Return to Disneyland - Final Thoughts - TRIP REPORT COMPLETED - June 10 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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We had yet to give my Star Wars fanatic of a son his Star Tours fix so that was our first stop this morning, right after grabbing Fastpasses for Autopia. Then we rode the Storybookland Canal Boats. As we were disembarking, who should be getting onto the boats with the guests but Pluto in one boat and Goofy in another. The looks on the childrens' faces were priceless.
Now very much in a character mood, we zipped over to Toontown and visited Mickey in his house and then posed for photos with Goofy right outside of his. I really love Toontown at Disneyland. It's so much more innovative and interactive than the one at WDW. It seems that every button you push or box you open creates some sort of special Disney magic. We played around in Toontown for a while before heading back to Tomorrowland for our Autopia fastpass time. On the way we stopped to watch the show at the Jedi Academy. What an adorable little production! The children who are chosen from the audience to participate are in for a rare treat. They get to don robes, wield light sabers and get a lesson in how to be a jedi. It turns out that their lesson really comes in handy when Darth Vader, Darth Maul and a couple of storm troopers show up. Each child gets a chance to practice what they learned fighting one of the bad guys. These kids really took the whole thing quite seriously as their imaginations were in overdrive and it was a sheer delight to watch.
By this time our stomachs were growling so we got in the line up at the Pizza Port to grab some lunch. This is where things began to get very surreal. While in line, we were approached by a CM who informed us that we'd been chosen for a special treat. Although this was a counter service restaurant, for today and just for us, it was to be a table service one. The CM led us over to a special booth which had a reserved sign on it. It was covered in a white linen tablecloth. And there were white linen napkins, flowers on the table in a crystal vase, silverware and special menus. And then a whole bevy of CMs began waiting on us catering to our every need. I guess you can imagine the sort of looks we were getting from all the other guests in this very casual, counter service eatery. I'm sure they were wondering who the heck we were and why the royal treatment. Kirk ordered spaghetti and meat balls and I had the veggie pizza. The food was quite good but the real star of the meal was the extra special VIP treatment we received.
After lunch, we spent some time exploring Innoventions and while there, a CM approached us and gave us reserved seating tickets for the Asimo show. Asimo is this robot made by Honda and the things he can do are nothing short of incredible. Both Kirk and I really enjoyed watching Asimo get put through his paces.
It was now time to head back to the hotel for our afternoon break but, before we could get out of there, we were stopped by a nice young man who asked if he could look at the pins on our pin vests. We willingly obliged and then he asked me if I had any CM special lanyard pins. I proudly pointed out the one I had from WDW that I had been given by a CM there. He smiled and said, "Hey, I think we can do better than that." It turns out that he was an off duty CM and he dug out a CM lanyard pin and gave it to me. He explained to me that he had been given two of the same pin so he was giving one of them to me. I offered to trade him for it but he would have none of it. He told me that it was a gift and then, after wishing the two of us a fabulous vacation, he was off. With all the Disney magic we'd been experiencing, I practically floated back to our hotel.
After our break, we had dinner at the Napa Rose. Oh, how I adore this restaurant! It is definitely my favourite restaurant at DLR. The service is impeccable, the ambience wonderful and the food superb. Tonight's meal proved to be no exception to the rule. Plus we had a window table with a great view. Kirk had the Colorado lamb two ways while I ordered the angus beef filet with macaroni and cheese and asparagus. For dessert, it was chocolate mousse cake with a Bailey's Irish Cream mousse. Every single bite was scrumptious.
Now stuffed to the gills, we returned to Disneyland to use up the Fastpasses we'd collected earlier in the day. Kirk rode Space Mountain for the first time and absolutely loved it. Then we helped Buzz Lightyear battle Admiral Zurg. The last of our Fastpasses was for Roger Rabbit but it turned out that we didn't really need it because there was no line whatsoever at that time of night. I had been a little worried about riding this attraction as I don't spin at all well. When I asked the CM at the attraction about this, she told me just to hang onto the steering wheel and not let it turn and I would be fine. Okay, easier said than done. I managed to keep the wheel still but not without a tremendous amount of effort. By the end of the ride, both of my arms were aching. The sights inside Roger Rabbit's Cartoon Spin are quite amusing but I was so busy hanging onto that dadblasted wheel that I missed a lot of it. What I didn't learn until another day when we tried riding it again was that I didn't need to hold onto the wheel at all. As long as you don't actually spin the wheel yourself, about the only movement your vehicle does is some half turns which actually afford you a better view of some of the nonsense going on around you.
