I LOVE Comedians with Guitars......You didn't tell me that part...COMPLETE 2/28/13 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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We sat next to this, which we assumed would be where the characters would come out for meets.
We all compared our boarding numbers. Now this was weird. Carolyn, Shelly, Susan, Lisa and I all had port arrival times for 11:30, and this is “supposed” to be what they base your boarding number on. Brook had a 12:30 port arrival time. Brook had a 12, Lisa, Shelly, Susan and I had 8’s and Carolyn had a 2!!!! So weird since Shelly and Susan were her roommates, you would assume they all got the same number. We sat and talked and we met a few more people from our facebook group….and then we found out from some experienced cruisers that if 1 person in your group has a higher number, you can all board at the same time with them. Jackpot! We now all had a 2!
I asked a CM nearby when the characters were coming out and if we could line up…she said soon ,and no, we couldn’t line up quite yet. So we chatted some more and looked over the navigators and I took some pictures.
We noticed a ship tour was scheduled for around 2Pm . It sounded really interesting, but I wasn’t sure if I would have time. I had wanted to get pictures of some areas right away that day while I could. I will tell you I did end up missing it, but Shelly and Susan went on it and they said it was very interesting. They told them that they put the cowboy had on just before they entered the channel and it wasn’t very secure, so they had to go very slow. It was removed already by 2 PM because they didn’t want it to fall off on to people.
More pictures.
These are the glass door I was talking about, where you could see the stairs leading up towards the ship.
We then saw Donald come out to the character greet spot. You would’ve thought we were crazed kids. We all practically ran to get in line. I think we were about the 3rd group in line. Well some were slower than others and we told them to get a move on for a group shot.
The nice CM used all our cameras and took a photo or 2 with each.
From left to right, that is Susan, Carolyn, Brook, Donald, Me, Lisa and Shelly.
We sat back down and again chatted and looked over the navigator and I decided it was time to take a picture of my KTTW card.
Speaking of Navigators, here is the one for the first day.
I have to admit I thought there would be more to it. I swear on the Dream they were at least 6 pages…and I went and looked at some posted online and I am right, they are a few pages bigger. I didn’t look closely, so I am not sure why the longer cruises have less to write about.
That is odd that you all had different boarding numbers, but cool that you all end up a "2"! I imagine the Navigators are shorter on the Magic and Wonder just because there are fewer people, and therefore fewer activities and locations to cover than on the larger ships. I've never been on the Dream of Fantasy, but they probably try to give the illusion of fewer people and less crowding with more activities spread all over the ships. You all look great and very excited!
That is odd that you all had different boarding numbers, but cool that you all end up a "2"! I imagine the Navigators are shorter on the Magic and Wonder just because there are fewer people, and therefore fewer activities and locations to cover than on the larger ships. I've never been on the Dream of Fantasy, but they probably try to give the illusion of fewer people and less crowding with more activities spread all over the ships. You all look great and very excited!
That sounds like good reasoning to me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezp
I love the way you were so quick in line for Donald!
I still have a lot of "kid" left in me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pamcarey
Great pictures from the terminal, especially with Donald!
I decided it was time to take a potty break and took a few pictures on the way.
This is the kids club registration area.
Then it was time! They were announcing boarding and we gathered our things. When number 2 was announce, it was a race….the place went crazy. LOTS of people had 2’s. We all walked together to start with, but a lady with her stroller and family decided to step in front of us and fold it up and she got put a stop to Brook, Lisa and I. They started moving too and made it pretty clear they wanted to board before us. Really? She couldn’t see that she just separated a group of people wearing matching shirts? So we walked fast and Brook made a pass…after a bit I did the pass too and she gave me a VERY dirty look. Lisa was stuck behind them and I think the lady took action NOT to be passed again. So I said to her, “My friend got behind you and she is part of our group, will you let her around, and she flat out told me no, I won’t let her.…..what a Witch with a capital B.
We went down the long hallway to get to the ship and they had photographers set up there to take the welcome aboard photos. We made a stop and we all were caught up with each other. Crazy lady and her family on the other hand had bypassed it and kept going.
We had a nice photo taken, but I don’t think any of us actually bought it.
We then headed to have our cards swiped. Carolyn, Susan, and Shelly got through right away. Lisa wasn’t far behind. They stopped Brook as her photo was from her last cruise and she was wearing a hat, so they needed a new one. I then went to another line and got swiped and headed up the stairs to meet with Lisa and we waited for Brook.
As we walked down the gangway I said we needed to think of a name to have announced for us…but we are not good with quick thinking evidently, because none of us could think of anything clever.
A peek of the ship from the gangway.
When we got to the doors, we still hadn’t thought of a name and the CM basically just asked our 1st names and we were announced that way.
We walked in and I looked up and all around and my first thought was WOW……………........................ …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………….. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………….
This Atrium is sooooo SMALL. It looks big in pictures, but compared to the Dream it is TINY. That was probably my only major disappoint in the ship. Now it isn’t really small and it is beautiful, but it was the very first thing I noticed….smaller ship means smaller atrium. As time wore on, it came to where I never noticed how much smaller it was.
We were stopped by a CM and told we could go eat lunch right away at either Parrot Cay or Topsiders and that all rooms were ready already. YES!!! We had boarded the ship at 11:50 AM and rooms are not supposed to be ready till 1:30 PM. We had hoped that since this was a first sailing coming into port with a pretty much empty ship that this would happen.
Now to find Carolyn and gals. Aha! There they are….getting interviewed by a local news station.
This is the footage from the interview. I am not sure how long this link will stay active though.
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/video?id=8820698
The lady had info wrong too. She said this is a 6 night sailing and it’s an 7 nighter. Carolyn said she was kind of anti-Disney and wanted to know why a group of only adults would ever even consider sailing on Disney. Oh well…not everyone gets it.
I had to get a quick shot of this too.
And this
We separated to go to our rooms and said we would meet back up in the atrium and then head off to Parrot Cay for lunch. Our bellies were starting to rumble a bit.
Brook and Carolyn’s gang both had ocean view rooms and were down on deck 2 right next to each other. Lisa and I had a veranda room on deck 5 towards the aft.
I'm sure the Atrium did look small after being on the new ships! I'm afraid I won't like the bigger sized ships because I'm so used to the Magic and Wonder. It's kind of like comparing the castles at DL and WDW. Once you get past the size, it's all wonderful! What difference did that idiot cutting in line think it would make to be boarding ahead of one other group??? I hope you don't run into her again on the ship!
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Hopefully that made up for tha nasty woman - good grief! 
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