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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Just read everyhting! Sounds like you're going to have a great trip! We'll be there a day and half the same as you, but doesn't look like our paths will cross.
I don’t know how long it took me, but when I was done making our itinerary, I sat down with Lenny to go over it. I told Lenny that this year, he WAS going to give input and not just say "what you planned looks fine, why do you need my input." So what did he do the first time I sat down with him and showed him the itinerary? He said - and in all seriousness - "it looks fine, why do you want to change it?" "Lenny, just look at it and tell my what you think". So he did and finally told me what he thought. I had originally planned on us doing a round of mini golf around 1ish on our arrival day with the thought that our room might not be ready. Lenny didn’t like this - he said it might be way too hot again like it was last year and that we should do it later. Valid point, so I wrote the word time with a bunch of question marks next to mini golf. Males - they are a stupid bunch. Lenny saw this and got mad at me. "Why did you write time? I said nothing about the time, I commented on the temperature." Meanwhile, I was trying to control my temper and I said something (and probably not as nicely) like "Yes, I know you mentioned temperature, but with me writing ‘time’, that is something I can change. If I plan on us going later, it will be cooler. If I write the word temperature with question marks, then I still have mini golf planned at the same time and we might end up not doing it at all because I haven’t marked it at another time." Lenny just didn’t get it and I could have killed him at that point in time. A few minutes and one headache later, I gave up trying to talk to him for the night. We hadn’t even gotten past the first day and I was getting nothing except frustrated.
The next day, having taken Lenny’s concerns into consideration, even though he didn’t think I did, I rewrote some of our itinerary. I changed the time for playing mini golf but left our "activities" for the first day the same, just at different times. The three of us sat down that night and started reading our itinerary. Lenny was okay with the time change for mini golf but then started complaining that Monday was a long day. "That’s too much stuff to do on our first day. I’ll be tired, I don’t think we should stay out so late. I’ll need to be up early the next day and it will be hard. " I kept pointing out that I had scheduled time for him to rest and he just kept giving me answers and I just wanted to smack him again. "I still think it’s late. Just because I lay down doesn’t mean I’ll sleep. I might only sleep 20 minutes so I’ll be tired that late." We weren’t getting anywhere so I just skipped the talk of Monday and went on to Tuesday. This day I figured Lenny would be happy - I had us back at the room by around 8. Nope, this didn’t make Lenny happy either. "Don’t you think that’s kind of early? Shouldn’t we go into a park for a bit?" I was really starting to lose my patience but we pushed on and finished going over everything. I didn’t really get any other comments from Lenny but on the day I have us leaving a park for actual hotel time, Abby almost cried. And on Lenny’s birthday, when I scheduled him a Trails End dinner so he could get his fried chicken? He didn’t seem surprised by that. So for all my hard work trying to come up with a reasonable itinerary for everyone, that I thought would make everyone happy, it wasn’t working. Our night until 10 was too late, but our nights until 8 were too early. Sorry but there’s no middle ground there, especially since the water parks close at 8. I’m wasn’t going to rush around and try to get to a park for 30 to 60 minutes of fun time - it was a waste IMO. So I wasn’t overly happy with Lenny after that.
So I put the itinerary down for the night and the next day, tried to talk to Lenny again. I told him if he wanted less things to do on Monday, then we needed to skip DTD (we planned to hit there for some more pressed pennies). Rainforest Cafe and T-Rex Cafe are not Disney. Yes, they’re on Disney property but they’re not Disney restaurants and I kept telling Lenny we shouldn’t waste the time or the money to get coins that we (at least me and Abby) don’t give two hoots about. I told him I’d rather try to go to Fort Wilderness and get the 3 we missed there instead. At least those are Disney and I said we could even do Trails End for lunch instead of the AS sports food court. Boy oh boy did Lenny like that idea. So I looked into getting a ADR for FW, then changed my mind as I didn’t want to commit to a time we might not be able to make but after asking some questions on the boards, I decided to go ahead and make an ADR anyway. That way, if our timing was right and the restaurant was busy, they wouldn't totally turn us away.
Now I didn’t exactly have to go back to square one, but with Lenny’s complaints I did start thinking again. I had been asking questions about where to watch the fireworks outside of the MK so we could avoid the rush of the crowds leaving. From everyone’s answers, it seemed like going to the Poly would be a good idea. The downside? There was no way we could watch the MSEP then get to the Poly in time for the fireworks. So I reworked our itinerary again. Lenny had said Monday was too late but Tuesday night was too early. So for Monday, I made our day shorter by having us leave the MK after the MSEP and I made Tuesday longer by having us go to the Poly and watching both the EWP and the fireworks. Even though it would be a long day, we would not be getting caught in the crowds leaving the MK, which can easily add one hour onto the day. With this plan, I also had the thought we could repeat our Poly experience on Wednesday if Abby liked the EWP enough.
