Halloween, Hawaii and holiday celebrations - THIS SECTION COMPLETED 12/27 - Page 8 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Great start to your trip. I must admit I was disappointed when I found out via FB I would be missing Larry by hours & then crushed to that I would also be missing seeing Sharon again. Then only to find out I was missing Jill, you & Mark as well. I may have cried a little
Great start to your trip. I must admit I was disappointed when I found out via FB I would be missing Larry by hours & then crushed to that I would also be missing seeing Sharon again. Then only to find out I was missing Jill, you & Mark as well. I may have cried a little
Hopefully one day in the future our trips will coincide.
I got to meet Larry and Bob a few times this trip and I had a short meet with Sharon, Jill and Karen. I was very sorry not to have a chance to meet Cheryl and Mark.
I got to meet Larry and Bob a few times this trip and I had a short meet with Sharon, Jill and Karen. I was very sorry not to have a chance to meet Cheryl and Mark.
I'm glad you at least got to meet with some of the others. Sorry we missed you.
So glad you are finally on your way...and in style, too! So glad Virgin could offer some meal accommodations for you to enjoy. We flew the relatively new Airbus a380 to Paris and it was amazing at how smooth and quiet the flight was.
danielle
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~Shoot for the moon, if you miss, you will land among the stars~
So glad you are finally on your way...and in style, too! So glad Virgin could offer some meal accommodations for you to enjoy. We flew the relatively new Airbus a380 to Paris and it was amazing at how smooth and quiet the flight was.
Wednesday 30 October – part four: well, I didn’t expect to see that on the map..
Soon we were seeing land, well sort of…
My goodness, it looks inhospitable down there! Here’s where we actually were..
Eventually, as we had a good few hours still ahead of us (nine and a half hour flights are horrible! ) I settled down to watch another movie. It was an odd choice for me, World War Z, as zombie films usually don’t do much for me, but I liked the premise that it was someone actually looking for a cure, rather than just fighting them, and heck usually anything with Brad Pitt in is Ok… It was a good film, although I did question the sanity of watching it when they got to the scene in the aircraft. Those of you who’ve seen it will know what I mean!
I managed to get some photos as we flew over Canada – I think we were somewhere near Quebec when I took these…
I have no idea what this was. Anyone?
I found it a bit disturbing to see the Titanic highlighted on our on board map…
Then we started to see land in America, which is always a good sign, as it means there’s only a couple of hours of the flight left. This isn’t great, but it’s the Hudson River in Connecticut.
Eventually, we were coming down the Georgia, and then the Florida coast, and the late afternoon sun was casting some beautiful colours on the land and sea below. I said to Mark I think this was perhaps my best set of aerial photography from any flight.
Soon our afternoon tea arrived, made up of a cheese and pickle sandwich and a cupcake.
Before long, we had the announcement that we would soon be coming into land, so I made a dash to the restroom and beat the long queue, then we settled down to wait for our descent. We entered Orlando International a very different way to the one we’re used to, but we got to see some amazing sights as we came down.
Finally, we were down, and my goodness, we taxied for what seemed like forever. We came in on a runway that we didn’t know even existed.
When we got to the gate, everyone in Premium Economy leapt up, so we did too, as our bags were at the back and we wanted to get them. I was halfway through the Economy seating section when I realised no-one in there was on their feet. It turned out the fasten seatbelt sign was still on. Ooops… No-one said anything and we safely retrieved our bags and were the first ones down from upstairs.
We headed down towards immigration, knowing that we’d have a wait ahead of us, as we’d seen another Virgin Atlantic plane in. We think it was the Manchester one, but the bonus was there was no British Airways flight. They were supposed to have left 25 minutes before us from Gatwick, but obviously they were now behind us, and sure enough, while we waited in line, we learnt that the next set of passengers streaming in was from their flight. Phew!
When we got into the hall, there were more people than I’d seen in a long time. The line snaked round twice already, and mentally I thought it would take maybe 40 minutes to get through it, so I made a note of the time we entered it and the time we were seen, and actually it was only 25 minutes, which wasn’t bad.
When we saw the guy, he asked where we were going, and when we said Hawaii, he got a bit of a goofy grin on his face and told us we were lucky. I know!
Quickly through that, the problem next was to find the luggage on the carousel, as everything was already out, and at some points, it was piled four deep. We quickly found one case, then the other two were next door to each other.
We headed for the line for customs, which snaked around a bit, but I noticed there was another, much shorter line next door, so I checked with a guy and he told me you could go in either. We headed that way with a couple following us, and lo and behold, they opened another desk, and we were seen immediately. The couple behind us thanked us profusely, but as I said to Mark, I wasn’t going to wait in a long line, if there was a short one.
We headed up the escalators to the monorail, where at the top, people were congested around. We were literally yelling at them to keep moving and get out of the way, as more and more people were coming up the escalator, and fortunately, they got the message just in time.
The monorail was sitting there, and sat there for what felt like an age, before the doors finally opened. Once at the main terminal, we headed straight down to Avis, although we were told as we were preferred customers, we could just go to the garage. Ok, then…
On the way to the garage, I nearly had an incident, as every time we’ve been here in the past, you had a crossing to the garage, a standard crossing, but not anymore. Now it’s traffic light controlled, but with no warnings, so that was a close call.
Safely across, we headed upstairs. We’d been told our name would be up and it would tell us where our car was, but it didn’t quite work, as we had to go to the preferred centre to get the details. Once we did, we found a very nice, shiny little car, which would be ours for the next few days.
Glad your wait at immigration wasn't too bad, it can be a nightmare but in fairness I think they have changed something because it was better our last trip as well.
I usually find by the time I have herded through all that and we get to our hire car I'm exhausted, it is really good when you get to drive out quite quickly and you know you are on your way home.
Your air photos are great! Imagine me waving as you flew over connecticut! Glad you didn't have too long of a wait in customs! You're on your way to the bubble now!
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Lisa Co-Guide to Sharing the Adventure: Disney World Trip Reports
I was getting caught up, and have to jump in to comment on your bed at the Gatwick Hilton. That's my bed! Seriously. I bought mine about 30 years ago from a Scandinavian store in Maryland. It doesn't have the mounted lights, but everything else, including the 'floating' night stands, is the same. I was so proud at the time. It, with a dresser and chest of drawers, was my first big purchase of brand new furniture. Plus it was a queen sized bed and my feet didn't hang off the end.
The kicker to this story is that when my parents looked at the picture I sent them, they wanted to know why was I buying 'motel furniture'?!
They backed off on this remark after they visited me and slept on my bed, though!
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So glad Virgin could offer some meal accommodations for you to enjoy. We flew the relatively new Airbus a380 to Paris and it was amazing at how smooth and quiet the flight was.
Here’s where we actually were.. 
) I settled down to watch another movie. It was an odd choice for me, World War Z, as zombie films usually don’t do much for me, but I liked the premise that it was someone actually looking for a cure, rather than just fighting them, and heck usually anything with Brad Pitt in is Ok… 
No-one said anything and we safely retrieved our bags and were the first ones down from upstairs. 
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