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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Aww......LOVE surprises like that!! We (after having some difficulties ourselves) told our parents for Christmas by wrapping bibs that said "I Love my Grandma" and such! I had to wait 3 weeks to say anything!!! It about killed me!!! And I went away with my mom for a weekend during that time! And because I was drinking juice/water rather than my norm of diet coke - I had to lie to my mom and tell her that I had a UTI!!!! LOL! good luck!!
That is so cute! I am thinking - if everything goes well I will scan the u/s. Then we will go up to visit with my parents and at the end of the slide show I will have the u/s of the peanut. I am REALLY hoping that this sticks as otherwise when we go to see my parents I will be beyond miserable.
Also I think my sister knows because I stupid left the congrats packet (of new mom stuff) in my car and my sister and I rode somewhere in my car together yesterday. She did not say anything but I suspect she really knows. I will surprise someone though! Hopefully
Quote:
Originally Posted by ilovedisney247
Love the photo with Minnie and Mickey! Too cute!
Oh I know I love it too! I like how she held up her dress to hide my troubled middle area. Always a lady!
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Originally Posted by Colexis Mom
Great pictures! More please!
Coming right up!
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Originally Posted by niccole
CONGRATS ON THE PEANUT. I know how hard it is, and how hard it is to stay positive. I have PCOS and could only get preg by shocking my system and giving up. So glad you stopped at the Dr. first not knowing would have killed you.
I thought I saw you in DTD the day we arrived, your last day. But sadly I looked a fool asking a ramdom stranger if she was you from Passporters and she had no clue what passporters was.
Ok now i can go read the rest.... I only got to the peanut part.
Oh no! I am sad I did not see you! I actually did not go to DTD on our last day. We did HS and MK. Next time I totally want to go when other PP are going! And yes I am glad we stopped before we left. Thankfully my doctor (who I cannot say enough nice things about) knew that and fit us in beautifully.
Quote:
Originally Posted by niccole
Back....
Love the photos, you are beaming but you can always brush it off as being in Disney. Maybe?
The quilt will make a great baby's first trip marker.
Going with a baby will be great, I found out I was preg at just a few days with all and it was the longest wait ever. Your Dec due date is perfect since you will be the most preg in the cool months rather then the hot ones. All three of mine are the first week of Dec. Your going to have a great preg.
Awww thanks. I do not feel like I looked beaming or glowing but I will definately take your word for it. It actually makes me so happy that other people say I look preg because I really feel NO different.
Oh the quilt would have been a WONDERFUL baby first trip marker. If I had not been so turned off by the annoying crowds and gotten more then a hand full of signatures. This will be a multi trip quilt! Lol
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Originally Posted by OCEANGRLLG
Great pics, cant wait to read more!
Thanks! I definately like my new camera. I got many more good pictures then blurry ones as opposed to my last camera/trip.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mommapants
Yea but December Birthdays Stink to the max..
Great update.
My birthday is January 17 so I am at the second end of stinky birthdays. Everyone is all maxed out on money and I tend to not get the cool parties that my June birthday sister gets. However I am big on birthdays so hopefully I will not dissapoint.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tessatilli
My oldest who was due March 17th was born December 24 1996 weighed 1lb 13oz and 12 in long, and then my youngest was born December 12 1997, he was 5lb 15oz and 20in. They are 12 days shy of being a yr apart. December bdays don't stink! Well at least not for them! LOL they get their combined bday party / get together around the 12th and they get christmas at christmas.
Anyway I just think it is wonderful! Oh and my oldest was and is called peanut too! When he was born my dad said he looked just like a paenut and it stuck!!! PEANUTS are awesome!
We were on a mission now. With our mouse meet and greet done I had only one thing on my mind. Pirates! This is a tradition for me that I will never give up. Even my sister says this has to be the first thing we do. Thankfully all people I go with humor me and come along for my crazy tradition.
However the mass amount of people were making this NOT a happy trip. It took a painfully long time to get through the crowds and by the time we made it to PotC I was getting grumpy. I had planned it after spring break so this was not good. Worst. For the first time I think ever there was actually a line for PotC outside of the building! Even in the summer I never saw a line like this. It made me sad.
But I was determined so we stood in it, got on the ride and enjoyed it! That ride never dissapointments. By the way if you ever ride and hear a woman yell "Wee" at the drop you are riding with me!
Once we left pirates we decided to do CS at Tortuga Tavern. It is mostly fast food mexican but it filled us up. However I left enough room for the most important thing.
If you cannot tell that is in fact a Mickey bar. I pretty much had one ever day. It was delicious and totally worth the calories.
