PTR: When You Wish Upon A (Death) Star updated 11/09/2015 - Page 4 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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October 6, 2017-Enjoying an amazing dinner at Victoria & Albert's with PP's Dot and Drew
My TR from my most recent trip is now underway. Includes: Universal Studios Florida, Disney World and Sea World Orlando Trifecta TR -Updated December 10th! TR is now COMPLETED!
Disney had been sending me quite a few emails in the past few weeks. Initially I thought it was to get me excited about cruising, but the more I think about it the more I’m convinced that it was just a “hey remember you still owe us money” disguised as a “Look at how much fun you can have! Let us know if we can do anything to make your trip more magical!” Whatever the case I PAID IN FULL last Thursday. My official PIF date isn’t until October 11th, but my Disney Vacation Account was finally open long enough to be able to redeem the rewards so I figured why not just pay off the trip. It has definitely paid off to buy Disney Gift Cards at Target using 5% off with my redcard and then loading those into the Disney Vacation Account to earn essentially another 2% cash back.
I did notice when going to pay in full that the port fees had been reduced. My amount owed was $36 less than it was the previous week. Fine by me. That’s a few extra drinks while onboard. I was also able to successfully add the ground transfers to our reservation so that is all taken care of. I am still thinking I should have tried to save money and done one way car rentals or something, but this seems so much easier.
I still have to figure out how to pre-pay my tips and add money to my onboard account. Anyone know if this can be done online? I didn’t see anything on the website. I’ve got a while to figure it out so I’m not going to stress.
Disney also announced that people sailing on a SWDAS itinerary can pre-order some exclusive merchandise prior to the cruise. It’s mostly pins, shirts, Dooney bags, Tervis Tumblers and some coins or something. I wasn’t wowed by any of it as I’m not that big of a Star Wars fan, but it’s nice to know we could pre-order. We’ll likely get a pin as we’ve been collecting them - although NOT trading them.
This weekend we are going to sit down and work on the packing list. We need some new luggage as one of ours is broken. I’d like to figure out what we should get so I can watch for luggage sales. I want to get a good handle on all the other stuff I need to purchase as well so that I’m not adding trip shopping into the mix when I’m doing holiday shopping. It’s the one thing I don’t like about early January trips. Too close to the holidays.
And for an update on my last post my daughter did in fact turn 3. We had a princess birthday party for her on Saturday and I managed to pull off the cake:
Complete with the required Pascal:
So apparently I can learn some things from YouTube. I just can’t do Origami. You gotta have your strengths. The cake did take an insane amount of time, but I spent all of $20 on it and the bakery wanted $60. My mom did come and help me put the final touches on it so I didn’t do it all myself.
My mom also managed to whip these up for the birthday girl:
She added the skirts to both shirts and I think they are so cute. DD is ready for Pirate Night and SWDAS! And she has a Rapunzel braid and is SO thrilled! I don’t know how she’s going to take it if Rapunzel is NOT on the ship, but I’ve been telling her that sometimes Rapunzel is on a little boat with Flynn and not on the big boat with Mickey. Hopefully she won’t be too heart broken. Or better yet hopefully we’ll be lucky and Rapunzel will be around.
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The cake is awesome and congrats on being paid in full!
It is so nice to know the cruise is paid for. I just have to pre-pay all the tips.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lauriep
What a great job on the cake! It looks amazing and also looks very tasty! Being PIF is such a great feeling.
The cake was quite the project. And of course now my daughter has a list. "For my next birfday I will have a Bell cake. Dan an Ariel cake or a Cinderella cake...."
Quote:
Originally Posted by pamcarey
Awesome job on the cake!! I'm super impressed! And the shirts that your mom made are so cute!!
I'm so happy with how the cake turned out. I was really worried that I would mess it up. I'm not 100% happy with the pinky-purple color as it didn't really match the barbie, but it looked like a closer match in person than in the pictures. And my daughter didn't seem to care. My mom is very crafty and I always love what she makes. My daughter did inform us that she doesn't like Chewy so it is up in the air if she will actually wear that one. Of course she changes her mind on a daily basis so who knows who she will like in 3 months!
