You can find me in da Beach Club -- COMPLETE!! Final Thoughts UPDATE 7/1 - Page 27 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Very Funny story Karen!!! I have to say we didn't see one YOMD CM during our 5 day stay last week! It was a disappointment. I love the pics of Kat. She's so adorable.
I have FINALLY had a chance to sit down and read your report. I laughed so hard that #1 I spit Diet Pepsi all over, and #2 DH asked me what the h**l was going on.
We left Animal Kingdom and drove to Downtown Disney in search of something to jazz us up a little at the Pirates and Princess Party.
Steve had decided that a great present for Matt would be an American Football (I suppose to Americans it’s just called a football, but to us Brits a football is a soccer ball), which he had seen in Team Mickey. Kat and I decided to head towards the Lego shop so that she could play on the slide.
Lego is a strange phenomenon to me. I so want to love the stuff; all those lovely little plastic colour co-ordinated bricks have a magnetic, almost hypnotic effect on me. And I always think 'Cool, I’ll buy a large bucketful of the stuff and I’ll take them home and build a dinosaur and a fully working windmill'. Yet in reality, I can’t do any more than construct an oblong house, with higgledy-piggledy windows and no roof. Both of the kids are exactly the same, neither has the first clue as to how to build anything. I also blame Lego for the destruction of at least one vacuum cleaner. Anyway, the reason I’m relaying this is because I was wandering around the store collecting grey pieces of Lego for the Boeing 747 I had decided to attempt, when Kat pulled me out of my trance.
‘Mummy, come quickly, something terrible has happened’.
I realised to my horror that I had left Kat completely unsupervised while I had wandered around the store immersed in brick-filled fantasy. Anyway, the ‘something terrible’ was no more than the slide being closed for repair (everything is relative, I suppose), but I was really quite shaken that I had been so reckless as to completely forget all about my daughter. Twenty squillion more bad mother points. (On a more self-indulgent note, I remember my father regularly abandoning me in similar circumstances, and I had the most horrific feeling that I am turning into my Dad).
After the trauma, I took some pictures of Kat.
See. All she can build is a tower.
We met up with Steve and bought a couple of silly hats in the World of Disney, and after spending twenty minutes trying to find the exit wandered over to Goofy’s Candy Co. for some chocolate treat yumminess.
What a treat! This for me is the Dining Plan Snack Credit Supremo. A number 1. Top of the List. King of the Hill. A number 1. Where else can you possibly have more fun spending a credit?
We decided to get a marshmallow stick (one of the cheaper options I might add) dipped in milk chocolate, coated in M&Ms and finally drizzled with more chocolate.
Here is a photo of the nice lady making it.
And here is the finished article.
It tasted wonderful. I should know – I ate 99 per cent of it.
We drove back to Da Beach Club where we spent an hour or so around the Villas pool – a relaxing alternative to Stormalong Bay. Steve and Kat had a swim, whilst I sat in the Jacuzzi chatting to a couple who were spending a couple of days in WDW prior to the Superbowl. They had travelled from Chicago and had spent $8000 each on tickets for the game. I assumed that put them in some kind of executive box, but evidently they were in the cheap seats but had to buy the tickets from a touting agency. I was very polite and acted like I thought their behaviour perfectly normal, but of course, I was thinking’ YOU CRAZY, CRAZY FOOLS’. Steve would have understood. He spent a colossal sum of money to watch his soccer team (Manchester United) win the European Cup in Barcelona a few years back. Let’s just say that the divorce petition was almost drafted and leave it at that.
We had a change of clothes – we didn’t exactly dress like pirates but we at least had our hats – and headed over to the MK. The P&P party was due to start at 7.00 and I recall that we arrived at around 4.30. We were admitted with our tickets through a dedicated turnstile and handed wristbands.
If you read my previous trip report, you might recall that I wasn’t overly thrilled with Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique. Actually, that’s unfair, I loved the set-up and I thought the place was an excellent idea; I just didn’t particularly like what they did to Kat. I thought she was a bit young for the make up and the hairstyle was too grown up. Here’s a reminder:
So I had the idea that as Kat needed a haircut anyway, I d get it trimmed at the Barbers Shop and ask them to give Kat an up do at the same time. I took a crown (the very one from BBB actually) and the lady barber (can you have a lady barber?) said that she’d be delighted to sort Kat’s hair out for the party.
Ta DAH
Kat was liberally sprinkled with Pixie Dust and we were on our way. The cost was $14, which I reckon is the best bargain in WDW and we were absolutely delighted with the results.
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Kat was absolutely adorable! I miss having a little one to dress up.
I didn’t realize that we could use a snack credit at Goofy’s. See family....this is why I spend my free time here.....its to make your trips more magical.
Great update,Karen. Kat looks perfectly adorable after her"updo" from the Barbershop!
I am with you in the lego-deficient category....However, I am married to, and bore one child with uncanny abilities to build anything out of legos. When we were thinking of building our house...voila...DH whipped up a lego model. Ditto for our garden, redoing our family room.
danielle
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I love the pics of Kat. She's so adorable.
Kat looks adorable with her up-do 
And what a bargain (especially compared to those non-sensical Superbowl ticket holders 
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ANGIE
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