We Turned Her Into A Disney Lovin', Character Huggin', Thrill Ridin' Girl! COMPLETED 7/11 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
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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.
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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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It is Saturday January 28th! The day we have all been anxiously awaiting. We are in a Days Inn in Kingsland, Georgia and getting ready to head to Port Orleans Riverside. So excited! I was the first one up this morning and almost every morning after this. I got up at 6:30 to get my shower before waking everyone else up. Wanda and the kids had all had baths/showers the night before so Jamie was the only other one needing the shower so he was the next one up. After I was dressed I went ahead and woke Asher and Wanda so that could start getting ready. Then once I was all ready to go I woke up Selah. She is always (not just on vacation) the last one I wake up. I like to let her sleep until I am ready to get her dressed. It just makes things much easier. We all had the "I'm going to the Walt Disney World Resort" t-shirts and we wore them this day so that we would have them on when we got there.
After Jamie and Asher are ready they decide to go check out the breakfast buffet. Wanda quickly finishes up and goes with them. I then get Selah up and dressed. When everyone else get back to the room with the breakfast it is not a very exciting breakfast that is for sure. A few little (very little) muffins, some cereal for Selah and some juice. Selah hopped up on the bed with her Minnie Mouse and I gave her her cereal while Daddy found Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on TV for her.
After Selah was finished we were off to Disney World! It was 8am when we left and my turn to drive. Before getting on the interstate we stopped for gas and then we were off. There was no more stopping until we got to POR. We were making really good time and it was looking like we were going to get there just before 11 and then we hit stopped traffic in Orlando. We only had 11 miles to go! That 11 miles felt like the longest part of the trip. We were so close! Then we finally find a break in the traffic and we start moving good again. Here comes our exit! Look Asher! Look Wanda! There it is! That sign we love so much!
Walt Disney World!
Look again! That's where we are staying! Port Orleans Riverside!
We've made it! It was 11:30 when we pulled into the parking lot of POR.
Jamie and I decided to go in by ourselves. We had no idea what it would be like in there since we have never stayed on property we really didn't know what to expect and didn't want Selah getting upset just waiting. So we left the 3 of them in the car. We got inside and the line was pretty long. At least it looked long to us. We had nothing to compare it to. We got in line and we waited. It went fairly fast and we were at the counter giving them our requests. This was something I didn't really know how to handle. I had wanted a room that was not surrounded by other rooms so that if Selah was up in the middle of the night upset we were not disturbing so many other people. I also wanted a room close to the main building so that we would not have such a long walk with her. She can walk perfectly fine but she often refuses to walk. More about that later. We also needed a ground floor room so that we were not having to go up and down steps with her and Wanda does better if she is not having to go up and down steps also. With all of those things I was a little bit at a loss. I had seen that the refurbished rooms in Alligator Bayou were only finished in a few buildings so I wanted to get in one of those as close to the main building as I could get. When we got to the desk there was a girl and a guy there. I don't remember either of their names and this becomes a trend throughout the week. I'll do better next time. I hope. Anyway, the girl was training the guy. She pulled up our reservation and told us they had a room for us in building 25. Building 25! That is far away from the main building. Hmmm. We asked her if there was anyway we could get into building 14 and still be in a corner room or how ever it would work to not be surrounded. She told us we would have to upgrade to be in that building at all and she told us how much that would cost. We decided no on that. Then we asked about buildings 37 and 38. They are across the river from the main building but they just didn't look to be as far. She checked on that and told us she could put us in building 37 but we would have to wait until the room was clean or we could go to 25 now. We asked what room we were in and discovered that not only were we not in a corner room but we were also not on the ground floor. So it wasn't seeming like any of our requests were being granted in that building. I asked where we would be in building 37 and it was a ground floor room just not a corner. We decided to just go with that and hope that Selah slept good all week. Now we had to wait though because the room was not ready. We headed out to the car, stopping at Bell Services to get our stroller that we rented for the week and discussed what our plans were until our room was ready. By the time we got to the car we had decided to go to the Riverside Mill to get our resort mugs and then head over to DTD to do a little shopping and looking around. We got everyone out of the car and told them all of our plans and headed for RM. Once we got our mugs and filled them up we headed to the ferry to go to DTD.
The mug colors we got were pink for the girls and blue for the boys. They only had pink, blue and black at our resort and no one wanted the black. No biggie though. We had sharpies with us and we wrote our names on the bottoms.
