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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Well hopefully I'll get lucky and the harness will work for DS when he's 18 months. What did you do when DS refused to wear it? Had he already outgrown the "run away" phase. Good luck finding a rain cover! I don't know if I've ever seen one for a sit and stand. Enjoy your trip!
If Ds refused to wear he had to hold someone's hand - still does when it's really crowded; otherwise he had to go in the stroller which wasn't always fun either, but once we got him in and moving he was fine.
I found a rain cover for a double stroller that didn't fit exactly but it worked - and boy did we need it!
Airlines can be such a pain sometimes. Glad you got what you originally wanted!
P.S. that dinner looked Delish! I've always thoughts about doing something like that, but then I think about all the work and just don't. Maybe I'll try it out soon.
Glad you got everything worked out with the flights, even if it was a pain in the patootie! I've never heard of a flight changing by such a big margin. I've certainly had them change our times by 15, 20 or even 30 minutes, but not 2 hours!!
I hadn't heard of a flight changing by more than 30 min either, but it worked out in my favor.
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Originally Posted by Colexis Mom
What a great meal you had! Everything looks delicious! Congrats on being able to change your flights without the fees!
Thanks!
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Originally Posted by disneycruising
I love all your plans.
Thank you. I just hope that the trip goes as well as the plans. With a little one you never know how the days are going to be.
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Originally Posted by Cam22
The Disney dinner items all look very delicious! Glad you were able to change the flights for free, too!
Thanks. The dinner was really fun and tasty.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OhToodles!
If Ds refused to wear he had to hold someone's hand - still does when it's really crowded; otherwise he had to go in the stroller which wasn't always fun either, but once we got him in and moving he was fine.
I found a rain cover for a double stroller that didn't fit exactly but it worked - and boy did we need it!
Airlines can be such a pain sometimes. Glad you got what you originally wanted!
P.S. that dinner looked Delish! I've always thoughts about doing something like that, but then I think about all the work and just don't. Maybe I'll try it out soon.
We're going to use the harness this weekend at the Apple Orchard and see how it goes. Cam refuses to hold hands with people and sometimes getting him in the stroller is quite the chore so I hope the harness works out. Glad you found the rain cover! We got one and it fits. The gate check bag we bought is a tight fit, but it will work. I'm actually glad the airline was a pain because I got a better flight! And you should try out a Disney dinner! It was a lot of fun, but you are so right about the amount of work. It was a lot, but delicious.
Dinner looks like it was delish! I think your soup turned out "chunkier" because the Disney recipe doesn't tell you to run it through a strainer (chinoise--yeah french!) before adding the cheese! (It will take out the veggies which are just for flavoring and any lumps that might have occurred during the cooking of the roux) The recipe I have also calls for a dice when it probably should have called for a mince. I used a lot of trial and error and chef advice on several tries! I love the way your grapefruit cake turned out--I'm going to have to try that one, but I'm not much of a baker!
Congrats on getting the flights changed! I love getting to Disney earlier!
Dinner looks like it was delish! I think your soup turned out "chunkier" because the Disney recipe doesn't tell you to run it through a strainer (chinoise--yeah french!) before adding the cheese! (It will take out the veggies which are just for flavoring and any lumps that might have occurred during the cooking of the roux) The recipe I have also calls for a dice when it probably should have called for a mince. I used a lot of trial and error and chef advice on several tries! I love the way your grapefruit cake turned out--I'm going to have to try that one, but I'm not much of a baker!
Congrats on getting the flights changed! I love getting to Disney earlier!
Thanks for reading. I'll have to try running the soup through a strainer next time. I don't really know the difference between a dice and a mince. I'm not the most domestic person out there.
So my updates have been few and far between. But that's because life has been so busy! I started a new job this week so I was busy dealing with finishing things up at my old place of employment and getting ready to start at my new job. I'm finally at a point where things are starting to settle down. Well as settled as they're going to get with a rambunctious toddler in the house!
