Dreaming of a Disney spring break! THIS SECTION COMPLETED - Page 41 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Yay you've started the trip report!! Sorry I'm always behind on it.
Every time I pick up my car keys, I think of you and Mark. You know, it's a real shame that they're even selling the Royal Wedding.......er.....stuff....in the UK at Epcot!! It's nothing like the "real deal" at Gatwick.
Just catching up with your trip report- £26 for a buffet dinner!!!!! that's madness. We stayed at this hilton last year before our wdw trip and the breakfast was not good then either.
Hope things got better with the service from Virgin- that's not a good start to your holiday, especially when you are already stressed.
Not a great start, between the job situation, the hotel, and now the flight.
I also know the heat was pretty unbearable in Florida, and your service was lacking at quite a few restaurants. I'm hoping your Dream portion of the trip was exceptional, since that was the one part without "live" updates!
Sorry about that! It was also the only part of the trip without free Internet access..
I'm going to have to stop reading this...all this bad luck, it's bringing me down. I sure hope Disney turns things around for you. I do hope your job situation improves. That is something you have to face everyday. I am anxious to hear more
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Sorry about that! It was also the only part of the trip without free Internet access..
Not a complaint at all! Just saying that's the part of your trip with the most suspense - for those of us who followed the live portion. Glad you were able to go internet free for a few days - I think it's good for you!
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I was just able to catch up on your TR. Sorry about work ,.. I hope things are better now that you are home.
Hopefully things will get better as this TR moves forward and that you are feeling much better by the time you reach your Happy Place .
Thursday 7 April – part two: this is like being in a kindergarten!
The kids opposite us were real pains, constantly pulling the blind for the window up and down and generally driving us nuts. It was good to see the dad finally doing something with the three kids, as for the first two or three hours, it seemed to be all down to the mum to do everything.
Once the entertainment got going, I watched the King’s Speech, as I had been wanting to see that for some time. Wow, it was worth the wait. What an excellent film and one that made me feel very proud to be British. I can see why Colin Firth won so many Oscars for what was an amazing performance.
While that was on, lunch arrived, with mine coming out, as I had the vegetarian option. Can you guess what it was? For those who’ve read my trip reports previously, you’ve probably heard me say that we always seem to end up with curries and I can never understand the logic of that. : Well, today’s offering was another curry, a vegetable Jalfrezi. I took a bite and that was all I managed, as it practically blew me away! I am not a fan of hot food and this was hot. Mark tried a bit and even he found it too much and he can cope with much more heat in his food than I can.
It’s just as well I eat fish, otherwise I’m not sure what I’d have done. I had the salmon fishcakes and, to be honest, they weren’t that great. They were Ok, but nothing special, and definitely nowhere near the quality that I’m used to with Virgin Atlantic, which was disappointing.
So far it wasn’t the best flight, so I took the opportunity to get a bit of sleep, and finally I did fall deeply asleep, even if it was only for a few minutes at a time.
One thing that was good about our flight were Sam, who was the Flight Services Manager. From talking to her, I discovered that she’d been working for Virgin Atlantic for 14 years and has a son, who’s 3½. I was surprised to find someone who’d been doing the job for this long, as generally they don’t tend to have a long life as air stewardesses. Dave was the other star and it turned out that we had a lot in common, as he lives in Coventry and does some work at their local radio station. That’s where I went to university and I know the radio station, as I used to do work experience there, so it was good to chat to him.
To fill in the time between movies, because irritatingly, it was one of the oldest planes in the fleet with controls that wouldn’t even come out of the side of the seat, making operating them very difficult, I asked for a complaints form. I wanted to be sure to make our views known on the seating that we’d ended up with, the moaning we’d had at the twilight check-in last night and the quality of the food. However, I also made sure to praise Sam and Dave for their great work, as we were very impressed with both of them. They did Virgin Atlantic credit, especially as many other things hadn’t gone so well for this flight.
When the third rotation of movies came round, I opted to watch Tangled, not having seen it yet and having heard good things about it. What a great classic Disney movie it is! I really enjoyed it and the woman who voiced Rapuznel’s mother, my goodness, she had a real voice on her!
The only thing that marred the film were the annoying kids (again! ). The youngest really was becoming a complete pain and even tried to watch the movie over my shoulder. Not acceptable! : I think the parents finally got the message and eventually started to take a bit more control of them – thank goodness!
Soon it was lunchtime, with cheese and pickle sandwich for me and coronation chicken for everyone else, then we were rapidly heading towards Orlando, ahead of schedule it appeared...
The final hour of our flight was like being in a kindergarten with the (by now... ) exceptionally annoying kids across the aisle. One of them appeared to be hyperactive and, while I was trying to catch up on some desperately needed sleep was jumping up and down and swinging on the seats. And what were his parents doing about it? you got it – absolutely nothing. By now, all of Premium Economy – there were about 12 of us – were talking about this family and our comments were both none too subtle and fairly loud, but still no sign of acknowledgement from the parents that they were doing anything about it or that they were sorry to the rest of us.
We were all very glad when we landed and finally got away from them. We were amongst the first off the plane and were quickly at customs, all looking very new and spick and span, after no doubt a fair amount of money spent on improving it. As we entered the area, I heard some very familiar music and immediately tears welled in my ears. It was the music to IllumiNations, being used as a backing track to a video welcoming foreign visitors to the USA and Florida. How perfect – it’s my favourite piece of Disney music ever and always brings me to tears, and within literally about two notes, I had tears in my eyes as usual.
We must’ve moved fast, as we were the second in line and were quickly through, although getting me to remove my glasses for the photo and then telling me I wasn’t looking in the right place caused some hilarity, as I’m blind as anything without glasses or my contact lenses.
We headed over to the luggage carousel to wait for our baggage and we waited and waited. Then we waited a bit more. While we were waiting, a woman had to tell a family three times to keep their kids off the carousel. Now can you guess which family it was? You got it! The same annoying family who’d sat opposite us.
We were glad to finally get our cases and head through customs and off to the main terminal. From there, we walked over to Alamo to get our rental car. Now they may have been cheaper, but my goodness, they know how to hit with the extras. Want an extra driver? That’ll be $10 a day – that would be $170 for our whole stay! Would you like roadside assistance? If you do, it’s another $4.99 a day or $85 for the whole stay. Unbelievable. We politely declined and thought maybe Avis would be a better bet after all....
At least you don’t have to mess around in elevators to get to Alamo’s parking lot. It’s literally just across the street and it was a pleasant walk, albeit very hot, with some lovely scenery on the way.
We found a dark blue Impala with Georgia plates, which I figured would make it easier to find in a car park and set off.
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What an excellent film and one that made me feel very proud to be British. I can see why Colin Firth won so many Oscars for what was an amazing performance. 
: Well, today’s offering was another curry, a vegetable Jalfrezi. I took a bite and that was all I managed, as it practically blew me away! I am not a fan of hot food and this was hot. Mark tried a bit and even he found it too much and he can cope with much more heat in his food than I can. 
You got it! 
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