The Big Kahuna Family's Welcome Home **Updated 6/6** COMPLETE! - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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 finished lunch and since our "Big Kahuna Suite" still wasn't ready, we walked to the main entrance to Disneyland across from Disney's California Adventure (DCA). We were anxious to check out DCA but we had to get our Annual Passes (APs) activated inside Disneyland first. Now what we haven’t mentioned yet is how much we love Downtown Disney--more about that later as we spend more time there.
Oh man, were we excited to finally get our first peek into Disneyland since our last visit in October of 2000. Every time we rode “Soaring Over California” at WDW, tears would fill my eyes when we soared over the Matterhorn at Disneyland. That’s when I knew the Florida dream was over, I was homesick, and I needed to go home. As we made it through the security check and over to the entrance where they scanned our AP printouts, another CM asked, "Did you just get back from Hawaii?" Apparently, everybody thought our leis were real (and unaware of the "Big Kahuna Suite Family for a Day" at Paradise Pier.)
The CM who processed our AP voucher was wonderful. When she saw our leis, she asked if we had just returned from our Hawaiian honeymoon. “That was 12 years ago,” we said, and she asked, “Which island?” When we told her we’d been to Maui and Kauai, she said she was from Kauai. She also mentioned how much she loved her job. "At least it's inside an air-conditioned building," we said. “Yes, but they make us take our breaks outside.” We laughed.
Then we had to pose for our pictures. APs at Disneyland have your photo on them and there’s a bar code that they scan at the park entrance, which makes this wonderful Tinkerbell-like chime--instead of the insert your finger hoop-dee-doo at Disney World.
A pic of my AP pic taken from my cell phone camera (looking like I just returned from Hawaii)
The whole experience felt very intimate and that could be said of our entire experience at Disneyland. And that was a nice change from the sheer size of WDW.
Upon exiting the bank with our APs in hand, we noticed a crowd gathering around a jazz band with Minnie Mouse dancing up a storm. We stood and watched for a bit. Minnie Mouse—now there’s my girl—she wears red.
Being already inside Disneyland, we couldn’t leave just yet. So we decided we'd return to the resort via the monorail and check out stuff along the way. As we headed for the monorail station in Tomorrowland, the first thing we noticed was how teeny tiny the castle looked. After living about two miles from the Cinderella Castle at WDW, we saw this tall, majestic castle several times a week. It was particularly awesome all lit up at night. Ah, I’m having a WDW moment… So, anyway, it was quite jarring to see how tiny the Sleeping Beauty Castle was. We knew it to be true, but it seemed even smaller than we remembered.
But the Matterhorn—now that’s the real Disneyland landmark to us. It was a site for sore eyes and we were looking forward to riding it again. We then got our first look at the new submarine ride; redone as “Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage.” The line was as long as we’d read. When we climbed the stairs to the Monorail station, we got an aerial view of the ride and from that point of view, it all looked the same. We weren’t sure if we’d try to ride it on this trip or not. Besides, the way co-workers described it, it really didn't seem worth a long wait. Riding the monorail as our first ride was a great way to catch glimpses of Disneyland. BTW, the monorail is not air-conditioned—open-air windows only.
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WOW! You guys have the best luck with upgrades! What a wonderful surprise for your triumphant return to Disneyland!
And more wonderful sounding drinks! I wish it wasn't Thursday night and I have to go to work tomorrow. Maybe I could contract a case of intentional flu....
Loving the report!
So, Larry, did you?
We can't wait to tell you about the rest of the good stuff, so stay tuned!
The monorail took us to the Downtown Disney station. I had to laugh because one woman told her daughter that the monorail station had been moved because it used to be at the Disneyland Hotel. Actually, it’s where it always was but several things have happened that may have confused her: Downtown Disney replaced the shops that used to be between the Disneyland Hotel and the monorail, the Olympic-sized pool is gone, and an overpass was created so that part of Downtown Disney was built to go over the street.
