/Cruising on a Dream Full of Frights and Friends: 10/12/13-10/19/13 TR completed 4/21/2014 - Page 25 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
Awww...Kelly, don't you do that to me. I really miss you guys too, and right now more than ever I wish I was with you so I could try and make you laugh like that again.
I'm all caught up and smiling over all the fun you guys had during pirates night. I don't remember that show from our cruise on the Magic. I hope it's there when we sail on the Dream next year.
I'm all caught up and smiling over all the fun you guys had during pirates night. I don't remember that show from our cruise on the Magic. I hope it's there when we sail on the Dream next year.
I think it's something new they started doing for the Dream and the Fantasy, but I could be totally wrong about that.
Day Five: Wednesday, October 16th
Part One: Will We Ever Find Them???
I forgot to mention one little detail in my last update…the horrible vibration of the ship when the captain was docking it. It was so bad, that it would wake me up out of a deep sleep, and just when it would end, he would start repositioning the ship again, which would make the noise and vibration start all over again. I’m guessing it was because we were in the back of the ship, and the captain liked to back into the port instead of just pulling straight in. Most of this usually started bright and early in the morning, as we were docking in each port, so needless to say it was always a bit of a struggle getting back to sleep, especially after the sun was already up too.
The reason why I wanted to bring this up was because of the adventure I had in the middle of the night around 1:30am. I woke up to a vibration, just like the kind I usually felt when the captain was docking the ship, but the problem was we were out in the middle of the ocean. So I got up and went to look out our porthole, but between the spray of the water and the pitch black of night, I couldn’t see anything.
I woke Chad up and told him what I had felt, and every once-in-a-while could still feel, and he told me that it was probably nothing, and to go back to sleep. Well, I couldn’t. At least not until I knew everything was ok. So I told him I was going to go down to the 3rd floor and walk outside to make sure everything was normal. He then tells me that if there was really something wrong, they would have already made an announcement or sounded the horn, but when you’re already nervous about something it’s hard to put your mind at ease until you see it for yourself.
So I got back out of bed, and proceeded to put my flip flops on. Now, you’d think being the good husband that he’s supposed to be, he would have volunteered to go down there in my place, but not my husband. He let me roam the empty hallways of the ship in the wee hours of the morning all by myself…in my pj no less! I quietly made my way down to the 3rd floor (which was the level with the bars and dance clubs on it), and walked out onto the deck to check things out for myself. Once I knew we were still afloat, and in a good upright position, I headed back upstairs. The entire time I was out looking around, I only saw one person, and it was a CM coming out of one of the bars with a mop.
Once I was back in the room, and then back in bed, Chad asked if I had seen anything weird, and when I said no, he tells me, “I told you so” before falling right back to sleep. Unbelievable. But then I was finally able to fall asleep as well.
We got up early, and Hope immediatly ran over to the porthole to see where we had ended up this morning.
I’m pretty sure we were out of the room by 8:30am, and making our way to Cabanas along with everyone else on the ship. We sat in the same area we did yesterday morning, and once again we found our favorite CM, Jason. He was super busy this morning, but he did have time to swing over to our table and tell us that he had something special that he wanted to give Hope on our last day, and asked if we could come back up here sometime in the evening before our dinner. Cabanas would be closed for cleaning, but we would still be able to walk through, and all we would need to do was ask for him. Hope had also brought along a picture she had colored for him in the kid’s club, and decided to give it to him. You would’ve thought she had given him a rolex or something. He was so shocked and surprised that any child would go out of their way to do something like that for him on their vacation, and he promised to hang it on his stateroom wall, and never take it down.
Once we were finished with breakfast, we made our way onto Castaway Cay. I this place, and would honestly be happy if they did away with the Bahamas, and just made it a cruise only to this island.
As we walked towards the beach, Hope came across a few characters she would’ve liked to have seen, but as soon as we would get in line they would take that character away in order for a new one to come out. So we decided to just head straight for the family beach so we could find a nice spot to settle down in.
After we found our spot I decided to text Kelly where we were, only this time I got smart and sent a text to both of her phones. Fool me once and well, you know how it goes.
I love the family beach so much better than the adult beach. Even before I had Hope, we would always find a spot on the family beach because you can hear all the music and I just feel like we’re right in the middle of all the fun. Once we were settled in we took Hope down to the water, but all she wanted to do was start looking for shells.
She really didn’t have any interest in getting in the water, but pretty soon I talked her into it by telling her she could find more shells in the water.
Then when she had finally had enough of that, I took her further out in the water with me, which to my surprise she really really liked. Somewhere in between all of our fun in the water, a ship photographer made her way over to us and got a few family pictures. This proves I really was on the trip!
During all of this, I was constantly keeping an eye out for Kelly, or checking our wave phone for any texts from her, but so far there was nothing. I kept thinking that maybe they just wanted to be alone as a family today, but then I noticed someone familiar walking along the beach, and heading our way. I didn’t have my glasses on, so I wasn’t 100% sure that it was her,
and I kept asking Chad if it was her, but he wasn't sure either, and didn’t want to make a fool of himself by yelling out her name if it was someone else. As the “person” got closer though, I realized that it definitely was her, so I called out her name, and she finally saw us. Hope even yelled out, “Mrs. Kelly!!! We’re over here!”
