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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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I set my alarm on my phone just a little earlier today. I was up before Brook, so I went to the shower and turned on the water to warm it up. It took FOREVER! I couldn’t believe how long it took. I finally just jumped in and took a shower in luke warm water pretty much. Not my idea of a nice refreshing or relaxing shower.
Brook hopped in after me and we both got ready. Luckily neither of us have to be total beauty queens before we leave the room ,so it didn’t take us very long to get ready. Brook has the advantage of naturally curly hair, so she didn’t even have to blow dry. She just lets it go and it dries nicely (Insert so jealous smiley here!!!!) I do have to blow dry, but let’s just say most days it was just a fluff and that would have to do. Brook left a little before me. We were heading to the conference room this morning for class. We had been to the conference center, but honestly I couldn’t remember where it was. Brook texted me after she got there and gave me some simple directions. I walked outside and called home. Today was Claire’s first day of school, and I wanted to be sure to talk to her before she left.
I tried to take a few pictures while walking, but I had the ever dreaded fogged lens, so I didn’t get too many.
I walked through the lobby to get to the convention center.
And a little jog outside.
And into the Convention Center.
I took more pictures, but most are blurry.
I believe our conference room that day was way at the end of the hall and to the right. When I approached, I saw they had the breakfast buffet set up right in the hallway. I went and found a seat next to Brook. We each had tote bags on our chair today. It had all sorts of goodies in them, like books about the resorts and a workbook for class. We had pads of papers at our spot as well as pens too. All that fun geeky stuff I love. I went out to the buffet and took some pictures, then grabbed a plate for myself.
It was a nice little set up. Nothing super fantastic, but it did its job. Each day was pretty much the same food with a few differences here and there.
I guess I didn’t take a picture of my actual plate this morning, but I assure you, I had a bit of everything. They also had juices and different Pops to drink. We could get pop, juice or coffee all through the class.
Mindy arrived and said Patty got her room key all settled, but still didn’t have a park ticket, so she went to talk to Tommy about it. Patty was running late because she had stopped off at the YC desk to take care of things there. Tommy issued Patty another ticket with no problem at all.
I didn’t really take pictures during class, except for these 2.
I can’t remember everything we covered in class, but I know some of it was marketing ourselves and Aulani. Rita had toured it recently and had some wonderful pictures of it.
It was a nice class, but many of us knew a lot that was covered, since we specialize in Disney at our agency. But we did learn new things and the marketing part was nice to hear other ideas.
After a couple hours of class and a few potty breaks, it was time to board the bus again. More resort touring for us.
I have to laugh, because I checked facebook on my phone while we were in transit and some of our fellow TA’s were wondering why we hadn’t updated that morning, and then they realized it was our first “class day”. … So we tried to update a bit more to keep them happy!
Off we go!
I always feel the need to take a picture of the Goofy Bus.
We passed the new pet center and I snapped a couple of quick pictures. I had never seen the pet Center before, but only read about it once for a potential client who wanted to bring her dog along.
Thanks
I am plying around with a couple programs. Some are done in photosho and some are done in photoscape, which you can download for free. I like the photscape flares better, but I have a hard time controlling where to put them.
I have CS3, so not sure how the other programs work. But I always resize my pictures to 4x6 with resoultion 300 pixels per inch. (unless I want a different size) then I do my editing. And then I save that picture in a folder (to be printed later or just saved to disc. Then I add the border. I have it so all I have to do is hit F12 and it applies it. But I had to set it up in actions. But what I did is opened the canvas size and set it to like 35 pixels and a white border. I also checked the relative box and hit OK. Then I reopened and clicked like 80 pixels and the border black, which made it thicker. I don't know if those are the exact numbers ,but something like that. But I recorded it on actions and designated it to F12, so all I have to do is click that.
I then resize it to 640 pixels on the biggest side as this board has a pixel restriction (as do a few others) and then save it again, but not in the same folder, just in my pictures, as I load them online, I will delete them each day.
