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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
It is still giving me the same error message for shirts and of course, customer service isn't responding!
The "Oops! Please complete the fields marked with an asterisk * below" message . . . with no asterisk to be found anywhere on the page?
I am getting that message now for every shirt EXCEPT the "Launch Day" t-shirts . . . the dark one that says "Are You 23?" on the front and the light one with marching Mickey and "Made for You and Me" on the front. And all of a sudden now, I can put pins in my cart, whereas before I couldn't put anything in there.
Yeah I think somebody messed up. All the other shirts seem to say "Will ship in 2 weeks". Maybe that's the glitch that's keeping me from the cool shirt. The "launch" shirt is ugly as sin.
After all the hype of the last few months, personally I expected more than another marketing ploy. I love Disney and always will-always have. But, sorry, (maybe it's my week), I'm getting the nickel and dime feeling here. Cut backs at the parks, (understandable-to a point), a $30/year mag, (yes, I bought that one) and now $74 for the exclusive right to give Disney more of my money. I'm not feeling the magic here, folks. Beautiful or not, I just can't do it!
It looks like Disney is trying to kill several birds with one stone. Now that there are three glossy magazines that cover Disney that aren't owned by Disney, they probably realized that killing Disney Magazine some years back may have been something of an error (doh!). Any time someone shows Disney that there's a market for something about Disney that Disney isn't doing, Disney considers entering the competition.
The Anaheim convention sounds more like the NFFC conventions than, say, MouseFest and the other parks-focused events. With it scheduled roughly mid-way between NFFC's annual Anaheim and Orlando conventions... I'm not sure the folks at NFFC are particularly happy campers at the moment.
As to the prices... I think Disney is thinking about the Disneyana collectibles market, where people really do spend that kind of money on exclusive merchandise, rather than thinking about theme park fans (like most of us here at PassPorter), who put most of our money into visiting the parks. That's one of the perpetual economic problems for MouseFest. "I can't spend a lot on MouseFest, I'm already spending so much on the hotel, food, and admission." Meanwhile, NFFC Convention attendees are used to paying over $250 per person to attend the events before you factor in hotel, dining, etc. (over $350 if they get the deluxe package that includes an exclusive collectible). I strongly doubt Disney will be charging less than that. Meantime, the choice of the Anaheim Convention Center is illuminating. It would seem to mean that Disney wants to draw a crowd larger than can be accommodated at the Grand Californian's ballroom, which is pretty big to begin with. That's an optimistic goal, considering the typical size of Disney fan conventions.
For a time, Disney ran Disneyana collectibles conventions. These had started as unofficial events, and then Disney stepped in and took control. According to everyone I've talked to about it, Disney managed to run them right into the ground, with high prices and restrictive rules for the exhibitors (among other things). Disney pulled the plug after the conventions failed to earn the kind of money that made sense to the company.
Meantime, Disney may also be hoping to weaken the unofficial Disney web sites. The biggest factor that will prevent Disney from ever undermining the unofficial guidebooks, fan clubs, and web sites is that, as much as folks crave the official "inside" word, they also want to talk and speculate freely, and say things that official company spokespeople are never free to say, and do things that aren't likely to be approved in a corporate environment. Some of this also has to do with the company's limitations as a publicly traded stock - how the company releases information to the public is covered by government regulations. If all investors don't have access to new information at the same time, the company is open to law suits and fines. So, any announcements of anything meaningful to investors has to be carefully orchestrated - real "inside scoops" for Club 33... I mean Disney 23 members are therefore unlikely. Another part of it is Disney's corporate culture of carefully guarding information from the competition, and protecting its valuable copyrights and trademarks from infringement.
So, what can we expect of Disney 23? I'm sure lots of folks will sign up, but I'm not sure the numbers will be big enough to satisfy Disney's corporate goals. In a company that size, you need to pull in big bucks in order to have any weight in the corridors of power. Note that the official Disney Magazine was discontinued because it had "only" 600,000 subscribers.
How many $150-$500+ admission special events will they organize yearly? I figure they may fold some of the year's special DCL cruises (pin trading, film festival at sea, etc.) into the Disney 23 offerings. Since the press materials state that convention tickets will be sold to the public as well as Disney 23 members, part of what they're doing is finding a new way to market the same old same old. They'll probably try things like a plussed-up Adventures by Disney Hollywood/Disneyland backstage tour. Maybe special events surrounding certain movie premieres. Maybe even a MouseFest knock-off. :::shrug::: What we see so far at the Disney site - a Disney artist meet-and-greet - seems to reinforce that view - meet-the-artist events have been going on for a long time in a variety of guises.
What I doubt Disney will be able to do is make it a community.
__________________
Co-Author, PassPorter's Walt Disney World, PassPorter's Disney Cruise Line, and PassPorter's Disneyland and Southern California Attractions
My sweet DH just surprised me with it!!! I am so excited, I am waiting for my DDs to go to bed so I can look at it without fear of getting anything on it.
My sweet DH just surprised me with it!!! I am so excited, I am waiting for my DDs to go to bed so I can look at it without fear of getting anything on it.
Firstly, with all due respect, anyone harping on the merchandise needs to let it go. Nobody is forcing anyone to purchase any additional merchandise.
There's no rush to join anyway. Unless you want the first day tshirt. and you'll need to join by the end of the year if you want the charter year merchandise. That's it.
They don't force you to pay a dime for the website, they don't make you be a member to go to the Expo.
If you are a member, you'll get special privileges at the Expo. If you don't go to the Expo, there will be localized events and special in-park events.
D23 is a way inside Disney for those that don't otherwise have the opportunity. It's the ability to virtually visit the Disney Archives or tour Pixar Studios or backstage at The Little Mermaid on Broadway. If you've done all of that - if you've done any of that - then you're right, Disney isn't offering you anything.
Too many people are throwing their arms up without even entertaining the thought. Go to your local Barnes & Noble or Disney Store and just browse the magazine. Then say you hate it and it's a waste of money.
Personally, I think it's worth it and I'd probably buy it without D23. Yes, that's $64 a year. And for $11 more, I get some crummy certificate I couldn't care less about. I see a ton of merchandise I can't afford (and by the way, there's plenty more merchandise coming down the pipeline through the Walt Disney Archives Collection and it is good). But I also get the surprise collectible (which all I know is not a pin), I'll probably have a guaranteed way of getting into a free screening of UP and who knows what else is on the horizon?
Anyway, I highly recommend the following two posts of mine for maximum benefit:
all I can say for certain is everything you all know about D23... everything I know about D23... it's the tip of the iceberg. this is years in the making (they even talked about Iger referring to it at last year's shareholders meeting) and there's a ton more stuff to it that didn't make it to the opening date. to understand what D23 is really about is to understand the magnitude of the scope they're undertaking. there's a lot of uncharted territory in having every single division of the company working hand in hand to give unprecedented access to the world.
Yes yes, the old adage that people can't complain about it underwhelming. We shall go in the corner and drink the kool-aid. But... I did join it and I am complaining so I guess I get permission? LOL
D23 is the new official Disney online community/club (for an annual fee). There will be an expo in CA in September for members as well as merchandise, like the magazine Judi got at B&N.
ETA: If you can't find the magazine locally in bookstores, follow the DisneyShopping.com link and you can buy it online for $15.95 plus $4.95 shipping plus sales tax.
Thanks for the info. And can I just say OMG that is probably the most adorable sig pic I've ever seen...including my own kids
About This Page: 
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
Enjoy it - I am!!
just kidding!
Linear Mode
