Me, Muffin, Disney World, and Universal - Page 7 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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So when I last left off, Muffin was doing his normal let’s shake up our Orlando trip spiel............
I didn’t say anything except that we should talk about it when we got home. So.............
We got home, unpacked our groceries and sat down to talk about this trip. In a very pleasant way, I told him that normal people book a vacation and stick with it.
I had a funny feeling that he was going to throw the Very Merry Christmas Cruise under the bus, so I took a stab and I asked Muffin why he was so intent on cancelling the cruise. I also reminded him that it was his idea to begin with.
He told me there were several reasons he was cooling off on the Very Merry Christmas cruise:
He told me that first of all, the main reason that he suggested the cruise was to get in some Disney Christmas, which we love, since we wouldn’t be staying at WDW this year. Then he said that he started thinking that Nassau was not our favorite port and admitted that even though the cruise was basically free for us, the booking price came out to over 700 bucks a night, which was pretty steep.
He also said the thing that bothered him most and he wasn't sure why was the 150 bucks we had to pay for the Disney shuttle.
He said that as soon as I told him about using some of our winnings from our last cruise to purchase an AP he started thinking that we could get more bang for our buck in a different way.
So what the heck was he talking about?!?!
Well! Muffin went on to say that instead of the Dream, we could spend four nights at WDW before USF and stay at the resort of my choice. He said that his show would definitely be earlier next year. He had just found out that the dates would be November 5th-7th and proposed that he would also get an AP, which would become worth it if we switched over to this plan.
Muffin said that he thought we would get more Christmas out of Disney by staying in the park instead of going on a cruise. He reasoned that we could also catch the tail end of the F&WF and he just felt like that was a better option. He told me to just think about it and if I wanted to keep things as they were, he would offer no complaint and just wanted to make a case.
Man, you’re going to cancel the cruise, aren’t you? After our last rip to WDW, we’ve decided we prefer the cruise to the parks. The parks are getting so crowded, and there’s so much more planning required. But that’s us. We'll do us, you do you. I am sure you’ll enjoy whatever you select!
Man, you’re going to cancel the cruise, aren’t you? After our last rip to WDW, we’ve decided we prefer the cruise to the parks. The parks are getting so crowded, and there’s so much more planning required. But that’s us. We'll do us, you do you. I am sure you’ll enjoy whatever you select!
I think you're going to cancel too, but honestly we're with Colleen. We've decided we much prefer cruising as well for exactly the same reason - the parks are getting too crowded now, even in supposed "quiet" times of the year.
However, if you do go with the parks, I know you'll have a ball.
Well I have a feeling you go with Muffin’s plan, and with you both having AP’s I bet you somehow get an extra trip out of them.
That answer will be coming right up!
Quote:
Originally Posted by cubfancolleen
Man, you’re going to cancel the cruise, aren’t you? After our last rip to WDW, we’ve decided we prefer the cruise to the parks. The parks are getting so crowded, and there’s so much more planning required. But that’s us. We'll do us, you do you. I am sure you’ll enjoy whatever you select!
I don't disagree with you, Colleen, especially about the crowds, but we also love the parks, especially in the fall. Also, having travelled much on RCCL, we are thinking we will stick with that line for cruising and enjoy WDW as is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jandsdennis
Sounds like a WDW vacation is on board versus the cruise.
Bon Voyage to the cruise! You all are out of there!
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezp
I think you're going to cancel too, but honestly we're with Colleen. We've decided we much prefer cruising as well for exactly the same reason - the parks are getting too crowded now, even in supposed "quiet" times of the year.
However, if you do go with the parks, I know you'll have a ball.
We love both!! And we do realize that the quiet days are gone.
I really need to say here that I was pretty happy with our plan and I was just about to say so when I decided to look at the resorts for November from the 8th-12th. The prices per night are still at rack rate, of course, and I told Muffin that everything was still pretty expensive, but he pointed out that since the cruise was already paid off, even without any discounts, we were well ahead of the game, knowing we would get all of that money to apply towards our resort stay.
Honestly, even the Grand Floridian came out to less per night then the cruise so, of course, I started to waiver...........
Thoughts of food booths and Christmas decorations were filling up my head and I couldn’t make them go away!! We truly do love WDW this time of year!!
Then Muffin threw in that we could go to MVMCP again, which we both love! I looked up dates for this year and sure enough, there are MVMCPs scheduled on November 8th, 9th and 12th.
Finally he said if we could get the rate down to around 400 a night, we could make it 5 nights instead of 4 and that was just entirely too enticing of an offer! So it appears we are once again putting a Disney Cruise on hold, maybe for a long time! While I am slightly sad about his prospect, I am way more excited about our new plan!! Anyway!
I called DCL and cancelled the cruise for a full refund. We are presently booked in at the Beach Club for a 5 night stay from November 8th-13th, since this is currently the cheapest option. We are assuming that either with an AP discount or a fall deal we will be able to get within the per night price point to accommodate an extra night. If that doesn’t happen, we will knock off the first night of our stay.
Although we would love to wind up at an Epcot Resort, this certainly could change depending on prices and discounts offered. We decided that we really love all of the deluxe resorts we have been at and would rather spend our money on touring so we will wind up at whatever works out better financially. We will get to enjoy 4.5 days of WDW including the F&WF and MVMCP!!
The rest of our trip will remain at the Rosen but instead of WDW, I will most likely focus on USF with maybe a day at Epcot or even Sea World. This will also affect Katie and Andy’s stay. We are thinking that we will have them come down from Wednesday to Sunday rather than Monday to Friday.
This means I have to rework everything!! I didn’t put an emoticon here but I’m sure you all know that I take a perverse pleasure in doing so!!
This also means we are now able to do EMH and book Fastpass+ much earlier!!! I am so looking forward to this trip!!!!
And!!
We still get to go to Spokane, Rome and on the Symphony in January as well!
And next year, we can go to WDW over Halloween!!
I guess I will have to change the title of this PTR now!!
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We truly do love WDW this time of year!! 
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