"I am freaking out" Trip Report UPDATED 5/14 - Page 5 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Our first ride was Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin which is one of our favorite rides. There was no wait which was a plus. All of the people in my family kicked my butt. I would prefer not to share my score. I did awful. The person at the end of the ride who stands there and says "Please watch you step. Exit to the right" saw my score and asked if this was my first time playing it. I told her no, that it happened to be my 6th time. She sighed and sayed "OHHHH" How embarrassing! Our next ride was the Blue Line monorail thing. It goes through Space Mountain, Buzz Lightyear and goes around Tomorrowland. We like that one too. We also needed to get out of the rain. But it turns out that when we got off, it was raining even harder. So we ran to a store to buy some kind of rain gear. $50 and 7 ponchos later, my mom, brother and grandpa wanted to ride Space Mountain. So while they did that, my grandma, my brother and I headed over to "It's a Small World". On the way, the parade started. So we had to go the whole way around the parade to get to Fantasyland. We pretty much walked onto that one. Oh and just so you know we didn't ditch my dad. He needed to make a phone call. The we made our way to Liberty Square for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. But when we finally got over there, it was pouring! So we decided not to ride BTMR. Instead we headed to the Hall of Presidents. Now, we knew my 6 year old brother would get bored, but he actually found the Auto-Animatronic Presidents quite interesting. In fact, he yelled in the middle of the show, "Hey! That's Barack Obama!" Then I tried to take a picture and my flash went of! Oh no! Then we went to a small snack stand and got hot dogs. Our last ride was the Haunted Mansion. My brother chickened out so my mom stayed off with him. But I can't blame him. He's only 6. That is one of my favorites. On the way out of MK, I saw a really cute topiary.
I almost forgot something! We also waited 1 hour for Peter Pans Flight. Reason we did this?? It was pouring down rain and it was so hard that it almost hurt. But the ride was a little lame for the wait. We just wanted to be inside. When we came out, I was surprised to see a 5 minute wait at Dumbo. We got in line and when we got to the front, we saw A) people walking off with soggy pants B) soggy dumbo seats. So we left with all the other soggy riders.
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Sorry it has taken me so long to get back. I have been pretty sick lately so I have mostly been in bed. But now I can continue with my trip report! OK so when we arrived at Epcot, it was still raining very hard, so we went straight to Spaceship Earth. We have never done this before (it has always been closed for refurbishment on our previous trips) We had a blast on that (and let me say my future is very bright) Tip for Spaceship Earth: When your screen asks you where you're from, put in a different place from where you actually live. I put in that I live in South Africa and it was cool to see my face at the end of the ride zoom to South Africa! Next, we made our way over to World Showcase because we had dinner reservations coming up. We looked around for a while and made our way over to one of our favorite restaurants in Epcot: Teppan Edo. When we walked in, we were the dripping wet people wearing ponchos and water shoes. We probably looked like a bunch of slobs (especially me after my hair dried! It was so curly and messy!) We were seated alone since we had such a large group (normally you get seated with another family) I love watching the chefs prepare your meal. They are so funny and are very entertaining. Not once did my 6 year old brother say "I'm bored". I had the Chinese Veggie meal because I wasn't to awful hungry. We also ordered a plate of California rolls. YUM!
Not the best picture of my food, but a picture is a picture!
By the time we were finished eating, I think we were about done for the day. We made our way back to the exit and went to catch a monorail to the TTC, then to the Polynesian were our car was parked. I love the long ride from Epcot to the TTC. The monorail was very warm, I was very wet and we were freezing. Once we got back to our hotel, the people that worked at the JW Marriott just so conveniently waiting for the people who worked at the Ritz Carlton next door for some sort of meeting. We walked in looking like a bunch of wet, unorganized slobs and they were standing there all dressed up in uniform and all touched up and, well, the opposite of us. I wasn't to happy about that. I could hear the snickering.
Today the weather was... COLD, WET, RAINY
We tried: Spaceship Earth
The result was: AWESOME!
