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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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We decided to do another first and walk to the Poly. It was a beautiful walk and not as far as we thought. Maddie hadn’t wanted her stroller, but then she got tired about halfway through the walk, wanted her stroller and refused to budge.
We had to use the “Okay, we’ll see you on our way back” ploy and just keep walking. At one point, we had to round a bend. I didn’t want to stop and give into her, but I didn’t want her out of eye sight either. I told Thom to slowly turn his head (he’s better at being sneaky ) and check to see if she was following us yet. Sure enough, just as we were about to be out of her eye sight, she ran to catch up with us. She let her daddy carry her then. Not to mention any names, but someone was tired after a full day of being a pirate, sun and swimming and no naps.
It was cool seeing where the luau was held since I had always wondered where it was, but had never ventured in this direction. We were soon at the Kona Café where Monica, Kim and Macy joined us. Between ‘Ohana, Kona Café and the Tambu Lounge, the waiting area was heaving since it was obvious from the red t-shirts that everyone from Gay Day at MK had transitioned over to the Poly for dinner . It did make for some interesting t-shirt reading though. Thankfully, we were seated soon in the far corner of the Kona Café, so the lobby noise never bothered us.
Maddie fell asleep within minutes of us being seated (so it was obvious that the lobby noise wasn’t a problem ).
Kona Café is a family favorite and this meal did not disappoint. Kim, Monica and I started out with an Island Sunset which put me right in the tropics.
Kona Café also had a dinner special where you could order an appetizer, entrée and dessert for a set price of $29.99. I’m not sure if this was offered with the dining plan or not, since we were no longer on it but I thought it was a good deal since the selections were varied. I ended up ordering cucumber sushi, Pan Asian Noodles (Asian noodles with sliced chicken, peanuts, seasonal vegetables, and soy-peanut sauce) and the Kilauea Torte.
Everything was absolutely delicious and I could have probably made a meal out of cucumber sushi alone. I was the only one who ordered dessert and no one would even help me out with it! Actually, I only ate a bite before I was pushing it away because I was stuffed! It was too bad that Maddie was still asleep because I know she would have!
Maddie didn’t wake up until Thom picked her up for us to leave. She opened her eyes about the time that we passed the desserts on the counter and immediately declared that she wanted dessert! We promised her that she could have something back at our hotel. Monica, Kim and Macy were going shopping, so we said until our breakfast the next morning and took our sleepy girl back to the hotel with a short trip on the monorail.
We saw that Ryan was at the concierge desk, so we stopped to chat with him. We mentioned that we were staying in that night, so he asked us if we wanted to rent a dvd. The girls were all over that suggestion, so he opened up his immense vault of movies which brought a gasp from the girls. They were in heaven with such a selection. It took them a while to narrow their choice down to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
Maddie tried to pick HSM 3 but we reminded her that she watched that at home all the time. We told Ryan that it was her favorite movie and he was even able to guess her favorite song (The Boys are Back). After we left Ryan, we played a little bit checkers and chess (well the 4-year-old and 8-year-old versions ) on the game tables that are dotted about the third floor before we headed back to our room.
When we entered our room, it was obvious that Vonnie had worked her magic again. The beds and nightstands were covered with goodies – balloons, confetti, stickers, stuffed animals and figurines. The girls were blown away. Mary Devall immediately whipped out a piece of stationary and started writing a thank you note to Vonnie.
We had brought Maddie’s uneaten ravioli back with us, but she really didn’t like it so we just bagged a somewhat normal dinner for her that night. For some reason, Mary Devall and I decided to go ahead and take the letter to Vonnie without Thom and Maddie. I can’t recall exactly why we left them behind, but if I had to guess the reason would be that Maddie needed a little privacy in the bathroom.
When Mary Devall and I took the letter to Vonnie, she had already found the thank you note that Mary Devall had written to her on our last visit. She also asked me if the girls had received pictures of Mickey that she had sent to them. I told her no and she wasn’t happy because she had mailed them herself. This woman was blowing me away with her genuine kindness.
The lounge had opened back up for dessert, so Mary Devall and I went back upstairs where she enjoyed a cupcake and a brownie and I enjoyed a glass of wine. A grandmother was sitting near us at one of the little tables with her grand daughter and immediately started up a conversation when I sat down with Mary Devall. She was babysitting her for the weekend while the parents went to NYC so she thought she and her husband would bring her to Disney. She said that they were old timers at the GF and it.
