Holy Great Movie Ride (April 5 - 10)! TR Begins - COMPLETE!! 6/8 - Page 23 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
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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.
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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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LOVE Tom's shirt - being a Cardinal fan and all it was great to see!
Yes!! I grew up in IL an hour out of St. Louis, so it was in my blood. Imagine my surprise in college when I met this boy from Alabama who was a Cards fan!?!
Now we all I have is Spring Training. I'll take it, though.
__________________
Brandi
Bakelins chillin' at the pool after a fun week at Disney!
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Yes!! I grew up in IL an hour out of St. Louis, so it was in my blood. Imagine my surprise in college when I met this boy from Alabama who was a Cards fan!?!
Now we all I have is Spring Training. I'll take it, though.
That's awesome!! I was born and raised and still live in the St. Louis area, so of course am a Cards fan. We went to one game this year where they had fireworks after the game from the stadium.
We were up and ready to hit DHS early this morning! We had stoked ourselves up for some Insania. We grabbed a bus to the park and were there by 8:30. After hopping in line we waited only a short time before they started letting folks in….and of course, since we’re the “unable to use our ticket in the turnstile” magnet, we were behind a bunch of folks who just didn’t know how to insert that ticket and put their finger on the machine. I have no idea how we came to possess this magnetic power, but I’d gladly give it back to whence it came…. FINALLY, we were in the park and made our way up towards the ropes.
While waiting I felt somebody tap my arm and then my big girl purse… this lady behind me wanted to know where I got it and if they had the other designs in the wristlet size. This happened a lot during the trip…. being asked about my big girl purse…
They dropped the rope early after letting us early… no big opening show, just the set up of the “radio show” going on all morning on Hollywood Blvd. I so want to be one of those streetmosphere people… sitting on Hollywood Blvd. all morning, people watching, talking about the park, and harassing guests. What a job. I mean, we pretty much do that ourselves anyway… minus the harassing guests part… (most of the time).
Anyway, we made our way with the stampede back to Pixar Place and hopped in line. We didn’t even fool with a FP. I just *love* those folks that hold up the line and then stand there and do the “my other half is in the FP line” wave to let go ahead of them b/c they hopped in line too soon….. We were pretty much walked right in and right onto a car. Andy was very proud as he made the leaderboard….probably for all of about 5 minutes
I swear, we don’t deviate from the norm when we go to this park… because if you’ve read any of my other TRs since Insania came to town, you’ll probably have a good idea of where we headed next… anyone? anyone? Rock n Roller Coaster. We considered waiting because they were testing the new queueless waiting area but we decided to grab FPs and then go ride TOT. On our way to the Tower we saw the CM that you always see in the footage on the Travel Channel. His name is TJ and I know you all just how fantastic he is. We got to see in a couple years ago when he unloaded our elevator, but Andy’s picture that he took turned out blurry, so here was my second chance!
I read somewhere online that when training a CM one time he asked that CM what they thought a CM’s duty was and apparently this CM hesitated a second and TJ said “I sell memories.” Isn’t that WDW is all about? I think some CMs have lost sight of this which makes me sad. Not all of them….. but I’ve seen a slight decrease over the years we’ve been going…
Anywhoo, I digress.
The Tower didn’t have a very long wait…the time posted was 20 minutes and the line did wrap around to the back but I think that was just to open up the line a bit. It moved fairly quickly. It was, however, in this line that my true stalker blood came out. You know that for some reason I have a soft spot for anything British… I mean I mostly listen to The Who and The Beatles and Robbie Williams I love BBCA (Top Gear, Peep Show, That Mitchell and Webb, Kitchen Nightmares, Gordon’s F Word, How Clean is Your House….my TV lives on this channel.) So anyway, with all that said… we had noticed in our few days in the parks so far, that there were A LOT of British folks around… I mean, there’s always a lot, but this was MORE than usual… at one point during the trip I joked to Andy that we’d go home thinking we’d traveled overseas we heard so many British accents. But today, in line at the TOT, a few people ahead of us, were these three guys, two younger, one older. It looked like the older guy was the father and the two guys were either family or best pals. Anyway, I saw one of the younger guys and told Andy that I bet anything that guy was British… I mean, something about his face… I don’t know what it was… I mean, I guess if we’re honest here, I thought he was cute (Andy’s gonna vomit now I’m sure…..). So now we had this mission of trying to hear them speak so Andy could try and prove me wrong. Once he saw the guy he wanted to say that he might Irish (which you know is what Andy is….just an Americanized version). Soooooo, since I’m so sick in the head, I found myself being a sidler (Seinfeld reference)….trying to sidle up as close to these folks as I could….with other parties between us Man I’m weird. I started thinking I could hear the older man and he sure sounded British. We debated the whole way into the hotel, and when we got inside, we ended up on the same side as them….so we sidled up behind them in the library…. AND, score. Melissa was right I don’t know if I should be proud of being so flippin weird. And what if they’re out there and they read PP boards. Oh geez…
Anyway…. yes, we ended up in the same elevator as them, too…. not that we purposefully chose the side that they did once you made it to the queues at the elevators.
