Introducing Friends to the Mouse TR - UPDATED 10/9 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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My wife is on her first long-haul trip to Europe since her blood clot and pulmonary embolism last year. I'm a little nervous but she reports that she feels okay after arriving in Paris and drive down to Rouen. She returns on Friday afternoon. My daughter and I will be meeting her outside of Newark, NJ where we attending a wedding.
PassPorter's Free-Book to Walt Disney World It’s hard to believe anything is free at Walt Disney World; but there are actually a number of things you can get or do for little to no cost. This e-book documents over 200 free or cheap tips to do before you go and after you arrive. You could save a considerable amount of money following these tips. Perhaps more importantly; you can discover overlooked attractions and little-known details most people whiz by on their way to spend money. Click here to see free sample pages from the e-book! Get this popular e-book free of extra charges when you join the PassPorter's Club for as little as $4.95. A club pass includes access to all our other e-books; e-worksheets; super-size photos; and more! This e-book is also available for separate purchase in the PassPorter Online Store for just $5.95.
Our trip started on Tuesday September 24th with a lovely early evening drive to Newark, New Jersey. We hit zero traffic on our drive from the Albany area. The only hiccup was when I almost jumped the median because of some poorly marked road construction and not 100 percent sure where I was going.
We got to our hotel - the SpringHill Suites by the Newark Airport. I spent most of the night worrying/wondering if the tire that took the brunt of the impact with the low median was going to stay inflated. When I woke up in the morning, it was still inflated so I took that as a good sign that no real damage had been done.
We hopped on the airport shuttle and made our way through security. Unfortunately, they put us in the painfully slow family line, even though, our daughter is an experienced flier and can easily keep up with the pace of the normal business travel lines. We got to our gate and waited for plane to take off to MCO.
We had a very uneventful flight to MCO. The flight was quick and there was very little turbulence which was very nice. We arrived at MCO and made our way down to the Magical Express line. We only had to wait a short time (about 10 minutes) for our bus and we were on our way to WDW.
Since, we arrived before noon; our room wasn't ready but we made our way up to the Contempo Cafe - a family favorite - for lunch. We love eating at Contempo because of the people watching and waving to the people on the express monorail as it makes it's way through the Contemporary. I got the bacon cheeseburger with the house potato chips which I would every day if I could. My wife (Patty/Abby Mallard) had the Multi Grain Turkey BLT with french fries. While our daughter (Maureen) had turkey sandwich on Goldfish bread.
We finished our lunch and checked again to see if our room was ready - it wasn't
So, we checked our carry-on bags and reintroduced ourselves to Carl - the head person at check-in/bell services. We remembered him from our last visit to the Contemporary/BLT in June 2011. We mentioned that we remembered him and he took our daughter aside and gave her her first pin for pin trading.
Maureen watching Carl write her 1st pin certificate
After dropping off our bags, we walked over to the Magic Kingdom to start our vacation. First, we had a couple "housekeeping" items to take off. We converted our paper annual passes into hard passes that could be used with the new ticket system. This took all of five minutes before we were in the parks. Next, we needed to redeem our Photopass+ voucher. This took almost an hour. There were only two cast members working the Photopass+ area and both we tied up with guests who needed to look through all of their Photopass pictures. The other "non Photopass+" CMs kept coming over and apologizing for the long wait but never tried to get more Photopass+ CMs to reduce the line. Finally, we got our Photopass+ but Patty had her sunglasses taken/lost while getting the pass.
We met up with our friends (my friend from college Jeremy, his wife Kristen, and their four-year old son Jackson) at the Mad Tea Party for our traditional first ride on the Tea Cups.
From there, we went Under the Sea with Ariel.
I'm further away in the picture in the Phillies shirt with my wife close behind. Maureen and her new friend, Jackson closest to the camera. This was not our first ride on Under the Sea but the themeing still amazes us.
