Most Everyone's Mad Here TR COMPLETED - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Aaaaaaannnnnnnnnnddddddddd we're back!!! And I'm totally exhausted and ready to sleep for about 2 days (too bad you can't take a vacation from vacation before returning to the real world!)
We had a great time, minus some toddler tantrums- this was the first trip that Stella really threw down the gauntlet in this area, it was a true battle of wills!
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Hi all! Hoping to start the TR tomorrow, I'm in the throws of culling and editing images but hoping to have a good start ready to go for tomorrow. In the meantime, here's one (from the last day actually) that's a front runner as a favorite- thought I'd share!
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Allen, Stella and I had spent the week in Melbourne, FL for some work and we were set to check out Friday morning and head to Disney (about an hour drive) mid-late morning.
I had a quick meeting I had to attend so I quietly got up, got dressed and left, leaving Allen and Stella to get a little more sleep. I was finished with my meeting around 9:30am and after stopping to fill up the gas tank, made it back to the hotel around 10am or so. Allen and Stella were dressed and the bags were packed- all that was standing between us and Disney now was the drive. After a quick change of clothes, we loaded the car and we were off!
(via instagram)
In my notes, I have that we arrived on Disney grounds at around 11am. We went straight to the resort in hopes that our room would be ready. We didn't do online check-in because we decided we'd like to upgrade to a preferred room so after we parked the car, we headed to the normal check-in line. There was 1 person ahead of us but we only waited about 5 minutes before we were helped. As we were waiting in line, a CP CM came up and was trying to interact with Stella. She can be a bit shy sometimes, and she was doing just that this morning as well. After a brief exchange, we approached the counter to check in. We told the CM that we'd like to upgrade to a preferred room, which is good because we were in a building in the way way way back. She asked us to wait for a moment to see if they had anything available....
She stepped away and when she came back, she let us know that there was a preferred room and that they would be happy to upgrade us for no charge! Yay Disney . She also let us know she would have a pack and play sent down for us since Allen did not remember to get ours in the car!
We also tried to add the DDP because we had decided at the 11th hour that we'd like to have it, but alas you can't add it at check-in. That's ok, we know now that we need to make that decision well ahead of time...
As we were finishing the check-in process, the CP CM that had tried to talk to Stella returned with a small Donald Duck fluffy. Stella was instantly more open to chatting with her since she had her good friend Donald with her. After talking a little, the CP CM said to Stella "Now will you take good care of Donald?" I laughed and told Stella to give Donald a kiss and say good-bye but then the CP CM said "OK, Donald is going with you...." I was really surprised and appreciative of the generosity of the CM- Stella loves fluffies- like really really loves them- and this was truly something to her.
With our room keys and new Donald in hand, we headed back to the car to pull around to the parking lot and unload luggage. We were in the Surf's Up building, room #1138- it was very convenient to the parking lot!
When we arrived to our room, we found: (via instagram)
We decided to go ahead and unpack completely (seems like we usually just drop our bags and go!) and give Stella some time to run a little before she got into her stroller. WARNING: Stella had some truly memorable toddler moments during this, and I'm not talking about the cute ones. More on that later though...
The pack and play arrived quickly so we got that set up, and got everything unpacked in about 25 minutes or so- not too bad! Allen was antsy to get to a park so we got out park bag ready, helped Stella choose 1 fluffy to come to the park with us (instead of all 5 that she had with her) and we were off to the buses.
Once we arrived, Allen headed to the bag check line while I pushed Stella in the stroller and met him on the other side.
Our first park of the trip was:
We picked Epcot for a few reasons for this day, the main one being that we had ressies at Garden Grill that night. But also this is a great park for us with Stella because she likes to walk and there are so many open spaces that she can do this here.
We've got to try this almost every trip too (although it is usually Tyler doing it!)
The first thing we did at Epcot was Spaceship Earth. Wait time was less than 5 minutes.
After that we headed to guest relations because we need to fax our signed counter offer for the sale of our Indiana house back to our realtor- yay!!!!! We recieved, countered, and accepted an offer for our house sale while we were in Melbourne and she had sent us the paperwork to sign and fax back as we were in route to Disney. FYI- if you need faxing services while at WDW, guest services is where it's at!
While we were at Guest Services, we went ahead and purchased our MNSSHP tickets because we hadn't yet done that.
Allen was feeling pretty hungry by this point so we decided to split a meal at the Electric Umbrella since our dinner ressie was only a few hours away. We got the chicken nugget meal and an apple juice for Stella. While Allen waited for the food, I grabbed us a table and a high chair and got Stella situated. I noticed that there was a family with 3 little girls next to us (I always notice this I think because I also came from a family of 3 girls) and they were here for the first time. I mention this because we will meet them again!
After enjoying our meal, Allen wanted to find a new pouch to carry our KTTW and AP's in so we headed over to Mouse Gears. Now Allen, Tyler and Stella were all set for their costumes for MNSSHP but I wasn't- I figured i would just find a t-shirt beforehand and where that. Mouse Gears has one of the best selections I think so my first order of business was browse their options. I wasn't thrilled with the adult halloween t-shirts (I remember in years past they had much more subtle options) but the only adult shirt I could find was very busy and loud. I continued looking and found character top shirts and thought that was a real possibility. They had Minnie, Mickey, Donald and Snow White. I would have liked a Cinderella since Allen was Prince Charming so I decided to look at DTD and if I didn't see anything there, I'd just get one of those.
In the meantime, Stella and Allen found the fluffies and she was testing each out with hugs. I have to give to to my girl though because she never throws a fit when it's time to walk away- perhaps we are doing a better job of not spoiling her than we did with Tyler because he always wants to buy SOMETHING and she is fine not too. We let her play a bit and then she happily waved and moved on. Allen found a new pouch he liked and headed to pay. In the line he spotted a bundle of mickey lollipops too and decided to get them to have just in case we needed backup for Stella...which we will!
Stella was getting tired by this point so we thought we'd lay her in the stroller and walk around WS to see if she will fall asleep. She was out before we even hit the Showcase Plaza- something about Disney causes her to nap like a champ!
We decided to check out the shirt options in the shop (whose name I can't remember) down by the Friendship Boat dock and we found this idea for FIL to wear to the party:
Leaving without making any purchases, we decided to just enjoy the marvelous weather and sleeping child with a FAB. Allen enjoyed a refreshing Molson, while I preferred a bud light. We sat on the benches near the Friendship Boat dock while Stella snoozed away:
Up Next: What will she think of the big fluffies now??
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and moved on. Allen found a new pouch he liked and headed to pay. In the line he spotted a bundle of mickey lollipops too and decided to get them to have just in case we needed backup for Stella...which we will!
. Allen enjoyed a refreshing Molson, while I preferred a bud light. We sat on the benches near the Friendship Boat dock while Stella snoozed away:
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