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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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It looks like a wonderful place. I bet the girls loved it there!
The girls had a blast
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cam22
The resort looks like a fun place.
It was fun, I just wish they had more to do. A lazy river would have been nice.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lindawdw
The water park does seem kind of small from your pictures but I'm glad the girls had a great time!
Yes it really was pretty small but it worked for one night.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mommapants
Evan loves those types of indoor water parks. They are so noisy. We have passes for the summer for a local one but has been so crowded we haven't gone more than one or 2 times
I hate when they are super crowded. That can really make or break your stay.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilsEagles08
It looks like a small water park but it reminds me of CoCo Key Resort here in NJ. It looks like the girls had a good time thou!
Is it owned by Cedar Fairs? It could be the same "chain".
There were a few places to get food near the lobby. I know one was a buffet and the others were more counter service. The prices were not reasonable in my opinion and I heard some other families gripe about food prices over the course of our stay. There was a quick serve place in near the water park area as well.
At some point we headed to the room to figure out what we were doing for dinner. Skip was first to say he wasn’t going to another steak place. LOL! Fine with me. We all agreed pizza sounded good.
Now Skip remembers several years ago…I am thinking before Claire was born..of us going to a Pizza Hut in the area. It was exclusively a buffet and kind of pricey but it was right near the Causeway to Cedar Point. I do not even know if this Pizza Hut is still in existence or not and if it was, my guess is it is only open during the summer. I asked Siri for nearby pizza places and this Pizza Hut did not show up. We probably argued about the fact that it wasn’t there anymore for 10 minutes. He couldn’t get past it for some reason.
Finally I said these are the options to choose from. And then I went to their sites to read menus.
We settled on the Brick Oven Bistro which looked to be about a mile or so down the road.
It was a small place and pretty busy but we got seated right away.
We ordered 2 pizzas and these were the best pizzas I have EVER had. Thin crust, fresh ingredients…..it was like heaven. Haley can be pretty picky and she even said this was the best pizza she had ever had.
We had left overs and we boxed them up but they had cheesecake on the menu too so Skip and I got one to share and Claire and Haley shared a piece as well. Again it was VERY good.
I stupidly did not take a single picture during dinner.
Now I will tell you a little more about our hotel stay. Our room was in a wing that was kind of further away from the main area, which was really no issue…..however it seemed that many of our neighbors were less than desirable. It appeared that many in our hall were there as a family group….or it could have been 2 different family groups. Every time I went in the hall there was one adult gal who would go from door to door knocking to talk to family members. No big deal right? Well she was a loud talker and she just didn’t seem to have a care in the world. Also the kids, when not at the water park had the run of the hall.
When I had walked down to the water park on my own after organizing the room, 3 people walked out of a room and one blew smoke in the others face and they all laughed. The hotel, like most, has a no smoking policy. In fact, Ohio has a no smoking indoors law. I thought at first it could be from an e-cigarette, but it had a smell…if you know what I mean. Now it still could be one of those fancy taste e-cigarettes, but I am thinking it was something a bit stronger.
We also noticed earlier that a wedding reception was going on there in one of the convention type rooms near the water park. Again, I had no issues with that. I do think the wedding party probably got some of the more prime spot rooms, but that’s ok. Really the hotel wasn’t that big.
While we were getting ready for dinner we noticed a lot of thumping of music. Skip commented on how he was surprised we could hear the reception music from where our room was. I wasn’t so sure it was from that. I even questioned if it was one of our neighbors. I also went out to our screened porch and tried to listen to the direction of that hall but didn’t hear anything really. But we could see the back side of the water park area from our room and it had a lot of noises just from that….machine noises…..I assume pumping water and generating the waves for the wave pool.
When we got back from dinner the boom boom thump thump was still going on. I believe I took the girls back for another quick swim before calling it a night.
Once back in the room it was just annoying hearing this music. We could tell the melody of the music, just not the words. I was becoming convinced it was the room next to us. I felt the wall and it even kind of had a thump to it. I went in the bathroom to listen and it seemed even louder.
We all settled in bed and it was getting really annoying. On top of that the bed was lumpy and small. It felt like something was poking in my back and also it had the big dip in the middle.
I had had it and I put some clothes on and said I was going to the desk to complain. I think it was around 10:30 or so at that point. The girls were all excited to see what I was going to say and both decided to walk to the desk with me and they didn’t care that they were in their jammies.