[B]Fish Conga Line[/B]
Ariel waving to her guests
Maureen riding with Jackson
Patty is calling these "Figment" Fish
Ducks Playing Turtles!
Next up on our list was Dumbo.
Me riding with Maureen and Jackson with Kristen and Jeremy in the Trailing Elephant
Since it was late September, we were able to knockout these three rides in less than hour so we continued our riding with our only trip on Tomorrowland Speedway.
We still have a few more rides to go on before our dinner at Chef Mickey's. But, I will save those for the next update.
We continued our tour of Tomorrowland with a spin on the Peoplemover. We always like to do the Peoplemover after a solid string of rides because it gives us a chance to rest and take a overview look of the park. It really is the only chance to get an overview since the Skyway is long gone. While on the Peoplemover, my wife was able to get some great shots of Tomorrowland from our car:
Pluto, Goofy, and Stitch getting down in Club 626
A look back toward Cinderella's Castle
A look inside Buzz Lightyear's Spin
After we finished our tour of Tomorrowland, we saw that Buzz Lightyear's Spin had a very short wait. We did one tour with Buzz Lightyear and amazingly, Maureen, had the high score of the group. We have no idea how she did it. She even scored higher than the score I achieved when the ride stopped and I was right next to a target.
Maureen's Score on Buzz
We started to make our way out of the park but we had enough time for Jackson and Maureen to participate in the Move It! Street Party.
The Genie from Aladdin
Luminere from Beauty and the Beast
Maureen and Jackson getting down at the Street Party
After the Street Party, we made what we thought was going to be a futile trip to City Hall to see if anyone had turned in my wife's sunglasses. To our amazement, SOMEONE HAD!!!!! Our first bit of pixie dust for the trip. We had thought they were gone for good. They are prescription sunglasses so whoever took them probably found that they couldn't use them and turned them back in. We moved on the monorail for the very short ride to the Contemporary. We promised Maureen that we could take the monorail back since we walked over to Magic Kingdom.
We checked in and got our pictures taken with the Chef Mickey out front and waited for our table. We got to experience a part of the restaurant that we had never experienced before. We have, usually, been seated in the main part of the dining room where there is a great view of the buffet and dessert as well as the monorail. This time, we were seated in a back corner of the restaurant by the windows and had a view of just the start of the buffet line. But as we learned, this view was very nice later into our dinner. We were able to get our food and the characters started to make their way back to our little corner of Chef Mickey's.
Pluto makes the first visit
Goofy stops by next
The Head Mouse in charge pays us a visit
Mickey also noticed that Maureen was wearing a shirt with her name on it. So, he wrote To Maureen: Mickey Mouse in her autograph book.
Maureen with Minnie
Jackson didn't want his picture taken with a girl mouse so he shied away from the picture.
Sometime between Minnie and Donald, Jackson reached his breaking point for the night so his parents took him back to Boardwalk so he could get to bed. It had been a long day for him. So, we waited for Donald solo and finally our favorite pantsless duck came by.
Maureen and Donald
Now about that view. We had a 6:45 pm reservation at Chef Mickey's. This allowed us to view sunset over the lake and we had a very restricted view of the 8 pm viewing of Wishes.
When we were paying for dinner, we discovered that our room keys had somehow deactivated themselves. We went down to the front desk and had our keys reactivated and call it a very long day 1 at Disney.
PassPorter's Free-Book to Walt Disney World It’s hard to believe anything is free at Walt Disney World; but there are actually a number of things you can get or do for little to no cost. This e-book documents over 200 free or cheap tips to do before you go and after you arrive. You could save a considerable amount of money following these tips. Perhaps more importantly; you can discover overlooked attractions and little-known details most people whiz by on their way to spend money. Click here to see free sample pages from the e-book! Get this popular e-book free of extra charges when you join the PassPorter's Club for as little as $4.95. A club pass includes access to all our other e-books; e-worksheets; super-size photos; and more! This e-book is also available for separate purchase in the PassPorter Online Store for just $5.95.
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