We still had some time left before the park closed for the night so we did our favourite big three (Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, and Indiana Jones) before calling it a night.
Joy
__________________
1968 - Disneyland
1976 - Offsite
1984 - Offsite
February, 2003 - All Star Music
August, 2003 - Animal Kingdom Lodge & Wilderness Lodge
December,2003 - Wilderness Lodge
December, 2004 - Beach Club Villas
August, 2005 - Port Orleans, French Quarter
November/December, 2005 - Old Key West
July/August, 2006 - Disneyland Hotel
January, 2007 - Boardwalk Villas
Wow! That was some Disney magic you guys received that day, all right! How incredible!!
Mmm, my mouth is watering just thinking about the filet and the macaroni and cheese at Napa Rose. YUMMO. I look at the picture I took of it every so often and my mouth just salivates. SO yummy.
__________________
*~*Tina
Picking up our Brasilian exchange student at the a/p
Today we decided to make a full day out of being in the parks and for once not bother with out midday break. So we started off with a major assault on Fantasyland by riding Peter Pan, Mr. Toad, Pinocchio, Snow White, the Story Land Canal Boats, and It's a Small World. Then it was over to the Tiki Room where we could enjoy a couple of Dole Whip Pineapple floats while being entertained by those always amusing tiki birds. I prefer this version over the one in WDW where I'm usually sorely tempted to personally throttle both Iago and Zazu in no particular order.
Then it was off to brave Mara's evil eye as we accompanied Indiana on his many adventures. Still in a heroic frame of mind, we blasted off for Infinity and Beyond with Buzz for some target practice before park hopping over to California Adventure to watch a showing of Aladdin. Neither Kirk nor I can ever get enough of this show. It seems to be so fresh and different each time you see it, mainly because of the genie's constant adlibbing.
Upon returning from Agrabah, we wandered over to Downtown Disney to do some serious shopping before having dinner at Tortilla Joe's. Kirk ordered a burrito which turned out to be the largest burrito either of us had ever seen. It filled the entire dinner plate. I had the pork ribs in a tequila BBQ sauce with sweet potato fries. Kirk wasn't all that thrilled with his burrito but my meal was mouthwateringly delicious. We also really enjoyed the entertainment going on around us. A mariachi band kept strolling around the restaurant stopping at all the tables and serenading all the guests. And there was a balloon guy who could make the most extraordinary creations. Even though there were no children at our table, he still stopped by and offered to make us something. I opted for a cute little teddy bear holding a rose inside a heart while Kirk got really brave and asked for a hat. And what a hat it was! It was actually a palm tree with a monkey in it and some bananas. The thing was about three feet tall and my wacky son wore it for the rest of the meal and all the way home to the hotel. We got more weird looks than usual.
After escorting me back to our room, Kirk headed out once more to ride his two faves a couple of times: Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean while I lazed around the pool. It had a been a lovely, relaxing day.
Joy
__________________
1968 - Disneyland
1976 - Offsite
1984 - Offsite
February, 2003 - All Star Music
August, 2003 - Animal Kingdom Lodge & Wilderness Lodge
December,2003 - Wilderness Lodge
December, 2004 - Beach Club Villas
August, 2005 - Port Orleans, French Quarter
November/December, 2005 - Old Key West
July/August, 2006 - Disneyland Hotel
January, 2007 - Boardwalk Villas
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I am just catching up from your last two days! Once again, you guys have a "pick me" sign on your foreheads -- table service at a counter service! Wow!
I really, really hope to meet you some day because you obviously have this magnetic personality that just draws people to you!
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Tenya
Keep up the report, we are enjoying it.
Do you have any pictures you can share 
I'd love to see it!
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