Quote:
Originally Posted by MayraLR
You did a great job with the cake!
Congrats on being PIF!
Thank you. I think you had more faith in me than I did!
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Great job on the cake and being PIF for the cruise!
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October 6, 2017-Enjoying an amazing dinner at Victoria & Albert's with PP's Dot and Drew
My TR from my most recent trip is now underway. Includes: Universal Studios Florida, Disney World and Sea World Orlando Trifecta TR -Updated December 10th! TR is now COMPLETED!
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Yesterday marked 75 days out from the cruise! Which means online check-in was available for us at 11 PM on Sunday - perks of being on central time while Mickey and Pals are on EST. I wasn’t sure if I needed to stay up to check in or not. I wanted an early port arrival time as we are staying at the Hyatt the night before the cruise so we’d be able to catch the first bus from the airport if we wanted to. I know you have to wait around a crowded terminal as boarding doesn’t start right away, but I think we can manage that.
I decided that I needed sleep so I went to bed around 9 PM and set an alarm for 10:50 PM. I almost shut off the alarm and just checked in the morning, but I got my butt out of bed and went down to the computer. The website was SLOW, but I didn’t have any errors using it like a lot of others reported. I was able to book PALO brunch for my husband and I, but the only available time was on SWDAS. We had discussed this and it wasn’t our favorite idea. Not only because it is Star Wars day, but it is also my mom’s birthday and she opted out of brunch saying DH and I should have a date. I’d feel guilty going on her birthday though. So I booked a dinner at PALO as well figuring we could decide later which to keep.
We decided to only do one excursion as this trip is getting a bit pricey. We decided on Mayan Ruins and Beach Break in Cozumel, but that exact excursion wasn’t available for our cruise. They did have one that was identical, but added a stop at a chocolate factory so I booked that and called it a night.
Of course while I was busy checking in my husband was sleeping away. So when he woke up in the morning I told him about the brunch at PALO and after much discussion we decided to cancel both the brunch AND the dinner. I know, I know. We would LOVE brunch. We should try the dinner. However, I think this is what will work best for our family. Brunch on my mom’s birthday and SWDAS wasn’t our favorite idea in the first place and while I could try to get a different day when we board I don’t think I’m going to. Dinner had a lot of options for time and day, but we are taking a family vacation and want to spend dinners with our kids. Being our first cruise we don’t really want to miss any of the standard menus or specialty ones either. Especially when we don’t know if/when they will do special Star Wars stuff in the main dining room.
Maybe we’ll regret not trying the specialty dining, but I think we’ll eat plenty of yummy things that are included already. We’d rather save the money. After all since having kids “fine dining” is a trip to the Olive Garden. We’re just not foodies and will probably be impressed with the food we do get to eat.
Now that online check in is complete - minus registering the children for the kids clubs (I’m confused by the password they ask for) - I’m slowly getting back to packing lists and making sure we have the stuff we need for the cruise. I keep telling my DH that he needs to go over my first draft packing list, but he is ignoring me right now. I did have my daughter try on her outfits from grandma:
And I caved and bought myself a Star Wars shirt:
Initially I was going to just ignore the fact that I was on a Star Wars cruise, but the rest of my family has shirts/outfits so I figured I had to. DH and I did watch the first half of Episode IV last night too. I’m going to finish Episodes IV-VI at least before the cruise. I saw them once 10 years ago. I figured maybe I could at least know a little about what’s going on before we sail.
Now I just need to figure out how to speed up the clock….
Too bad about Palo but I understand your reasoning. Funny how you husband keeps ignoring you. He's probably thinking it's waaay to early for packing lists. Men...
That's too bad that the only available Palo brunch day was your SWDAS and your mom's birthday. But like you said, I'm sure that you'll enjoy all the food that you will get to eat.
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with the cake - I hope it all works out and you can solve those problems with the website too.
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