I'm so glad you enjoyed SE. I have always enjoyed that ride. Sorry you were wet and dripping. Not a good way to spend the day. But, hey! You were at Disney!
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To start the morning, we needed to head to the outlets to get some coats. We were expecting warmer weather and left our coats back in Pennsylvania! So we searched the whole outlet center before finding a coat for me. And thats it. So while I had a windbreaker and was warm, everyone else froze because they couldn't find any! We finally left the outlets and headed to Hollywood Studios at 11. When we got there, we bolted to Toy Story Mania, our favorite ride of all time! The wait time said 50 minutes, but from previous experiences, we knew it wasn't going to be that long. It only took 20 minutes. But I love the theming of the queue area. It is very detailed and Mr. Potato Head is very entertaining!
I have to say that I am better at this game than I am at Buzz Lightyear. My score for Toy Story Mania was 97,900! I was very proud of myself and my grandma (who was riding with me) was not happy with her score (19,560) Her scoring accuracy was 70% and mine was 30%. She was trying harder to hit the targets and I was just flinging away! But we still had a lot of fun. Next, we headed to the Studio Backlot Tour. That is always a favorite of mine, especially the part that simulates the earthquake and you get a little wet. Then my 6 year old brother got on his knees and pleaded that we go to the Honey I Shrunk the Kids Playground. So we gave in after he started tearing up. We were in there for 30 minutes and then we lost him. I was crawling through all the tunnels calling his name and eventually found him with some other kid talking about Pokemon cards! So we left because we warned him about wandering off like that. Plus there was just so many people there and my dad was ready to rip his hair out! We decided to go to Muppet Vision 3D next because we have never seen it. It was OK but I wouldn't see it again. My grandpa fell asleep during it and we had to shake him awake at the end. Next was Star Tours. I decided to pass on this one (as well as my dad) so we went to get lunch while everyone else rode. We got corn dogs and nachos at Herbies hot dog stand (outside of Lights, Motors, Action I think) VERY GOOD!! We recommend them! To end the day, we decided to see Lights, Motors, Action (which to be honest with you, I am not a big fan of.) I am a major girly girl and could care less about cars. I just watched the Tower of Terror in the distance go up and down and up and down.
Next: Pics of Lights, Motors, Action and The Downtown Disney Nightlife!
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All of the people in my family kicked my butt. I would prefer not to share my score.
I did awful. The person at the end of the ride who stands there and says "Please watch you step. Exit to the right" saw my score and asked if this was my first time playing it. I told her no, that it happened to be my 6th time. She sighed and sayed "OHHHH" How embarrassing!
Our next ride was the Blue Line monorail thing. It goes through Space Mountain, Buzz Lightyear and goes around Tomorrowland. We like that one too. We also needed to get out of the rain. But it turns out that when we got off, it was raining even harder. So we ran to a store to buy some kind of rain gear. $50 and 7 ponchos later, my mom, brother and grandpa wanted to ride Space Mountain. So while they did that, my grandma, my brother and I headed over to "It's a Small World". On the way, the parade started. So we had to go the whole way around the parade to get to Fantasyland. We pretty much walked onto that one. Oh and just so you know we didn't ditch my dad. He needed to make a phone call. The we made our way to Liberty Square for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. But when we finally got over there, it was pouring! So we decided not to ride BTMR. Instead we headed to the Hall of Presidents. Now, we knew my 6 year old brother would get bored, but he actually found the Auto-Animatronic Presidents quite interesting. In fact, he yelled in the middle of the show, "Hey! That's Barack Obama!" Then I tried to take a picture and my flash went of! Oh no!
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We finally left the outlets and headed to Hollywood Studios at 11. When we got there, we bolted to Toy Story Mania, our favorite ride of all time! The wait time said 50 minutes, but from previous experiences, we knew it wasn't going to be that long. It only took 20 minutes. But I love the theming of the queue area. It is very detailed and Mr. Potato Head is very entertaining!
Susan
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