A Disney Trip 10 Years in the Making. PTR 10/14 - 23/2011 - Page 34 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
Welcome! We're happy you've found the PassPorter Community -- the friendliest place to plan your vacation to Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Disneyland, and the world in general! You are now viewing the PassPorter Message Board Community as a guest, which gives you limited access. As our guest, feel free to browse our messages by selecting the forum you want to visit from the list below.
To post messages and ask questions, join our FREE community today and you'll get access to tools and resources not available to guests, such as our vacation countown timers, "living" avatars, private messaging system, database searches, downloads, and a special PassPorter discount code. Registration is fast, simple, and completely free. Just click the Join Our Community link.
If you think you've already joined, log in below now. If you don't remember your member name or password, please visit our Member Name and Password Recovery page. You are also welcome to contact us.
That's quite a deal on the pins! Almost all of the movies have some scary or sad parts, but, yeah--- Bambi and Dumbo are killers! I can't get through either one without a few tears. Evan will be well-prepared for meeting and recognizing the characters!
That is a great deal on the pins...congrats! I'm trying to get Hope to expand her Disney movie horizons, but all she wants to watch are the same five movies...Snow White, Cinderella, Tangled, Princess & the Frog & Finding Nemo. I tried putting Ratatouille in the other day and that lasted 5 minutes. Then she picked Alice in Wonderland which I thought was a bit older for her, but hey, why not? That lasted a little bit longer...maybe 10 minutes until she was begging for Cinderella again. You're lucky, at least Evan will watch all of them.
All caught up! Great job on the 'crafts' Holly! I never even thought that the pumpkin shirt was dyed - great job! I need to find one of those hats - my Dad wants to be the crocodile for MNSSHP and we have no idea what to do. Your tye-dye Mickey shirts came out really cute too. I lvoe the Walt thank you card. So happy to hear Evan is expanding his Disney movie watching. We need to have family movie night tonight - I think it's Dylan's turn to pick. His latest pick was Princess & the Frog - and they watched it without me!
I feel like it has been forever since I did an official update on the trip. I’ve been posting a lot of smaller tid-bits here and there but nothing major…not that I have anything major to report but here it goes anyway.
Things I will not be doing on this trip
Since I’ve been to Disney a few times and as I’m getting older (if not wiser) there are some things I will not be doing while at Disney.
RIDES –MK: As I’ve gotten older I’ve found that some rides just effect me more than others, and hence they are on my “no go” list. Tea cups and star jets. I know someday I’ll have to do these for Evan, but hopefully not this trip.
Epcot: Mission Space, neither version, Evan isn’t tall enough yet so I’ll dodge a bullet this trip. I don’t think we will see any of the movies in World Showcase – I’d like to but I don’t think they will be great for Evan – maybe France as we can sit down and maybe get him in there at nap time-hmmm!
DHS: No RNR or TOT for me either. I did RNR once and was thinking during the ride – “oh I don’t feel well, I’m ready for this ride to be over” and then it was over so I was able to recover quickly but I think being in the dark and being upside down I just got me disoriented and it just didn’t “sit” right. I really like TOT but can’t handle the up and down. I liked it when it was just one drop but once they added the multi drops, my stomach just can’t handle it. I even e-mailed Disney suggesting since they made a “whimp” version at Mission Space to do the same at TOT. I never heard back from them. I do really like this ride and 1 drop would be fine, but not the multi drops. I don’t care about seeing Indiana Jones and since Evan doesn’t know the movie we might be able to skip it this trip. I do wish they would upgrade this attraction, and Great Movie Ride too.
AK: I know we won’t be doing EE. Evan isn’t tall enough and I didn’t care about it enough last time to do rider swap or single rider so I think we are forgoing this time.
FOOD - I’m not a foodie in any way shape or form so I don’t really care about anything in F&WF (sacrilege I know) I don’t drink alcohol at all so no FAB’s or AB’s. Cost and time will be an issue so I don’t think we have any ADR’s at any signature locations and most of the time we will be doing quick counter service.