As we walked out our room door I stopped and listened to the room next to us and it was definitely music coming from them. The door was vibrating and it was VERY loud.
We marched to the desk and the staff was very nice. I told them the room number of the music lovers and they said they would tell them to turn it down.
I also told them about the bed and how we had paid for a queen bed and this obviously wasn’t one. She told me it indeed was a queen but I was not the first person to complain about the size. She says she really doesn’t know, but it appears their queen beds are not standard queen bed size. At least I wasn’t alone in this. She did credit our account the difference between a double and queen bed, which wasn’t a lot but was a nice gesture.
With that we headed back to our “rockin” room. About 10 minutes later we heard a knock on the neighbor’s door and the music went down. Then we heard muffled voices and the music went back up for a few minutes then off. AHHHH! 5 minutes later it was back up. Skip started humming the music and we all just laughed. I gave them about another 10 minutes then called down to the front desk again to let them know the music was back up. 5 minutes later it went off for good. At this time it was now about 11:15. I guess they got tired. LOL.
Needless to say we probably won’t be coming back to Castaway Bay in the future. The staff was great and friendly but the beds just won’t cut it for us. And though all the other issues were not the fault of the hotel, we just would rather try something else in the future.
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I was up pretty early…and not only because I normally get up early but because the bed was just awful.
I headed down and got everyone a donut and some milk and brought it back to the room. We promised the girls some swimming time today but I decided I was done. Yesterday was enough for me. Skip had said last night he would go but he changed his mind this morning. One thing about Skip….on the day we are to leave…if driving…he wants to leave immediately and it drives me crazy!!! I told him we were not leaving early at all.
So I took the girls swimming and I don’t remember what Skip did, probably slept longer.
I was actually just sitting reading my phone and looking up stuff. When Skip came to relieve me I went back and packed the suitcases up and got the girls clothes out for the day. They weren’t too far behind me and said they had done all they wanted and we could go. We got the luggage trolley and hauled all the bags outside. It was much cooler today unfortunately.
And then we made the drive home. We talked about the fun we had and for some reason Haley brought up something she had googled awhile back. It was the worst amusement park ever and she was telling stories about that she read. So I googled it on my phone. It was called Action Park and basically the owner allowed employees to come up with ideas and then build it. It was seriously the funniest thing ever as I read stories from people who visited as kids. People got hurt ALL the time. Now that isn’t funny…but the fact that they kept going back over and over. It totally sounded like something Skip and his brothers would make.
Here is one of the links I found and read from and we were laughing so hard….yes I do feel bad for the people that got hurt and even a few died….but the fact that someone made these rides and it was legal to let people ride them is just amazing.
Go ahead and google this place….story after story will come up.
As we got back into Toledo we did stop and have lunch at Applebees. It really hit the spot but we were all now super tired and couldn’t wait to get back home. Once we did get home we dropped Skip off and I took Haley home and then Claire and I came home and crashed for a nap. We’re a wild bunch!!
And that’s our Rubber Factory story. It was a really nice little get away and it was so nice to just escape from our normal days for just a weekend.
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So sorry about your loud neighbors! We had the same experience in Aruba two years ago and I felt like I slept very little the whole week because of the loud talking and music in the next room! You are always so entertaining with your writing and your pictures (especially of the house tour) were fabulous!!! Are you planning on writing anything for your cruise to Alaska?
Sorry about the rude neighbors. Thanks for sharing your trip with us.
Liz
Thanks for reading
Quote:
Originally Posted by lindawdw
So sorry about your loud neighbors! We had the same experience in Aruba two years ago and I felt like I slept very little the whole week because of the loud talking and music in the next room! You are always so entertaining with your writing and your pictures (especially of the house tour) were fabulous!!! Are you planning on writing anything for your cruise to Alaska?
It's crazy how some people only think of themselves.
I do plan on writing...but it will take me forever i am sure. But it's such a new experience I will be fun to write about.
I really have enjoyed this TR. We have driven thru that area on our way to & from other events. Now I know of something interesting to see that could get us off the highway for a few hours. Thanks
I really have enjoyed this TR. We have driven thru that area on our way to & from other events. Now I know of something interesting to see that could get us off the highway for a few hours. Thanks
Thanks for reading. I really was happy to find out about this place. It made for such a nice day.
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I bet the girls loved it there! 
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