Since I was happy with my Mickey bar we decided not to push our luck and made a dash for the exit. As we came back I could not resist snapping yet another picture.
This is one of my favorite pictures of the trip. I am not usually very good at artistic shots but I am quite satisfied with the end result.
We went back to the room and got cleaned up and ready for our dinner reservations. Where? Ohana of course. We LOVE this place. We cannot stop ourselves from going - or eating ourselves silly. We had also decided to try for a later adventure at MK. Hoping most people would be gone later at night so we could get in more then one ride. Taking the boat back over to MK to catch the monorail we quickly realized our hopes for coming back to MK might not come true.
I seriously could not even grasp how many people were there. It was CRAZY. We quickly ran away from the crowd and to the monorail station. I caught this neat picture of the monorail going into the Contemporary.
I know not terribly interesting but I always think seeing the monorail go around is neat. It did not take long for us to get on our own monorail and off to the Poly we went.
Now let me just say I was a terrible passporter this trip and became very excited about food and thus forgot to take a lot of pictures. Sorry. Guess I will just have to go back
We were sat along the walk way around Ohana, as that is where most of the 2-3 people tables are. I must say I will be excited to go with more people so we are closer to the windows as I always feel too close to the traffic. Thankfully as always the food did not dissapoint. I cannot say enough good things about Ohana. The food there is always so good and I always wish my body would allow me to eat more of it! Here are the food pictures I did remember to get.
Thankfully I had also remembered to tell our waitress at the beginning of the meal that I was allergic to bananas so I finally got to taste the bread pudding with the caramel. SOOOO good. We left happy and full, as always.
We still thought we might brave MK. We went over and it was not TOO terrible. We decided to give it a shot. We hit HM first because I wanted to see the new line. They had both sides of the line open so a bunch of people actually missed the new que. I encourage you to take a look as it is certainly very neat.
Now once again the crowd of teenage girls made me dislike their age group more. They decided it would be fun to scream from the time they stepped into the "doom buggy". Now I must say whatever mother yelled out to them that they were scaring the children and to stop I could have hugged her. It made those girls feel bad about what they were doing and they said a very embaressed sorry. I wanted to cheer and say to those girls that they were annoying everyone not just children. Either way they stopped amd I was SO greatful.
We headed over to Tomorrowland and I beat my DH at the Buzz ride (finally!). I also rode one of my favorite rides - COP. I do not care how cheesey it is I love it and the song. We also took a ride on the People Mover which also is a favorite of mine. Best of all - they were all peanut approved adventures. Sadly my favorite mountains were not and I am sad I missed them this trip.
We caught some of the Electromagic parade that night but got the full viewing several days later. Again do not miss this, I think it is so neat. I did manage to get a nice picture of the castle as well.
Then before we left I had to get a picture with Roy and Minnie. This is one of those shots I get every time I come. To all the parents it really is a neat idea to do that with your kids. There is another place in Epcot my sister and I get a picture at together every time we go. It really touches my mothers heart when she looks at all the years lined up.
We finally decided to call it a night and headed back to the hotel at around midnight. We finally crawled in our beds but counted our first day as a success.
You managed to hit all of my favorite peanut approved rides! Pirates and HM are two of my favorites! Don't you just love the new queue? Did you get to see the new ending? I also love COP and once had a funny CM who asked everyone to buckle up and get their headsets on. You could see everyone who hadn't been on the ride before reaching around looking for their seatbelts and headsets! Priceless!
It sounds like you are having a really great time in spite of the crowds!
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You managed to hit all of my favorite peanut approved rides! Pirates and HM are two of my favorites! Don't you just love the new queue? Did you get to see the new ending? I also love COP and once had a funny CM who asked everyone to buckle up and get their headsets on. You could see everyone who hadn't been on the ride before reaching around looking for their seatbelts and headsets! Priceless!
It sounds like you are having a really great time in spite of the crowds!
Yes we did get to see the new ending to HM and it was TOTALLY awesome. I had looked at it on you tube but it definately loses something in translation there. In person it is so unreal! While I enjoy disney holding true to some of the old magic, I am thumbs up at this improvement.
Haha that is SO funny about COP! I would have been laughing so hard if I saw them looking for it.
I also love COP and once had a funny CM who asked everyone to buckle up and get their headsets on. You could see everyone who hadn't been on the ride before reaching around looking for their seatbelts and headsets! Priceless
I am all caught up...I had to take a break to wipe my eyes. I am SO happy for you! I don't know why, but even though I don't know anyone personally on PP, when something like this happens for one of you guys, I just get so happy and emotional. It drives my husband crazy. But anyway, I'm crying again. that everything goes PERFECTLY with your pregnancy, and I'll keep you in my prayers. Congratulations, in a BIG way. Ugh, I have to go get another tissue...
