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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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I guess after Japan, I didn’t take anymore pictures……
I made it to China and bought the parasol. It was quick and easy and they wrote her name on it in just a few seconds time. I then got smart…and opened the parasol and used it to shade the sun off my head as I walked back. It was kind of funny. Many people commented on what a smart thing that was as I worked my way back to Epcots back door. I stopped off for one more Photopass before I left the park.
The guy joked about having a Chineese parasol with France in the background.
Time to leave. I was SUPER hot…Dripping sweat, really gross hot. My feet were killing me and I had a beat read face. I just wanted to sprout wings and fly back…or maybe someone would be kind enough to carry me? Nope …neither happened, so I just kept walking. Once I made it to the Beach Club, I went inside and tried to walk back to our room using the air conditioned corridors as much as possible. I did have to go outside once or twice, but as soon as I found a door to go back indoors, I would go back in. Nothing like going to meet someone for the first time…dripping with sweat and I’m sure smelling my best as well. LOL!
I got to the room and Brook, Joe and Henry were all in there. It was a great meet…like we have known each other our whole lives. Henry was just too cute. Brook informed me that Henry had spotted my carryon right away and opened it up to take a peak. LOL! Henry informed me that he had seen snacks in the bag. LOL! I told Henry I had a gift for him, and he instantly became my new best friend. I went to my big suitcase to get it out. That’s when I discovered something was wet inside there. I later figured it out. I had forgotten to close the cap of my Paul Mitchell hair lotion and it had dripped on the bottom of my case. It wasn’t bad, but strangely it did discolor my tie dye shirt that it was near….But being it was tie dye, you really couldn’t tell. Henry opened his gift.
I got him a Handy Manny toy, a pez dispenser and one of the washcloths that is in a square and then when you get it wet, it expands. He quickly had Joe help him put together the Handy Mandy toy. He told us that one of his friends had the same toy too. As he played, I could see he kept eyeing my suitcase with the chips. I told him he could have a bag if his Mom said it was ok, and she did, so he had a little snack and played and talked a mile a minute. I then had him meet Phineas and Ferb.
I sent one picture home for Claire. The next day my MIL asked me who Henry was, and I told her. She laughed, because she said she asked Claire who he was and she told her he was a character at Disney….Which I guess makes sense. Usually whenever Claire has seen a picture of Henry, he is at Disney…so I guess he is a character to her. LOL! Henry played with Phineas and Ferb and those boys got a lot of playtime. They were thrown and whipped all around…their idea of fun.
I also had a gift for Brook. It was a t-shirt, like the one I had gotten for Tom and Karin, with a DCL picture on it. Also I had ordered us all a t-shirt with our travel agent name and logo on it. Those we had planned to get and they had paid me for them prior to the trip, so I gave that to her as well then. Brook had a gift for me as well. A black and White cookie from New York. I had never had one before, and I saved it for when I got home. It was really good, and I had to fight with Claire to eat it. LOL! She also got us each a NYC Disney pin.
After a bit of chatting…and Brook calling a couple times looking for her luggage, I got changed and cleaned up a bit. Ideally, I should’ve taken another shower, but time had gotten away from us, and I was just happy to wipe the sweat off and put some fresh clothes on. Brooks luggage finally made it over and she too changed.
Before long, it was time to head off to meet up with the AEP group. I knew our other 2 agents had arrived, as they had texted me during the day as well. In fact, Mindy gave me a lecture, telling me to stop marking my texts as urgent when I replied. LOL! OK, I don’t even have that feature, and I did look to be sure, again, but nope, it must be something that her phone does for me (I am important after all. LOL), because no one else was getting their messages from me marked as urgent.
We made it to the lobby and saw Patty and Mindy right away and said hello. A man came over to Brook and I and checked us in and introduced himself as Tommy. He then walked off and I was kind of in my own world, just looking around, looking at other agents, and taking it all in. Brook then tells me that Patty has just told her that Tommy is the Professor. I quick take another look at him and sure enough…He is…. We have a celebrity in our mists! You are now probably wondering who the heck the “professor” is? Well to be able to sell Disney vacations, we had to take online classes at the Disney College of Knowledge (COK). We also had to be graduates in order to attend the AEP. Tommy is the Professor at the COK. We do these video classes and the professor comes back in several still shots, with these hilarious, cheesy motions, and reviews the courses and gives us quiz’s. If you do well, you get a great cheesy shot of him say congrats, if you miss a question, you get a sad face. We all laughed about these when we took the courses. They are just so funny. Tommy was that guy…and we also had another “leader” named Rita….She never made a cameo on the COK course though. Not long after getting there, I realized that I left my camera on the bed back in the room. UGH! So I ran back quickly and retrieved it.
