Our own California Adventure - Pre Trip **Updated 3/21/11** - Page 3 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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The wait just may kill us. DH and I are slowly going crazy with the wait. Our last trip anywhere was to WDW Aug 2009 for our honeymoon. It's snowing today and all I can think about is warmer California. At least when we go to WDW we get to plan in stages. We book our package. Few months later, airfare. A few more months and it's ADR time. This trip is not at all like that. We're down to about 2 1/2 months. At least I get to make my Goofy's Kitchen reservation soon.
We have been kind of working on our Lompoc days part of the trip. We know there's a couple places we want to go so I thought I'd share them with you. Some of the places we've been before so I dug up some pictures to show you guys. Oh and I found out when I got the pics cd out we went in 2006! It's been longer than we thought since we saw DFil last.
One place we definitely want to go is Hearst Castle. We drove there last time but the tours were sold out. We had no idea it was so popular. This time we're buying tickets online in advance. The place is amazing - even just from the outside and photographs. There are 56 bedrooms, 41 fireplaces, 61 bathrooms, and 19 sitting rooms just to start. Check out some of the pictures on their website. It's unbelievable. Hearst Castle - California State Park
Another place we definitely want to go to is a beach in Big Sur where elephant seals live. It's pretty cool to be able to see them not in a zoo. Elephant Seals, Big Sur California
I guess there won't be many seals when we're there in the end of March. According to their site, the females and juveniles will just be returning to molt, the males are gone by then. When DH and I went, there were a bunch of seals.
At first we thought those were rocks out there on the beach, not seals.
These two pictures kind of show how far you can walk down the beach. There's a walkway built like the above pic, but the beach extends much further than the walkway does like you can see in the first picture.
How cute is that? This little baby was using his flippers to, well, flip sand on his back.
We'll probably drive a little further north. The seal beach is located in Big Sur which is gorgeous along the coast with lots of spots to just stop and look around.
Last trip to Big Sur. We had to stop because there was a landslide ahead and you had to wait until the bulldozer cleared the rocks away! I never mentioned how while this drive is beautiful, it's kind of scary. There's landslide signs everywhere and as you can see, the road is right next to the mountains. You should see some of the big rocks just hanging alongside your car. I was just waiting for one to fall on us.
If you look really, really closely on the right hand side of the pic about a half inch in on the road, you can see the bulldozer clearing the rocks. Those mountains don't look that big in the pictures until you realize the bulldozer looks like a toy car.
We're still working on the rental car thing. Visa just released some decent discounts. And speaking of Visa, we now have just under $300 in Disney Reward dollars to use on this trip. Our goal is to pay for as much food as possible with them while we're there. We also plan to use them to pay for Goofy's Kitchen.
Just caught up with your report! Sounds like you guys have a great trip planned. Can't wait to read it all, once you return from the trip. We'll be heading out a few months after your trip!
Just caught up with your report! Sounds like you guys have a great trip planned. Can't wait to read it all, once you return from the trip. We'll be heading out a few months after your trip!
How strange is it we're both going to visit family in Lompoc?
I finally got DH to sit down with me a look at some rental car prices. Visa has some good discounts out now during our trip. I was looking at Alamo prices and I couldn't find anyplace to apply the discount code so I hit the little next button and on the next page was my reservation confirmation! I didn't have a clue I was actually making a reservation. I still don't see any place to apply the discount code on their site without making a reservation first anyway. Besides I figured I could just immediately cancel it if needed. Once I had the reservation, I could follow a link to apply the discount.
I ended up using a $30 off plus 20% off discount. I hate renting cars in California. They really stick it to you with fees and taxes. It's about $100 in fees and taxes for a 5 day rental. The total came to about $400 for 5 days, including a Sat and Sun rental. The best part? We spent the extra $30 to get a Prius! DMiL has one that DH has driven quite a few times for her so he's familiar with how they work. We figure for an extra $30, the amount we'll save in gas will be more than enough to make it up.
I also get to call and make our ressies for Goofy's kitchen this week. Of course my 60 days falls on a Saturday. Since DS doesn't know we're going, I have to make sure to call when he's not around. It couldn't have been a weekday when I'm home all day and he's at school. That would have been way to easy.
We're also looking at other parking options for O'Hare than their own lot. At Midway we can use Midway Park Ride and Fly which is a fantastic service. You park at their lot and they use a shuttle van to drop you off. Much easier than dealing with the luggage through the airport parking lots. Oddly enough, they don't have a service at O'Hare. It looks like most of O'Hares off site parking/shuttle services are all at hotels and are far enough away it doesn't make sense for us to use them.
O'Hare's parking is kind of crazy. Unless you park in the 'F' lot, it costs a small fortune. Not that the F lot is cheap, it's still $9/day so it costs about $100 to park whenever we go on vacation. Now let me tell you about our experience with the F lot. First off, when I told my cousin that's where we were going to park he replied "The F lot? As in - way the 'f' out there?". He wasn't kidding. After you park the car, you have to take a bus to a monorail, then take the monorail to a lower level of the actual airport where you get the fun of dragging all your luggage up an escalator. You have to maneuver your luggage on and off the bus and monorail too. After all that the escalators just seem to be an insult. We laugh that we have to take a car, bus, monorail, and airplane to get where we are going. All we're missing is a boat.
The next closest lot, which isn't really that much closer, is $17/day! All that extra $9/day gets you is skipping the bus section of that trek and start at the monorail instead. We're cheap so we'll just be schlepping luggage on and off buses and monorails. I'm not paying almost $100 more to avoid a bus.
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I never mentioned how while this drive is beautiful, it's kind of scary. There's landslide signs everywhere and as you can see, the road is right next to the mountains. You should see some of the big rocks just hanging alongside your car. I was just waiting for one to fall on us.
PassPorter Guide Author
I thought they were rocks, not seals at first glance!
Congrats on all the Disney dollars! 
Disney Magic - Oct 2015
DMiL has one that DH has driven quite a few times for her so he's familiar with how they work. We figure for an extra $30, the amount we'll save in gas will be more than enough to make it up.
great job on the reward dollars! 
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