Thank You Doctors!!! - A Thanksgiving TR - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
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.
Packing 95% complete. Just waiting for a few items to cycle through the laundry (to finish up before Thursday morning) and to pack our activity bag for the kiddo for the flight.
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.
Trip completed. We had a great time. Only had one "bad weather" day which was Monday when the sun didn't come out as forecast. As a result, the temperature never got out of the low 60s which we were unprepared for. However, we made the most of day and got A LOT done.
Overall, it was a great vacation and we're already planning our next trip. More details to follow once we sort through all the pictures (my wife found an action shot setting on our camera which led to a lot of junk pictures esp. on safari.).
The beginning of our trip can be traced back to November 9th. Up until this point, my wife and I had kept our daughter in the dark about the trip. My daughter has the tendency to tell everybody and their mother about Disney trips and we didn't want the entire world to know that we were going.
On Fridays, we always go to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner. So before we ordered, we told her to "enjoy Buffalo Wild Wings this week because next week we are going to be having dinner at Walt Disney World." After a minute of stunned silence, my wife and I were left with this reaction.
Yes, she was very excited. The next question out of her mouth was when will Carly (one of her classmates) be there? We told her the dates that we are going and what dates Carly is going to be there. At that point, if she figures it out, she figures it out. We are going to figure it out for her. Our daughter is very good with a calendar and quickly figured it out once she got in front of calendar. That only got her more excited because a friend from school was going to be there for part of the trip.
Flash forward to November 15th...the unofficial start of our trip. Our daughter had half days of schools on the 15th and 16th because of parent-teacher conferences, then a full day of school on the 19th, another half day on the 20th and no school on the 21st. All told she missed two half-days and a full day of school. After our parent-teacher conference on the 15th (we had the first conference of the afternoon), we headed off to the train station to take the train down to New York City. We had a very uneventful train ride. From the Amtrak, we had to take the Long Island Rail Road to the AirTrain which got us to our hotel. After a very tasty room service dinner, we climbed into bed to be well rested for our first day at Disney tomorrow.
5 am always seems to come earlier than expected. That was time for our wake-up call so we could get the hotel shuttle to JFK airport and make our 8 am flight. The wait at the Delta check-in was almost nothing and the security was basically nothing. It was a lot better than I thought. We found a table near our gate and my wife and daughter sought out breakfast. They found some breakfast and right on time our plane left the gate. The flight was very relaxing. DD watched a movie. My wife watched some TV show on her iPad and I watched nothing. My job was to make sure that my wife got up and moved around. This was her first flight since she had her pulmonary embolism in September. She got about 30-40 minutes and was just fine.
We arrived at MCO and only had to watch one bus load for the Wilderness Lodge, Contemporary, Poly, GF loop before it was our turn to get on the Magical Express and head to the Wilderness Lodge. The Wilderness Lodge was the first stop and we checked-in and found out that our villa was ready. We headed to our villa to drop off our carry-on luggage before heading to the park.
We also had these friends with us for our stay:
We got villa #2514 which is an one-bedroom villa right next to the elevator and the closest villa to the bus transportation at the Wilderness Lodge. Not bad for only requesting "near transportation."
After a brief layover in the room, we headed to the park. The one thing that we love about Wilderness Lodge is the direct boat to the Magic Kingdom. The weather was about 75 and sunny which was perfect for a boat ride to the park. We had two pieces of "administrative stuff" to get done before we could start to enjoy our vacation. The first thing was to buy the Photopass+. My wife is still kicking herself over not getting it done before our trip. The last piece was upgrading our park tickets to Premium Annual Passes. The thing that always amazes us with regard to the Annual Passes is the fact that they are not hard plastic cards but paper cards. One would think that something that needs to last an entire year would be hard plastic.
Administrative stuff out of the way. My daughter puts us on a beeline to the Mad Tea Party - our traditional first ride. My wife doesn't ride (makes her sick) so I always go on the ride with her. It's a great first ride because there is almost never a line.
Riding Mad Tea Party
After the Mad Tea Party, we went exploring in Storytown Circus and too, of course, take a look at Dumbo. We got fastpasses for Dumbo as we didn't want to wait 30-40 minutes for Dumbo. But that didn't stop us from getting pictures:
Storybook Circus
We asked a cast member if Be Our Guest was open for lunch. We were told that it was but to hurry because she wasn't sure how long it was going to open today. When getting to the restaurant, we got in the wrong line. We got in the line which was only for picture taking. We grabbed some pictures while we were in that line.
Finally, we got in the right line to eat lunch at the restaurant. The ordering was very unique. We ordered with some assistance from a cast member. I got the steak sandwich with a strawberry cream cheese cupcake for dessert, my wife ordered the Croque Monsieur and the triple chocolate cupcake for dessert, while my daughter got some pasta with no sauce (she does not like sauce). The cast member handed us our rose and we told that our food would be delivered to us and to find a table. All of the tables in the main dining area were taken so we ate in the Beast's Chambers. DD was scared at first because it was dark but quickly adapted. My wife went around and took some pictures while we waited for our food.
Be Our Guest Restaurant (ordering area)
Be Our Guest (Beast's Chambers)
Be Our Guest (main dining hall)
After a delicious lunch, it was time for our fastpasses at Dumbo....(to be continued)
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.
About This Page: 
PassPorter Guide Author
with the packing!
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
! I can't wait to hear about all your adventures!
Linear Mode