I guess I took this picture while walking back.
And then I tried to get a picture of Tommy, which was really hard to do, because when he talked he moved around a lot.
Soon it was time to get started and we made our way over to the bus that would take us to our first onsite inspection. We went down some hallways towards the convention center to catch the bus.
That is Rita leading us…and we really walked fast….we were on a mission, no lollygagging around here.
We loaded onto the bus and on the way over to Coronado Springs, we were given an introduction. I soon realized that Rita had my “Dream” job…..I wanted to be her…and I no sooner thought that, and Brook leaned over and said “I want her job”! LOL! We were told that we would be divided into two groups for the tours and those with a Mickey on the back of their name tag would be going with Tommy, while the Minnie’s would be going with Rita. We had Tommy. Before we knew it, we were pulling into CSR and Tommy got off the bus. We found out this was the routine at each resort. Tommy would get off and tell them that we had arrived and he would then get the keys to the room or rooms we would be touring. While he was checking in, we all unloaded and made our way to the lobby.
I'm getting so excited for you! And I'm really looking forward to your impressions of CSR. Love the pic of you in front of France, with the parasol, doing your best impression of Mary Poppins. Glad I'm not the only one who has thought the GM slushie was "meh". All the more reason to go back to try the Grey Goose one, right?
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I can't wait to read more - I bet this is going to be a fascinating tour.
It was very cool. I would love to do this again...there was so much info to take in all at once.
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Originally Posted by Colexis Mom
Great update!
Thanks
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Originally Posted by Cam22
Catching back up! Great pictures and the tour sounds like it is going to be fantastic!
I had a great time...it was paradise for a Disney geek!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Big Baloo
I'm getting so excited for you! And I'm really looking forward to your impressions of CSR. Love the pic of you in front of France, with the parasol, doing your best impression of Mary Poppins. Glad I'm not the only one who has thought the GM slushie was "meh". All the more reason to go back to try the Grey Goose one, right?
I liked CSR a lot, but it's very big. I want to stay there some day...but then I want to stay at all the places we toured.
I will warn you all now…..I took a LOT of pictures at each resort. I know that some of these places I may never get back to, or at least stay at, so I wanted to try and get as many as I could.
We gathered in our groups and we started off in the lobby, while Rita’s group went off to tour the rooms.
We got a bit of an overview of the resort and the theming and background as well. It was all very interesting.
This resort has a Convention center and like most of the other moderates, it has a perimeter road running around the resort and a table service restaurant.
We them moved outside for a bit…and the heat about knocked us over. Tommy is a Florida Native and even he complained about the heat.
Tommy told us more about the resort and pointed out a few things.
PassPorter's Free-Book to Walt Disney World It’s hard to believe anything is free at Walt Disney World; but there are actually a number of things you can get or do for little to no cost. This e-book documents over 200 free or cheap tips to do before you go and after you arrive. You could save a considerable amount of money following these tips. Perhaps more importantly; you can discover overlooked attractions and little-known details most people whiz by on their way to spend money. Click here to see free sample pages from the e-book! Get this popular e-book free of extra charges when you join the PassPorter's Club for as little as $4.95. A club pass includes access to all our other e-books; e-worksheets; super-size photos; and more! This e-book is also available for separate purchase in the PassPorter Online Store for just $5.95.
I think Rix Lounge is fairly newer. Tommy said they put it in because many convention goers wanted a bar/lounge to go to in the evenings. It was pretty neat looking inside too.
We moved on, passing CSR’s Pepper Market. I have heard good things about this place in the past. Tommy did say it was pretty popular, and since this was a big convention center, they put in a counter service restaurant that served several items.
Next we made our way over to they Maya Grill.
Tommy told us about the restaurant and we all snapped pictures.
The details in this restaurant were great. We next walked outside to explore some more.
PassPorter's Free-Book to Walt Disney World It’s hard to believe anything is free at Walt Disney World; but there are actually a number of things you can get or do for little to no cost. This e-book documents over 200 free or cheap tips to do before you go and after you arrive. You could save a considerable amount of money following these tips. Perhaps more importantly; you can discover overlooked attractions and little-known details most people whiz by on their way to spend money. Click here to see free sample pages from the e-book! Get this popular e-book free of extra charges when you join the PassPorter's Club for as little as $4.95. A club pass includes access to all our other e-books; e-worksheets; super-size photos; and more! This e-book is also available for separate purchase in the PassPorter Online Store for just $5.95.
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