Initially I thought that if I got this new job and a raise I would upgrade to a moderate or a deluxe, but DH have talked about it and we've decided to get Lasik instead. So we're staying with POP. I'm excited to try it, but I'm just not so sure about the "loud" decor. I'm sure DS will love it though. I'm sure it will be a lovely trip regardless of where we end up staying.
I recently went through our summer clothes and put them away for the winter (only to have it warm up again here!). I put some short sleeve shirts and shorts aside for our trip though! I know it will most likely be cool in January in FL, but I'm thinking dressing in layers is a good idea. And bringing some shorts isn't going to hurt anything. Maybe we'll get lucky and we'll have some warm weather. Or maybe we'll be ready to put shorts on in 40 degree weather because it's -20 back home. I don't know, but I put them aside just the same. It will be interesting to see what size clothes DS will be wearing at the time of our trip. Hopefully I'll have enough clothes for him.
I've been looking into getting some kind of gift basket for MIL to be delivered to our room or a restaurant. I just realized she's turning the big 6-0 about a week after we get home. So I want to do something extra special for her to celebrate it. We've already got lunch at Le Cellier, but I'm thinking a gift basket might be nice.
I'm also thinking about doing some sort of countdown calendar. We're creeping up on double digits and I'd like to give something like that a try. I'm not sure that DS would "get it" though so maybe it would just be a waste of time.
Well I guess that wasn't much of an update at all, but I felt like I should check in on this PTR instead of just neglecting it.
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WDW - August 1997 Off Property
WDW - January 2005 AKL
WDW - May 2006 Pop Century
WDW- november-dec 2007 pop century
WDW- dec/jan 2009/2010 pop century
WDW- oct/nov 2012 art of animation
WDW- sept 2013 port Orleans riverside
WDW- july 2015 beach club
Thanks! I've just got to decide where to get a gift basket from. Disney Florist? Some other company? Bring my own? Decisions, decisions... MIL isn't very "Disney" so a basket filled with Mickey stuff probably isn't the best.
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Originally Posted by shnewell
Layers is definitely a good idea for Disney in January!
I'll be sure to bring plenty of layers then! Anything is better than Minnesota in January so I'm sure I'll be happy with the weather.
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Originally Posted by bsblady01
more please
Thanks for reading!
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Originally Posted by ilovedisney247
Layers are a great idea at Disney during the winter--I had one day last Dec that started out at 40 degrees and ended up at 72!
40 in the morning and 72 in the afternoon? Sounds like what we've got in Minnesota right now. I'll have to pack just about everything we own.
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Originally Posted by Colexis Mom
It'll be here before you know it! Good luck with the countdown!
It is creeping up on me. Although I'm quite impatient about it. Hopefully the busy holidays will distract me!
We have hit double digits! We're currently 99 days out!
I'm still looking into what to do about MILs birthday while on our trip. I'm looking into gift baskets and such, but I also just found the cake thread on these boards and now I'm getting more and more ideas... I think this board ends up costing me a lot of money
Cameron and I did end up making a count down calendar the other day. It's nothing fancy just a simple 100 day count down that I made with some 10x10 card stock and a black sharpie. It's rather pathetic when you compare it to what some of you crafty ladies do, but it will work to keep us excited for our trip. I found some Mickey and Friends, Cars and Toy Story stickers at Walgreens to use to mark off the days. I'm sure Cam will have a blast sticking the stickers on the calendar. The only thing is I forgot to mark off day 100 yesterday I spent all this time making the calendar (ok it only took like 20 min) and forgot to start it! So we're already behind. We'll have to mark off two days today.
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Congrats on being able to change your flights without the fees! 
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Pixie Dust
Glad you were able to change the flights for free, too! 
Disney Magic - Oct 2015
I spent all this time making the calendar (ok it only took like 20 min) and forgot to start it! So we're already behind. We'll have to mark off two days today.
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