Next Up: DTD And Our First Experience With The Dinning Plan
Great Updates!!! Isn't it the best to see the "Walt Disney Wold" sign. I def. understand trying to find a place to change your daughter. We have the same issues with Alex since he is not potty trained yet either. Looking forward to more!
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Love your pictures! How did your kids respond to the POR food court? Did you get a chance to walk around a bit before going to DTD? So glad you all made it! And hope the room situation turns out ok!
P.S. I'm impressed you got a family of 5 up & out the door in only 1 1/2 hours!
__________________
DS-almost 3 & DD-6 with Meeko & Pocahontas in 2012
DH, "Commando" (Let's get a move on, folks!) ~ Me, "Pokey" (Just a moment...Look at this cool trinket!) ~ DD, born 4/2005, "Ride! Ride! Ride!" (Roller coaster! Cars! Dumbo!) ~ DS, born 3/2009, "Charge!" (I wanna goooooo!)
You've made it to Disney! Sorry you didn't quite get your room requests! Can't wait for more!
The room turned out to be great. A little farther away from the main building than we would have liked but that's ok. We are at Disney! The Happiest Place on earth and we were very happy to be there!
Quote:
Originally Posted by alexsmommy0412
Great Updates!!! Isn't it the best to see the "Walt Disney Wold" sign. I def. understand trying to find a place to change your daughter. We have the same issues with Alex since he is not potty trained yet either. Looking forward to more!
It is the best!
That whole diaper changing thing is getting more and more difficult the older she gets. We will figure it out though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by shnewell
You made it!! Sorry you were having trouble getting your room requests met. I hope that you ended up not too far away -- POR is so spread out!
Selah looks so happy on the boat!!
We were a little far from the main building but we had a wonderful room. I learned from this trip and the next trip I will know a little better how to make those requests and what to stress as the most important. That is really where our problem was.
Selah did not start out happy on the boat but that is because she saw the water and wanted to get in it. I was soon able to calm her and she started to enjoy the ride as did everyone else on the boat.
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Originally Posted by chezp
Yay - you've made it!
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Originally Posted by ilovedisney247
You made it! I'm so glad the front desk was able to help with some of your requests!
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2Peanuts
Love your pictures! How did your kids respond to the POR food court? Did you get a chance to walk around a bit before going to DTD? So glad you all made it! And hope the room situation turns out ok!
P.S. I'm impressed you got a family of 5 up & out the door in only 1 1/2 hours!
Thanks! I'm going to post some more pictures of our walk around the resort before we got on the boat. Asher loved the food court. Selah really didn't pay any attention to the food court at first but as the week goes on she comes to love it too. More about that later. We got a great room! Just a little farther from the main building than we would have liked.
Getting 5 people ready is easier when 4 of them can get themselves ready.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Colexis Mom
Sorry about the room requests! Glad you're on the boat to DTD!
Room turned out great just a little far away. We learned for next time though!
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Sorry you had so much trouble with your room requests as you were checking in. I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on POR, like you, we are staying there in November for our first "on property" stay!!
Since I didn't post any pics of our walk around the resort before heading to DTD I thought I would do that real quick.
Ok, so the real reason I didn't is because I forgot about our walk around the resort. I will have this TR thing figured out by the time we get to the end of it.
1/28
Let me back up a bit to help this make sense. Our room was not ready. We decided to go to DTD on the boat. We chose the boat because there was no way we could get the stroller in the car with it still packed. So, Jamie wanted to go ahead and park the car by our room. He told me to drive the car around and he would meet us over there with the stroller. Then we would all walk back through the resort to the RM this way we could do a little exploring and picture taking. Here are the pictures from that walk.
Asher getting some energy out in front of Muddy Rivers Pool Bar
Posing for a pic
Me and Selah heading over to Riverside Mill to get our mugs. Wanda is a little behind us in this picture. She had stopped to take some pictures.
Sorry you had so much trouble with your room requests as you were checking in. I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on POR, like you, we are staying there in November for our first "on property" stay!!
We loved POR! I think we would definitely stay there again. We did have a long walk from our room to the main building but I think if I would have known better what to request then it wouldn't have been an issue. I also didn't realize that building 14 (which was where we wanted to be once we really started studying the resort) is a preferred building and we didn't pay for a preferred building. It really wasn't that much more but oh well. Next time.
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Glad you're on the boat to DTD! 
I will have this TR thing figured out by the time we get to the end of it. 
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