So we got off the Monorail and took the long hike to Paradise Pier. Okay, so it’s not that long of a hike from the Monorail but it really is a hike from the parks. And after walking around the parks, you really don’t want an extra hike. There is no transportation to Paradise Pier.
On one of our calls checking to see if our “Big Kahuna Suite” was ready, we were told no, but our picture was. But upon learning that our suite was ready, we headed straight there—all the way up on the 15th Floor—the top floor.
Well, we approached the suite with a set of double doors leading to two separate rooms—1515 and 1517. We inserted the key in the door on the left, walked in, and took a look around. Apparently, we had entered the sitting area of the suite complete with sofa, dining room table, TV, refrigerator, safe and bathroom. But we couldn’t figure out where the bedroom portion of the suite was. We saw a connecting door but it only opened on our side. Hmmm… this didn’t make sense.
We turned around and entered the key to the separate door on the right. It opened and wah-la, it was a regular room with bathroom, king bed, desk, TV armoire, coffee maker and a couch.
At this point you are probably as confused as we were. We didn’t even think to take pictures except for the Mickey Mouse appointments, which we'll post next. But, really, it was 2 rooms—a standard hotel room and a separate sitting room. We could close the set of double doors but then had to use the key to open each door and prop the door open so we can go from room to room. The sitting room was nice and we’ll tell you more about that later, but this hotel just didn’t feel like a Disney hotel—even with the Mickey décor. And after all of the hoopla, it was a bit of a disappointment—even before we knew about the technical difficulties.
One person on the internet said they were “underwhelmed” with the suite and that’s exactly how we felt. In fact, it was worse than that. I’m getting ahead of the story but I may as well tell you now that we saw Engineering quite a bit as they had to fix at least one thing in the room every single day.
This hotel was “refurbished” in 2004 but it’s still an old hotel. There were nice appointments, nice tile, nice carpet, but there didn’t seem to be any padding underneath the carpet—pure cement—and that really killed tired feet at the end of the day.
But the CMs were absolutely wonderful as we’ll show you throughout the report. And every time they saw us they said, “Congratuations, you’re the Big Kahuna Family.” We smiled because they were so excited for us and it really was nice to get the special attention. But after while what we really wanted to hear was, “Congratulations, you’re the family we’re going to transfer to the Grand Californian.”
That does sound like an odd arrangement for the suite and it doesn't sound like it was all smooth sailing with it either, which is a real shame.
Yes, as you can imagine, by this time we were picturing something really grand. It would have been just silly, if not fun if we hadn't had so many problems with the room. One CM said how great of an honor it was because we were the 1 chosen out of 500. Apparently, she wasn't aware of our daily calls to Engineering.
Hmm. Sorry that it wasn't all you imagined. What about the view?
And I am sure it was nice to have a sitting area. While not on the same scale, that's one of the reasons we loved the Poly so much, because it had all that area on the end of the room with a entire sofa and chairs and stuff.
Anyway, I can see there's more to tell here Well, DUH, Larry, so I am eagerly awaiting "the rest of the story"!
Just catching up!! Sounds like you're off to a good start!! Congratulations on the suite, even though it does seem to have an odd setup. Can't wait to hear more
Hmm. Sorry that it wasn't all you imagined. What about the view?
And I am sure it was nice to have a sitting area. While not on the same scale, that's one of the reasons we loved the Poly so much, because it had all that area on the end of the room with a entire sofa and chairs and stuff.
Anyway, I can see there's more to tell here Well, DUH, Larry, so I am eagerly awaiting "the rest of the story"!
LOL! Yes, the extra space was quite nice to have and the sitting area was more comfortable than the bedroom area. Imagine if the bedroom had been all there was to it - that was the room that kept having problems.
We had a pool/parking garage view. Now, for me, it was wonderful looking at Anaheim - so nostalgic and great to reconnect with home. Just knowing I was in Anaheim was huge! I'm not a fan of rooftop (on the 3rd floor) pools, though, and more about the pool later.