Most Everyone's Mad Here TR COMPLETED - Page 6 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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What wonderful character photos - I them! Superb photos of the parade as well... I think we need to see that on our next visit. How lucky you were able to get a walk-up!
Thanks! It's a very cute parade so you'll definitely have to see it! I can't believe we were able to get a piece of curb for the parade considering how close to the start we sat down- we were down by the front of the park though so perhaps it is the least busy there since it's at the end of the route .
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We were excited for today to come for several reasons, the biggest of all being that Tyler was arriving this day!
We had early ressies at 1900 PF so we were up with the alarm at around 6:30am. We knew we would be driving over to GF so at least that allowed us to sleep in a bit longer than if we would be relying on the busses.
When Stella woke up, she was happy as a clam! She obviously was excited that her brother was arriving today too! (via Instagram)
As we were getting ready, we called the in-laws to see how far they were away. We anticipated that they would arrive around noon based on their goal of leaving at 6am CT. Well, they had some snafus and got on the road a bit later than they had hoped too.
The roads were very quiet heading over to GF- most of the cars we saw we thought were probably CM's coming to prepare for the guests that day. We very easily breezed through the MK entrance gates and following the signs to GF. Once there, the gate attendant told us that if we planned to leave our car at GF after our meal, they prefer that we use valet parking so that we aren't occupying space in their self-park lot.
Don't have to twist my arm to valet park so with that, we were pretty quickly entering the GF lobby. This resort is so lovely, I could just sit and enjoy the atmosphere for hours here!
We arrived before the restaurant had even opened up so we had a few minutes to wait and park the stroller before checking in. Once the doors opened though, us and about 5 other families were ready to check in. After doing so, we were immediately escorted to the line to have our photograph taken and then ushered over to the double doors. After a few more minutes, lots of CM's had gathered and they selected a very cute young lady to "open" the restaurant.
We were seated quickly in the main dining room about 4 tables away from the buffet... Our server promptly brought us water and and advised is to go ahead and make a trip to the buffet before the first characters came out, as we would be the 4th table or so to be greeted. I went first and got plates for myself and Stella and then Allen went. We had plenty of time to dig in before the character started making their rounds.
OK, Photobucket is not cooperating at all so I'll be back to finish this update
I'm back and Photobucket seems to be working for the moment....
Returning to our breakfast at 1900 PF:
Caption "Mom, I'm eating- no more pictures!"
The characters started arriving after we had been eating for about 10 minutes or so. Please not Stella's failure to look at the camera- at all!
Oh that Tiger, he's a silly one!
After Mary Poppins, Stella's interest and patience were waining so she looks less than thrilled with Alice and Mad Hatter.
Alice liked her shirt- I couldn't hear exactly what she said but she pointed herself out in Stella's shirt:
Our server picked up on Stella's deteriorating attitude and promptly brought us the check. Between that, Allen took a picture of Stella and I (via Instagram):
With the bill settled, we packed up and headed out.
Here's a review of our breakfast at 1900 PF:
Food- 9: We thought everything we tried was really good. The buffet offerings were tasty and plentiful. They had an amazing dill spread for the bagels that I have never had on property and it was enough to make me want to eat about 10 bagels! They also had some deliciously fresh salmon (which I'm a sucker for and any place that has it earns lots of points in my book!) The only reason I'm not giving a 10 for 10 here is Allen had an issue with the made to order omlets. Truthfully, I think it wasn't the staff's fault because line was just nutty for them but some how his omlet ended up having some fixin's that he didn't request so it mostly went uneaten.
Service- 10: Our server was fantastic! She did such a nice job and she was so prompt and proactive with our bill when she noticed Stella starting to get antsy. I also thought the character handlers here did a particularly nice job managing the guests. There seemed to be a lot of guests just walking up to see the characters (I think because we were seated so close to the buffet that when the characters where in our area, they were like magnets to guests walking to the buffet.) Each time though I noticed the handlers politely let them know that all of the characters would greet each and every table.
Atmosphere- 10: To me, there is just something magical about this restaurant. It's just lovely and I enjoyed our breakfast a lot.
Overall- 9: We will definitely book meals here in the future. I think this is one of the best characters meals in terms of value. Breakfast is so affordable- lots of food, lots of characters!
Since we valeted the car, our plan was to ride the monorail over to MK. We strapped Stella in for the ride over. There were very few people waiting with us.
Once we arrived at MK, our first stop was the Firehouse to get more Sorcerer of the MK cards for Tyler. After doing that, Allen decided to go into the Barber Shop to see if he could get a haircut. Amazingly, they were able to take him after about a 10 minute wait. There was 2 young boys getting their 1st hair cut in the chairs when we arrived and neither of them were happy about it.
Allen was told that he if made it through without , he would get a Mickey sticker. It was touch and go for a while but he did make it without shedding any tears
While Allen was getting his haircut, Stella was playing with his lanyard. We were sitting on the benches next to the chair that Allen was in and I looked to make sure that there was a ledge between the bench and the window in case Stella would drop the lanyard. Well, I didn't look far enough because I thought it was completely solid and it wasn't. Stella dropped the lanyard, including our AP's and KTTWs, down the smallest of spaces between the bench and the wall.
I tried looking around to see what I could use to get it but they didn't seem to have anything. The CM had to call for maintenance, which she said can take between 20 minutes and 4 hours....ugh! We decided we would just come back after a while to check. Before heading down Main Street I decided I need to take a bathroom break and Allen waited with Stella outside. As I was in the restroom, he noticed maintenance arrive so when I came out of the bathroom, we headed back over to the barber shop to wait for them to retrieve our lanyard.
With the lanyard safely back in our possession, we headed down Main Street. We didn't really have any plan, so we took a left at Casey's towards Adventureland so that we could make a stop at the baby center for a diaper change.
Stella at the fountain outside the baby center:
Then we stumbled across Peter Pan, with a fairly short line. We decided to go ahead and wait to see him. Now Stella loves Jake and she knows who Peter is so I thought there was a good chance she would be excited to meet Peter....
Nope.
Even though she wouldn't even so much as look at him, he was very chatty! He asked her if he could be her big brother, lol!! It was so funny (to Allen and me anyway!)
After our meet with Peter, we headed back through Adventureland. Jungle Cruise had a very short wait time posted, perhaps 10 minutes?, so we decided to go that a go.
Waiting to board (confession: I have an obscene number of pictures very similar to this of Stella. I love close close close ups- super close. I love seeing the details of someone's face and every session I ever shoot includes images just like this! )
As usual, there were lots of great things to see (even though this one makes me a little sad)
Our skipper (is that what they are called? I can't even really remember!) was very dry, which I really enjoy. Poor guy didn't have a whole boat of people who got it though so Allen and I tried to give loud laughs as much as we could without looking too foolish!
Great breakfast at 1900 Park Fare and your pictures are terrific, too! So glad Allen managed to get his Mickey sticker! Isn't it amazing how kids can find a way to lose things down tiny spaces! So glad they were able to retrieve them for you.
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them! Superb photos of the parade as well... I think we need to see that on our next visit. How lucky you were able to get a walk-up! 
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Our server promptly brought us water and 
and advised is to go ahead and make a trip to the buffet before the first characters came out, as we would be the 4th table or so to be greeted. I went first and got plates for myself and Stella and then Allen went. We had plenty of time to dig in before the character started making their rounds.
Stella dropped the lanyard, including our AP's and KTTWs, down the smallest of spaces between the bench and the wall.
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