Another great update! Sorry about the crowds in MK but sounds like you made the best of it! Great meal at 'Ohana!
I really was surprised by the crowds. We had went in September last year and were terribly spoiled. I think after sampling several seasons we are going to be fall people.
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Originally Posted by Jessie092408
I am all caught up...I had to take a break to wipe my eyes. I am SO happy for you! I don't know why, but even though I don't know anyone personally on PP, when something like this happens for one of you guys, I just get so happy and emotional. It drives my husband crazy. But anyway, I'm crying again. that everything goes PERFECTLY with your pregnancy, and I'll keep you in my prayers. Congratulations, in a BIG way. Ugh, I have to go get another tissue...
Thank you so much for your kind words. I 100% know what you feel like about being emotional for people on here. You do not want to know how many times I have cried over stories (including some of your own stories from your past!). I think it just shows how connections and friendships can blossom anywhere.
Again thank you for the pixies I truly believe the pixies will help make this a safe and healthy 9 months.
I really was surprised by the crowds. We had went in September last year and were terribly spoiled. I think after sampling several seasons we are going to be fall people.
We were just a few days after you and had very small crowds. Only a few rides had long waits (TSMM, Dumbo, ToT), every thing else was less then 10-15 min. = walking through the line for the most part. Funny how a few days makes a difference.
We were just a few days after you and had very small crowds. Only a few rides had long waits (TSMM, Dumbo, ToT), every thing else was less then 10-15 min. = walking through the line for the most part. Funny how a few days makes a difference.
Boo now I am jealous! Lol. I really think a lot of the crowd was the cheerleadering competition. Mostly because it was a lot of teenage girls that seemed to be milling about. The beginning of the next week (of course only 2 days left in our trip then) it was better. Although I am still jealous of your short lines.
Sorry. I just didn't want you to write spring off. We ran in to a problem with grad night (again). And I'm happy to report it was the last grad night Disney will be hosting.
Because of you I'm willing to try fall
Sorry. I just didn't want you to write spring off. We ran in to a problem with grad night (again). And I'm happy to report it was the last grad night Disney will be hosting.
Because of you I'm willing to try fall
Oh no you are ok! The jealousy was all in good fun. Really the crowds were my own fault for not looking and seeing there was going to be the competition that week.
The fall is good. We missed F&WF so I am not sure how the crowds effect that. Also it tends to be more humid but really no worse then it was when we were just there. I promise I will not write off spring! In all reality spring will probably be when we go next year if we do indeed have to push back our big Disney vacation.
You all seem to have some fun in spite of the crowds! We've seen long lines outside for PoTC many times in June, so we loved it in the fall when there weren't long lines.
Love your story, I have been in your shoes, infertility is horrible. I am praying you have a healthy pregnancy and welcome that little home just in time for the magic of Christmas! I could not think of a better Christmas present for you and your family!!
Your TR is exciting too! We will be there in June for our first Star Wars weekend. Looking forward to reading more!
__________________
Paige-Blessed Mom of two wonderful, amazing little boys through the miracle of adoption.
We love WDW!!! I know what is not to love? So glad to find there are more Disney crazy people out there like me!
You all seem to have some fun in spite of the crowds! We've seen long lines outside for PoTC many times in June, so we loved it in the fall when there weren't long lines.
Oh my goodness! I hate to imagine a line like that frequently. I truly have been spoiled with when I have gone. And thankfully we did have fun. I think part of it is knowing we will be back. Don't get to do something now? Thats fine, we will just book a DVC studio in a couple months and try again. It allows for a lot more fun to be had I think.
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Originally Posted by Paige4
Love your story, I have been in your shoes, infertility is horrible. I am praying you have a healthy pregnancy and welcome that little home just in time for the magic of Christmas! I could not think of a better Christmas present for you and your family!!
Your TR is exciting too! We will be there in June for our first Star Wars weekend. Looking forward to reading more!
Thank you so much for your prayers. Infertility is truly horrible and I would wish it on no one. I truly hope God allows me to have the worlds best Christmas gift by giving me a healthy pregnancy and a wonderful little one in December.
I am glad you are enjoying the TR! We stumbled across experiences Star Wars weekend accidentally on our honeymoon and even though I am not really a Star Wars fan it was definately neat.
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