She told us that she had left both of their phones in their stateroom, and she decided to leave Mike with the boys so she could slowly walk up and down the beach searching for us. Kelly told us that they had found a spot on the family beach where the new Pelican Plunge was, so we decided to pack up our stuff and head over there with her.
Once we got over to that section, it was night and day compared to where we had been. While our beach had more of a quiet and relaxing feel to it, this beach was busy busy busy, but we didn’t mind because we were just happy to be with our friends again. A little bit later Kelly mentioned something about the tape on her pump coming off (I think), and in order for her to get in the water, she had to make sure the pump stayed dry. At first I think she had it clipped onto her bathing suit strap, which I could also be wrong about, but I do know that she had it positioned away from the water, either way, it didn’t look comfortable. Finally she said she was going to go back to the ship to get some new tape, which then left me with all of the kids (yes, all 5 of them). I just decided to sit back and let them have their fun.
My Favorite Picture of this group!
After we all played in the water for a good while, Hope asked if we could take her over to the water cannons they had across from Pelican Plunge.
It was around that time that Kelly finally returned from her little excursion, and ended up bringing insulin shots with her instead of the pump because the tape just wasn’t cooperating. I told where we were headed, and that we would be back shortly so that we could all go and grab lunch together.
Hope and I decided to get out of the water and just walk over there, but Chad had other plans in mind. He walked most of the way in the water, and then got out in the only roped off area of the beach. Apparently it was roped off for a reason…duh! And that reason was because of sharp rocks. Thankfully the life guard yelled at him before he did too much damage to his feet, and this little incident would later come back to haunt him.
Once we made it over to the area where the water cannons were, we let Hope do some shooting practice for a while.
When she got tired of that, we walked over to the Heads Up Bar, where they had telescopes you could look through.
Eventually we found our way back to Kelly and her family so that we could all grab a bite to eat at Cookie’s Too BBQ. I think Chad and Hope went and grabbed all of us a table while the rest of us grabbed the food. It was almost closing time, so the pickings were starting to get slim, but we were all able to at least get what we wanted. Once we were all together at the table, we were able to enjoy a really laid back and fun meal. We learned that Mike never cries, but Chad could apparently pass as a girl because of it. We also started talking about that roped off section of the beach, and Kelly said she heard someone get yelled at for walking over there. That’s when I told her it was Chad, and she busted out laughing, and then responded with a big “duh” towards his general direction. I think we laughed for most of that meal, and learned a lot more about each other. I knew that when this trip was all over I was really going to miss all of them. I mean, how often do you get lucky enough where not only you, but your entire family gets along so well with your friend’s family? And what makes me so lucky was that it was a friend I made online through a Disney forum site? The only unlucky part about all of it is that they actually live a whole plane ride away.
After lunch I think we headed back to the beach for a few more minutes, but ended up packing up so we could go back to the ship and get some rest along with a few showers before enjoying our final evening onboard together. Hope wasn't too happy about this though.
Once we were back in our stateroom, Hope kept an eye on all of the passengers making their way back onto the ship.
Then when it was finally time for us to start leaving the port, we watched as a few people were left on the dock waving as we pulled away. Lucky ducks! I mean, who wouldn’t want to have that entire island to themselves?
Such a lovely trip you are having. PP do make wonderful friends too. Your Pirate sound sounds like loads of fun. I can't believe you are coming into your final night. I must say you are very brave to one-have your photo taken while in a bathing suit and 2-posting it! Many PP do post photos of them sleves in the pool and what not but resy assured you will NEVER see a photo of me in a bathing suit posted online!!!
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.
What a great day at CC. I always go to the Adult Beach, I never realized how much more fun the family beach seems! Can't wait to hear what Jason had in store for you guys
What a great relaxing time on Castaway Cay! Sounds like you guys had a great time with Kelly's family. Love the pictures of the kids playing together. How great to get along with people you meet online!! Can't wait for 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.
The best part of a DVC members cruise is the fact that it goes to CC twice. We also did a double dip last year on the Dream when we did a 5 night trip. Love it there! And would certainly jump to be part of the crew that stays on the island!! Course, they probably wouldn't let me get drinks from the bar, would they?
Great day! Sorry to hear about Chad's walk on the sharp rocks!
I totally agree with you, I would LOVE a cruise that just skipped the Bahamas and docked at Castaway Cay for a few days instead! It sounds like you had a fabulous day there with Kelly and family I love the photos they took of you in the water, very cute!
OMG. I literally laughed out loud several times remembering this day and reading about our adventures. First - you going out in the middle of the night and then for Chad getting yelled at. That was too funny. The lifeguard by us was entertainment enough because of all the yelling he did.
Another rough day for me on CC! I need a do over stat!
I love all the pictures you got! I love that one of Hope & Dylan.
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.