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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Yay! A Jilly and Mary Devall trip! I thought it was going to be list and not a TR when I saw the title~ Glad you made is safely so far. My mom worries every time we drive somewhere and always have to "give her one ring" when we reach our destination.
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Can't wait to hear more....I would love to do a mawmaw/dgd trip with each one of my grandangels....will have to consider starting a tradition of my own....thanks for the inspiration....
Eager to get moving this morning, I was awake by 7 a.m. and in the shower shortly afterwards. Now Mary Devall is always the last member of our family to wake up on vacation, so I was surprised to see her stirring by the time that I got out of the shower. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who was eager to get to Disney! Once I was ready and we were both dressed, we headed to the lobby for our complimentary breakfast which was essentially a bowl of cereal for both of us.
We stopped back by the room long enough to brush teeth and pick up our bag and then hopped back in the car. After a quick stop at a nearby gas station to fill up the car, we were back on 95. And it was only 8 a.m. by this time, folks. An all-time Koenigs record!
The last half of our drive was uneventful and, before we knew it, we were driving under that beloved archway.
We pulled up to the Wilderness Lodge at 11:15 on the dot and found a great parking space in the self-parking lot. The car didn’t move again until we left to go home the next Monday morning.
Mary Devall and I all but skipped up to the lobby where we were greeted by name and escorted to the online check-in desk where we were immediately assisted. Our CM was earning her ears, so the process (even though I had already checked in online) took a fairly long time.
Most of the time, however, was spent trying to find us a room that was ready. She disappeared in the back for about 10 minutes, but when she came out she proudly announced that she had found us a room. Somehow, I had a feeling exactly where that room would be.
With room keys in hand, Mary Devall and I went back to the car, grabbed our bag and my laptop and made the short walk to the villas. Sure enough, when the elevator door opened on the second floor, I realized that our room number was the.last.room.down.the.long.hallway. Foiled once again!!! Oh well, at least our room was ready!
Once in our room, we took the time to unpack and once again, let all interested parties know that we had arrived safely. By this time, Mary Devall was ready for lunch and decided that she wanted to eat at Roaring Forks before we headed to DHS. This ended up being a fantastic idea on her part because when I tried to pay for our food with our room key, the CM informed me that neither key had charging privileges. Thankfully, I always carry a little cash with me, but we would have quickly run out at DHS if we hadn’t discovered the problem with our keys before we left the hotel.
We took our food to the only table available in the dining area which was the first table when you walked into the room. The funny thing was that someone had taken two of the chairs on one side, so we sat side-by-side facing people as they entered the room. We looked more like judges on American Idol or Dancing With the Stars than we did two people just trying to eat their lunch. I told Mary Devall that I felt like we needed little paddles to give people number ratings as they entered with their food.
I wasn’t that hungry, but I ended up with a ginormous veggie wrap and couldn’t even finish half of it. Mary Devall, on the other hand, enjoyed her PB&J immensely.
On our way to the bus stop, we stopped back by the check-in desk and rectified the card situation. This may be petty on my part, but I was surprised when the CM (not the same one who checked us in) didn’t even apologize for the mistake or even acknowledge that it was a mistake.
Once we had that situation corrected, we headed outside to the bus stop. Both of us squealed when a wiggly baby snake crossed our path halfway to the bus stop. You can believe that we stayed on alert from then on out when walking down the WL paths.
Before we could even take a seat at the bus stop, a DHS bus pulled up. We made a stop at FW and then finally made it to DHS where we breezed through bag check and the gates. We immediately headed down Sunset Boulevard where we were surprised to see the standby line for ToT at 20 minutes. We quickly hopped over to RnRC and grabbed FP’s before returning to ToT.
It wasn’t long before we were sitting in the front row screaming and laughing. By the time that we finished our ride and walked out, the standby line was backed up all the way to the entrance. Great timing on our part!
Mary Devall loves the villain shop, so of course we had to stop there for a little browsing. She was distressed to find that all of the comic books that she had loved from June were gone and no one knew if they had been moved to another store. They suggested that we try The Writer’s Stop, so we put that on our “to do” list.
Next we decided to ride GMR since we can’t do this ride with Maddie (something about the fire and gun battles just don’t sit well with her ). Mary Devall and I ended up in the last two seats of the back row with a young couple. The couple was all cuddled up, so the next thing I knew, Mary Devall had put her arm around me and whispered that I was her “pretend” boyfriend. I whispered back that a “pretend” boyfriend was the only kind that I wanted her to have for a while.
After our ride, we stopped by The Writer’s Stop to check to see if the comic books had been moved there. Sadly, they hadn’t been, so we kept moving.
There was a 40 minute standby line at Star Tours and we couldn’t get a FP yet, so we decided to just bite the bullet and stand it line. As Mary Devall put it, we had nowhere else to be. The ride was worth every minute of the wait too!
By this time, we were ready for a break and a nice cold refreshing drink , so I thought that Tune In Lounge would be the perfect spot for both. We did stop on the way so that Mary Devall could get a nice cold refreshing spray of water!
We ordered our drinks, a margarita for me and a lemonade for Mary Devall, and then we moved over to the sitting area when they were ready so that Mary Devall could investigate every nook and cranny.
The air conditioning was the best part of our break, but the margarita was a close second. While we were there, we discussed what we wanted to do for dinner. We hadn’t made any ADR’s that evening not knowing what we would feel like doing on our first night, so we were just going to try to eat at whatever struck our fancy.
When we finished our drinks, I went back to the bar to pay. The bartender who had waited on us did a double take when she saw me and exclaimed “There you are!” She hadn’t noticed that we were sitting just a stone’s throw away.
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It's no fun being the one left behind! 
Oh well, at least our room was ready! 
Thankfully, I always carry a little cash with me, but we would have quickly run out at DHS if we hadn’t discovered the problem with our keys before we left the hotel.
You can believe that we stayed on alert from then on out when walking down the WL paths. 
). Mary Devall and I ended up in the last two seats of the back row with a young couple. The couple was all cuddled up, so the next thing I knew, Mary Devall had put her arm around me and whispered that I was her “pretend” boyfriend. 
I whispered back that a “pretend” boyfriend was the only kind that I wanted her to have for a while. 
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