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So with the itinerary really coming together (in spite of Lenny’s help or lack there of - whatever the case was at any particular time) , I decided to look to adding just one (or two) more things: celebrations. Every time I called Disney, I was asked "what will you be celebrating?" and I always said the same two things: being able to return again so soon and Lenny’s birthday. I never mentioned it but Lenny getting his new job was definitely worth celebrating somehow too. Then I started wondering if Lenny and I should celebrate our anniversary. At first I didn’t think we should. We were married at the end of November so our 10th anniversary was a while ago and our 11th won’t be for a few more months. I mentioned the idea to my friends here then to Lenny and he said "if you want to we can." I just didn’t have any ideas of how to do it. Then I thought Abby deserved a celebration all her own too. I just had to think of something for her. When Abby knows something happens on a particular date - like her birthday - it happens on that date and no other, so celebrating her birthday wasn’t going to happen.
Then I came up with something simple for Abby - she should celebrate "first times." It’s something that she could understand (and probably be willing to celebrate) and as the days go by, it can change and she can celebrate all over again. For example, she’s never seen the MSEP or the EWP. She’s never eaten in the castle and we’ve never taken her to the water parks. All of these will be "firsts" for her (for Lenny too, but he already has his own day).
Then of course, after all of my hemming and hawing of what we could actually do once we got to the parks (I was still unsure of the "first time" celebration and didn’t have a clue of what to do), I just outright asked Abby what she wanted to celebrate when we go to Disney. "Daddy’s new job" was the answer. I then asked her how we should celebrate it and she said "by going on rides" so I guess as usual, I was over thinking something. Instead of KISS (keep it simple stupid), I was making it complicated trying to come up with something.
And with Abby’s answer came the realization that Abby doesn’t care if we celebrate anything at all at Disney. She’s just happy knowing that we’re going and going on rides. And for this year, she has the added excitement of the water parks - those two facts alone will make the trip memorable for her. She doesn’t need parties or cakes or buttons to wear that puts holes in her clothes. Add in the fact that we’re not party people to begin with so trying to come up with a way to celebrate really was making it difficult on me. Our way of celebrating things at home is going out to dinner at an Abby friendly restaurant. Other than that, we rarely eat out. If we want to add a little something extra, we’ll buy a single layer store cake or a cheap Pepperidge Farm cake. When we really want to splurge, we go for the double layer store cake. At Disney, we’ll technically be eating out every single day so IMO that takes the specialness out of any kind of celebration (with the exception of Lenny’s birthday - our ADR’s on that day were chosen specifically for that day). We’re not attention seeking people so the more I thought about it, the more it just didn’t feel right to me to wear buttons for events that were not occurring during our vacation. So I changed my mind (yet again) and decided not to celebrate anything at Disney except Lenny’s birthday. He will wear his birthday pin and whoever notices, notices. Whoever doesn’t, he won’t point it out.
With that decision behind me, things really were shaping up and falling into place. Until Lenny and Abby started mentioning other things they wanted to do that is.
First of all, Lenny said he wanted to do Lights, Motor, Action this year. It’s a stunt show - I don’t care for stunt shows and for the last 3 trips I’ve been able to avoid this one. Let’s face it, I find them totally boring. I don’t care how movies are made and I’m pretty sure Abby doesn’t either. Really, it was only last year Abby told me she didn’t want to wait for Fantasmic, that she wanted to ride the rides. I don’t think she’ll want to take the time out to see this show this year. I did have her watch it on Youtube and she said she didn’t like it but Abby being Abby, between now and then she’ll probably change her mind again. So I wanted to include that in our itinerary. If it’s in there and we change our mind, that’s great, it means extra time for something else. If I don’t put it in and it’s a last minute addition, chances are it’s going to interfere with something else (a dinner ADR, time at a water park, etc). So with the "new" attraction suggestions, it was time once again to figure out our itinerary. I used Steve Soares’ site to figure out times for shows (and the week I used the park times were most similar to what they will be when we go) and the new itinerary went quickly and smoothly. It didn’t seem like there was anything else to add and when I was done, everyone seemed happy with it.
I do have to mention here as a side note that every time I went over what I thought was a finalized itinerary, I went over it with Lenny and Abby. Every time Abby asked what CRT ADR meant I just kept telling her it was our breakfast reservation. One night she got very insistent. "Mommy, if CP means Crystal Palace, what does CRT stand for?" Not wanting Abby to know what it truly meant, I told her it stood for Cosmic Rays of Tomorrowland. Abby thought it over, said it aloud then accepted it. I’m just hoping that when we actually get there, she’ll want to eat in the castle and not insist that we have to go to Cosmic Rays like I told her.
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. We also have never been the mid day break type, so I'll be curious to see how it goes for you guys....
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Disney Magic - Oct 2015
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