The little girl absolutely loved Mary Devall and then took a liking to Maddie when she and Thom finally caught up with us. Those two played together a lot before the grandmother told her that they needed to go back to the room. The little girl wasn’t budging, so I finally told the grandmother that we would go too to make it easier. The grandmother was most grateful.
We finally made it back to our room, popped in the movie, snuggled up in bed and watched it. We all really enjoyed it and we finally fully understand the premise behind everything in HISTK playground! We did have to turn the volume up a time or two. Our room was almost directly above the band that plays at GF every night and you could definitely hear it in our room. Not a one of us ever complained though because it truly made us feel that we were at the GF.
Our non-park day had been very successful - - and we had already made the decision to do it one more time before we left!
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Sometimes words aren't needed . . .
Last edited by Jillybean; 07-23-2010 at 03:36 PM..
If the cabanas have a TV and iPod dock, is there much 'noise pollution' from one to the next? I don't know how close together they are, but I can imagine it'd be all too easy for one group to stick the TV or their music on really loud and ruin the tranquility for everyone around... I guess it wouldn't even have to be loud to annoy if it were something you didn't like, or if you were hoping to just listen to the waves etc.
I'm pretty sensitive to noise (I can hear the static sound of plug sockets when something's left on standby for example) - unlike DH who never seems to be able to hear anything that bothers me - and I know it would be just our bad luck that such a thing would happen to us. Our neighbour's radio when he's in the garden absolutely does my head in, but I can't really say anything because it's his garden after all, the problem is that my ears are too good!! (<-- LOL - I've never had cause to use this smiley!)
Not that I even have a trip booked, nor could afford to stay at the GF if I did, but just curious!
Thom and I conferred on this question and decided that the sounds from the pool were so loud that we never even heard anything else going on in another cabana. The pool was like "white noise" so if someone had their tv or iPod running, we never heard it. We barely heard anyone even talking from the other cabanas.
We did play the tv some during the afternoon for the girls, but mainly we just enjoyed the pool itself!
NO picture of the Cabana Boy?? Jill I'm very disappointed in you! It does sound like a relaxing morning. Hope you have fun in Hilton Head! I love it there! Are you staying at the DVC property?
I know . . . I should be ashamed .
We did stay at the DVC resort in HH. I believe that we have stayed there every year since Mary Devall was born and we love it! We had a fantastic time!
What a truly relaxing day! The cabana at the pool looks like a wonderful way to enjoy a non-park day and still have loads of fun and pampering. So neat that you all got to see Vonnie again!
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What a wonderful relaxing day!
I am very sure that I could suggest this type of day at WDW to my dh and he would say "Book It"!
Miss Vonnie sounds like a gem! I love the look on the girl's faces as they find their surprises from her!
What an awesome "non-park" day for you all! I can't imagine anything better and I am amazed at all you managed to accomplish on that most relaxing day!
I so enjoyed catching up with your updates Jill! The girls looked so adorable in their pirate outfits and you and Thom sure looked like you enjoyed your alone time in the cabanas!!! It's always nice to take a down day while at WDW after running around the parks all week. The girls certainly looked like they enjoyed the pool and activities that the GF provided. Glad to hear you enjoyed your getaway in HH! I've seen pictures of that resort online and it looks so relaxing. Looking forward to reading more.
Talk about an amazing day, I think I am in love with the cabana. Now would that not be the perfect excuse for planning a weekend trip to the GF (see all I need is one little excuse). How great that you got the extra hours with no cost, your cabana boy definitely was looking out for your family that day. Loved the pictures of the girls at the pool, there was just so much going on there.
Dinner sounded delicious, love the picture of Maddie sleeping at the table. The girls really got some adorable gifts from Vonnie, glad that Mary Devall was able to thank her personally.
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) and check to see if she was following us yet. Sure enough, just as we were about to be out of her eye sight, she ran to catch up with us. 
She let her daddy carry her then. Not to mention any names, but someone was tired after a full day of being a pirate, sun and swimming and no naps. 
and I could have probably made a meal out of cucumber sushi alone. I was the only one who ordered dessert and no one would even help me out with it! 
Actually, I only ate a bite before I was pushing it away because I was stuffed! It was too bad that Maddie was still asleep because I know she would have! 
until our breakfast the next morning and took our sleepy girl back to the hotel with a short trip on the monorail.
They were in heaven with such a selection. It took them a while to narrow their choice down to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
it. 
I guess it wouldn't even have to be loud to annoy if it were something you didn't like, or if you were hoping to just listen to the waves etc. 
(<-- LOL - I've never had cause to use this smiley!)
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