if she spends $50 on BBB or on a bunch of stuff to bring home? So BBB it is! Her BBB reservation is in the castle at 3:50.
Everything was falling in line according to plan until Disney decided to drop the fp's for MSEP and Wishes. Well we weren't about to rearrange our ADR for BOG and try to change BBB. So might as well schedule some fp's. Here's our new and improved (hopefully final) Wed schedule.
Sleep in, breakfast at the food court.
Hang at hotel, swim, whatever floats our boat.
Be at MK sometime between 2:00 and 3:00 for PP fp.
BBB at 3:55. DD decided she wanted to wear an Anna dress so I'm taking one with. We'll hit a ride or two in Fantasyland between PP and BBB.
BOG at 5:45.
Rapunzel M&G at 7:20 for DD, DH, and myself. DS wanted Space Mountain.
We'll all meet back up in Tomorrowland for some rides and a Buzz Lightyear fp at 8:35. It's an EMH night at MK. I imagine DS will be out as late as he can be. DH, myself, and DD won't be staying super late because we're on a Jedi Training mission in the morning.
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We're down to 18 days!!! No new crises or injuries to report and my broken finger after weeks of no improvement suddenly seems to be getting better so things are going good! Back to the plans.
Thursday August 4: DHS We'll be up early to head straight to Jedi Training Academy this morning. DD is Star War obsessed. Kind of amazing since she's never seen any of the movies. She's watched Jedi Training and really wants to do it. She loves Darth Maul and is convinced at some point he decides to become a good guy. She just can't stomach the idea of her beloved Darth Maul being a bad guy forever.
We have fastpasses for TSMM at 9:55am, TOT at 11:00am, and Star Tours at 1:00pm. DD swears she wants to go on TOT. Whenever we tell her it's kind of a scary ride, she tell us she'll be fine. We have told her multiple times she can decide not to ride something all the way up until we get on. Once the ride starts you can't stop until it's over. She is our little daredevil so who knows, she may love it. We'll see....
I'm super excited about trying the Fried Green Tomato sandwich at DHS. Being a vegetarian, I'm thrilled with the option of something that looks delicious and is not a veggie burger or vegetable wrap.
We plan on catching Fantasmic tonight since we hopefully already saw the Star Wars fireworks earlier in the week.
Friday August 5: Magic Kingdom This is our last MK day. We have a breakfast ressie at BOG at 9:30. We love being in the castle and since it's a QS credit, why not?
Then we have fastpasses starting with Meeting Ariel at 10:30. Right now it's scheduled for all 4 of us but we'll see if DS changes his mind.
Then we have SDMT at 11:40. It was being constructed the last time we were there so it's a new one for all of us. I've managed to avoid on-ride videos for 3 years so I'm pretty excited to finally see it.
Next up is Splash Mountain at 1:35. Hopefully DD doesn't hate it the first time we rode it earlier in the week since we booked it again today.
Saturday August 6: Epcot The last day of our trip before we head home on Sunday. We'll have breakfast at CBR's food court before heading out. We have fastpasses today for SE at 9:50am because DH and I adore SE. We've been known to ride it 5 times in one day before lol. Every time that trip we walked by SE and the wait time was pretty short, we took a ride.
We also have our Soarin' fastpass today at 11:25. We had to pick something else out of Tier 2 and went with Journey Into Imagination. It's cute and I've gone many times in the summer where the wait would be 40 minutes. We'll watch Illuminations tonight.
Sunday August 7: Departure day Oh how we all hate this day but sadly it has to come. Our flight leaves around 3:00pm so I'm assuming we'll be picked up by DME around noon. No plans today other than sleeping in, eating breakfast for the last Mickey Waffle at the CBR food court, packing up and heading out.
So that's about it as far as plans go! Now to get all the little things done like stopping the mail and the newspaper, shopping for any last minute things we need, and all that packing.
We leave next week! I can officially say it. Next week!
We've only made one change to our plans since the last update. We changed our EE fp from 7:00pm to 1:30pm. We booked the fp for nighttime because we wanted to make sure DS got a chance to ride at night since he never has. However it looks like wait times at AK at night are virtually non-existent (usually around 10 to 15 minutes) so we don't really need a fp for it. We'll just get in line. We need to use rider swap so DS has the potential for 4 EE rides that day lol. He'll be thrilled.
We had to buy another suitcase. We realized we're short one after an airline broke the wheels on mine and DH broke his when trying to stuff too many freebies in it at a work conference. I've started packing one suitcase with all the extra things we need: ponchos, band-aids, packs of wet ones (dd is a super messy eater still), sunscreen, etc etc etc. DD saw the stroller fan we bought on our last trip in the garage so now that's getting tossed in there too. I put in the hold delivery orders for the mail and newspaper today. Things are starting to get checked off the list and our paper chain countdown DD and I made is getting shorter by the day!
Funny how it can seem like time is dragging yet still feel like there's not enough time to get everything done.