Make any sense? I played around a lot till I got it. LOL
ummmmm.. no! lol But I will check it out! I love the border on it!! I can actually do quite a bit of editing in iPhoto and I am almost positive I have CS3, maybe! lol I have Adobe Illustrator, indesign, after effect, dreamweaver, photoshop.. but they all say CS5 after them.. I thought I had elements too but My husband may have took it off..
Oh and I am the goody dork too! lol I LOVE all the goodies we got. I still use the college of knowledge bag.. its a nice bag!
__________________
~Leigh ~
Disney Runner and Mom to 2 beautiful boys
ummmmm.. no! lol But I will check it out! I love the border on it!! I can actually do quite a bit of editing in iPhoto and I am almost positive I have CS3, maybe! lol I have Adobe Illustrator, indesign, after effect, dreamweaver, photoshop.. but they all say CS5 after them.. I thought I had elements too but My husband may have took it off..
Oh and I am the goody dork too! lol I LOVE all the goodies we got. I still use the college of knowledge bag.. its a nice bag!
CS5 is the newer version, so you are good. It should pretty much have the same features, plus more. If I get time later some time I can do it completely step by step.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezp
Shame you didn't learn more from the class, but that spread looked good to me.
We did learn some stuff, but honestly, I cruise the boards so much that I knew a lot of the basics. It was mazing how some people didn't though. One lady was supposedly a Disney specialist with another company and she asked about Dixie Landings, which as we know is now Port Orleans.
Looks like breakfast was a pretty nice spread even if the class seemed repetitive!
It was. And class wasn't boring by any means...but like I said, I tend to know and read a lot about Disney already. Disney is always changing things too, so it is good to try and keep up and learn more.
Nice seminar and with breakfast included, a real win win. You seem like a very well educated and helpful TA. Is your agency a local agency or are you part of a national chain?
Great pictures, especially of the castle and the Electrical parade (sorry just catching up after a couple of days)! Now do all travel agents who specialize in Disney go to this class or is it only if they want to learn more about the resort as like a continuing education?
Nice seminar and with breakfast included, a real win win. You seem like a very well educated and helpful TA. Is your agency a local agency or are you part of a national chain?
It was a win win. I think I gained a few pounds on thsi trip and I don't normally do that, but we were really eating all the time. LOL!
My agency is on the internet for the most part. We all work from home, and our owner lives in Idaho. We have a website and facebook pages, plus many of us post about it on facebook as well.
Over this past year, our agency has really picked up.
I don't know if we are allowed to post facebook links, so if we aren't let me know and I'll remove it, but these are my facebook pages (not our agencies page, just me)
Wow! Day 3 you were on the Dream, then AK, then MK? You really covered a lot of ground!
Can't wait to see what resorts you tour today!
YES. it was a very full day. And Day 4 is just as busy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tiggerluv
Great pictures, especially of the castle and the Electrical parade (sorry just catching up after a couple of days)! Now do all travel agents who specialize in Disney go to this class or is it only if they want to learn more about the resort as like a continuing education?
This class is by choice. You do pay to go to it, but for what we did and where we stayed, it was a complete steal. It is like a continueing education, but we don't NEED to do them. it just betters us. They have offered some at Disneyland and on the cruiseline too. Some day I do want to try those as well, but they have to offer them at the right time. Actually one on the Wonder is coming up in Feb and one of our agents is going on that. I actually asked my husband about going, but it just wasn't timing out right and we do have a lot going on this year. (plus he is worried that I am taking more vacations than him. .....not my fault though...I keep inviting him along. LOL)
We entered the Cabin and took a look around. Rita and Tommy split up in different areas so they could explained some of the features as we walked around and looked.
I honestly was not taking pictures of the other agents. LOL! It was just crowded so I didn’t have much choice but to get them in as I was shooting the different things.
I loved the murphey bed.
Back to the bathroom. This was set up much like a mobile home is.