So that was my freak admission for today. Hello. My name is Melissa. And I’m obsessive.
After our stalking was finished we grabbed a banana for breakfast there on Sunset and sat and people watched for a minute before hitting up the Great Movie Ride. That’s right, Holy Great Movie Ride folks. We made it through a few of the movies, which really did enhance the ride… I was really excited in the gangster scene because I finally recognized Patrick J. Ryan’s pub! We pointed out everything while we rode of course. And this time…. we finally got the western scene. We’ve been riding this since we started going to WDW and we’ve ALWAYS gotten the gangster. I read up online about it right before our trip b/c I was convinced they didn’t do it anymore…. and sure enough, we ended up in the front car and got carjacked by the cowboy! I prefer the gangster scene… I mean I LOVE that one liner “no more red light”… But I’m glad we got to see the western one.
We made our way over towards the Streets of America next to take some pictures… One of which is posted on my photoblog and Ryan from Main St. Gazette featured it last Sunday on his blog. Here’s a couple more…
Can you see itty bitty Andy?
We wanted to see the Muppets but when we got over there, holy moley! That was the longest line I’ve EVER seen for Muppets. So we decided to skip it. I was pretty hungry and we wanted to take advantage of the eat before 11:30 and get one entrée free when you purchase another one. So we headed to the Backlot Express. Andy ordered while I grabbed us a spot outside so we could watch the Jedi training. I’m still waiting for some little kid to go apey on Darth. One almost did. I think they whopped him in the head. I can’t remember b/c the Jedi did his Jedi mind trick on his and told us we did not see that……
I do enjoy the Backlot… we got the Turkey Sandwich (which is VERY tasty) and the chicken breast nuggets and split everything.
After lunch we wandered around, took pictures, and acted stupid.
Indy Andy doing his impersonation…..
I wanted to wander through the shops and see if they had the D&B bags b/c I was starting to itch for that tassle tote…and I had my 20% off coupon now that we’d eaten CS… We just looked today though… then we headed off to use our RnRC FP.
I’m gonna have to pick up later… it’s lunch time….. I will try to finish later today. It’s been crazy this week but today’s been kind of slow… so stay tuned!
We're planning on going back to the world in December this year and you've completely inspired me to go rent the movies from the Great Movie Ride! We've never gotten the cowboy version either but I'm glad to hear that I'm not missing out with the gangster
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Disney Magic - Oct 2015
those folks that hold up the line and then stand there and do the “my other half is in the FP line” wave to let go ahead of them b/c they hopped in line too soon….. We were pretty much walked right in and right onto a car. Andy was very proud as he made the leaderboard….probably for all of about 5 minutes 
I love BBCA (Top Gear, Peep Show, That Mitchell and Webb, Kitchen Nightmares, Gordon’s F Word, How Clean is Your House….my TV lives on this channel.) So anyway, with all that said… we had noticed in our few days in the parks so far, that there were A LOT of British folks around… I mean, there’s always a lot, but this was MORE than usual… at one point during the trip I joked to Andy that we’d go home thinking we’d traveled overseas we heard so many British accents. But today, in line at the TOT, a few people ahead of us, were these three guys, two younger, one older. It looked like the older guy was the father and the two guys were either family or best pals. Anyway, I saw one of the younger guys and told Andy that I bet anything that guy was British… I mean, something about his face… I don’t know what it was… I mean, I guess if we’re honest here, I thought he was cute (Andy’s gonna vomit now I’m sure…..). So now we had this mission of trying to hear them speak so Andy could try and prove me wrong. Once he saw the guy he wanted to say that he might Irish (which you know is what Andy is….just an Americanized version). Soooooo, since I’m so sick in the head, I found myself being a sidler (Seinfeld reference)….trying to sidle up as close to these folks as I could….with other parties between us 
I will try to finish later today. It’s been crazy this week but today’s been kind of slow… so stay tuned!
*Melissa
Our 3 princesses LOVE the RED SOX!!!!
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