MISCELLANOUS - I will not be going commando style this visit and will not be traveling in a herd (even though there are 11 of us). I’m not planning any side visits to water parks or mini golf or Disney West Side or Disney Quest. We are planning a Gatorland visit and shopping at DTD.
I hope to finish our Halloween pumpkin shirts this weekend – they are taking longer than I thought but I still have time. My goal for the weekend is to finish the shirts and pull out my pedometer, check the batteries and re-program it with my stride and maybe test it out by taking a walk.
Evan has had the training wheels off his bike for a while now but just this week learned to start the bike by himself so hopefully a bike ride is in store too.
I’ve got a box in my spare room that I’ve been throwing stuff into for the trip but no serious packing. We are heading to the shore for a week after Labor Day so I need to get myself together about that too.
Random Disney story:
When I was 21 my girlfriend and I took a trip to WDW. It was both of our first trip where we planned it and we paid for it AKA our first adult trip. We went over July 4th weekend, it was hot and crowded and there were a ton of the Brazilian groups there – very annoying. I found them very rude and disrespectful – especially on Fourth of July – but that is for another time. We stayed at Caribbean beach resort. This was when they were the budget resorts. Port Orleans and Dixie Landing were under construction. We toured every hotel on that trip and I absolutely fell in love with the Beach Club. However I’ve never stayed there – perhaps some day – hey a girl can dream can’t she?
One night we went swimming at the “big” pool at Old Port Royal and we were just being so silly. We were pretending to be synchronized swimmers and we had really big fake smiles on our faces and we were trying to mimic what the other did, then we would go into the water and come out with a giant gasp to air. It was the type of thing the more you did it the sillier and funnier it got. To this day, nearly 20 years later we still laugh about that night in the pool. It is just a silly memory that will stick with me forever.
Disney Trivia:
Although there are literally hundreds of different species of animals residing in Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Zari and Miles, a pair of reticulated giraffes, were the park’s first residents. Zari, a female, was born at the Metro Washington Park Zoo in Portland, Oregon. Miles was (at the time), a two-year-old male from the St. LouisZoologicalPark. Zari can now be found on the Animal Kingdom Lodge’s Savanna.
I don't do any of the rides you're not doing! It makes things so much easier when you have experience under your belt and know what's important to you to see and do. There's no way to do it all, but you can't help trying on your first couple of visits.
Just before AKL first opened I got to meet Miles and fed him! He was at AK then and would move to AKL the next day. He was at AK before it opened and at AKL before it opened!
Congrats on the pins, that's a great deal!! Sounds like Evan is getting all caught up on his Disney movies. I won't go on Tea Cups or Mission: Space either!!
I have fallen WAY behind on your PTR, but am once again all caught up. I can't ride the teacups at Magic Kingdom. We rode them on our honeymoon in March of '09 and I felt sick to my stomach for a good forty five minutes afterward. Not pleasant.
I love your shirts, and your thank you cards, and Evan's hat. For someone who claims to not be crafty, you sure are pretty crafty! I love all your little craft projects. I want to make thank you cards, but I don't know if I have time this time around. Maybe next year!
Sorry to see that list of rides you will NOT be going on. We were in the same fix when we first started taking our DGD with us. And my wife gets motion sick real easy so she always goes shopping while I do the rides. My DGD has turned out to be a real rider as she has grown older so the list has continued to get shorter. Hope you guys have a great time on the rides you are able to ride.
Registered Message Board Members Get Our Free Newsletter! When you register you'll have the option to sign up for our weekly PassPorter Newsletter. It's chock-full of feature articles; news; tips; contests; photos; and special offers in our online store.
It sounds like you have the things that you cannot do well in hand. I can't wait to hear what you think about Gatorland. I've been to several of these types of venues, but not the one in Orlando.
I used to love ToT, but I have to be in the right frame of mind to go on it now. I don't know why, but maybe it's just because I'm becoming more chicken in my old age. I did the Tea Cups last year for my friend's girls, but I have to say, it will be a while before I do that one again. You're making a wise decision.
Registered Message Board Members save 30% off PassPorter guidebooks! When you register you'll have access to a discount coupon good for 30% off the list price of PassPorter books in our online store.