A 40th celebration to end the world! PHOTOS ADDED 1/1 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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That was a very busy few days booking things! Sounds like you got everything you wanted and some good deals as well. I agree that the party tickets are getting expensive. It would be nice if they'd at the same time put a lower limit on the number of guests, so it could be a really special experience. I've been to some parties that are so crowded it's just uncomfortable. I hope we'll have a nicer experience this year!
Sounds like your plans came together nicely (for the most part)! Look like you guys will be leaving Disney just before we arrive (you will be just missing the crowds and we will be joining them).
I'm especially excited to hear about your time in California as we are planning a very similar trip (although two years away) that inlcudes the national parks and Disneyland.
Wow! You Gita lots accomplished that weekend! I'd love to see La Nouba - do you think it's something kids would enjoy (mine are 9 and 7 if that helps any).
I think you probably know your kids best, but they'd need to be able to sit through 90 minutes of a show, as there's no intermission. There's plenty to keep their attention, but as I say, the big thing is if they can sit through that long a show...
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All caught up! Oh your vacation sounds like it will be wonderful! (If my own vacay wasn't coming up so soon I would seriously have a case of the green-eyed monsters right now!) Can't wait to hear about the Fantasy cruise especially as we hope to be able to do a cruise soon too!
That was a very busy few days booking things! Sounds like you got everything you wanted and some good deals as well. I agree that the party tickets are getting expensive. It would be nice if they'd at the same time put a lower limit on the number of guests, so it could be a really special experience. I've been to some parties that are so crowded it's just uncomfortable. I hope we'll have a nicer experience this year!
I think that's a great suggestion and I hope we have a nicer experience this year too.
Sounds like your plans came together nicely (for the most part)! Look like you guys will be leaving Disney just before we arrive (you will be just missing the crowds and we will be joining them).
I'm especially excited to hear about your time in California as we are planning a very similar trip (although two years away) that inlcudes the national parks and Disneyland.
What a shame. We leave on 15 December, so I think we will just miss you.
I think you probably know your kids best, but they'd need to be able to sit through 90 minutes of a show, as there's no intermission. There's plenty to keep their attention, but as I say, the big thing is if they can sit through that long a show...
Thanks they would definitely be able to sit through, but I wasn't sure content wise if it would interest them. It sounds it would though!
__________________
Stacey
Why do these kids look so pathetic?
Find out in: A New Grade, A New House, and A Surprise!Final Thoughts 01/30
Whew! You already need a vacation from your vacation! Tons of planning, but it seems to all be coming together. Love it when that happens! I agree about those party tickets. We haven't gone to one since 2008 (that was MNSSHP), and I'm not sure we will. The CP dining package is getting crazy as well, but if I have to choose, that is what we go with.
I bow to your planning skill! It's exciting to read of all your plans. The cruise itinerary sounds fantastic! Can't wait to see you! It's getting close now!
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I bow to your planning skill! It's exciting to read of all your plans. The cruise itinerary sounds fantastic! Can't wait to see you! It's getting close now!
Pre-trip report – part six: wouldn’t it be nice to upgrade?
Nothing much more happened until late July. My grandmother passed away in October 2010 and I knew that I was due some money in her will, but due to various problems I didn’t receive the money until summer 2012. Once I had got the money, I decided to put a little bit of it towards paying for some of the items for our December trip, as the bill was still looking worringly large for items we still had to buy over the next five months...
I decided the most sensible approach was to buy some of the most high cost items and make sure they were paid for. The first of those were the Annual Passes, which were definitely the biggest cost, even with our DVC member discount. Then again, they would give us 12 months of admission, and if our plans came off to return for Food and Wine next October, then the passes would be good for two vacations.
We’d already decided, with the way we’d booked our ADRs, that we wanted to have two parts of our trip with the Deluxe Dining Plan. The first part would be the first four nights at the Beach Club Villas, and that was a fairly large expense as well. Thank goodness though we were getting it before the dramatic price increase for 2013! I will admit I was staggered by how much those prices were going up when the announcement was made. I have a horrible feeling that the various restaurants around Disney will follow suit by all raising their prices at the start of the new year... we’ll see.
We also got the Deluxe Dining Plan for our three nights at Animal Kingdom Lodge Villas, so actually the only two nights we wouldn’t have any Dining Plan for were the two nights at Bay Lake Tower. It will certainly be interesting to see whether or not the Deluxe Dining Plan pays for itself, the way it certainly has done for us in the past.
It was at about this time that I was peer reviewing the latest edition of PassPorter’s Disney Cruise Line, and as I got to the chapter on staterooms, I started to admire some of the higher category staterooms. I’ve never had any interest in concierge rooms before, but when I found out some of them on the Fantasy have their own hot tub, wow, I just had to check online to see if there were any left for our cruise. I wasn’t at all surprised to find out that nothing was available in that category. However, there were still category 4 staterooms available, and they didn’t cost too much more, so we ended up upgrading to a 4D category, which would give us even more room! Sara, our wonderful travel agent, reassured us that, for the extra price, we’d love having the extra room, and I trust her advice implicitly. I can’t wait!
At around the start of August, Mark asked me if it was possible to upgrade our flights from Premium Economy to Upper Class. It would be a costly expense, but well worth it, and heck with money we hadn’t expected, it would be nice to treat ourselves... wouldn’t it? I couldn’t do it online when I went into our booking, although when I checked on the Virgin Atlantic website, they were showing that there was availability. It was very odd...
Mark suggested giving them a call, so I did, and after listening to a great selection of old 70s and 80s music on hold (well, I guess that’s Richard Branson’s influence... ), I was through to someone. She had a look and told me that there would be no Upper Class at all on the flight out to Orlando. I clarified with her, whether that meant that all the seats were booked or just that there wasn’t an Upper Class and it was the latter. Interesting! I know that Virgin are putting brand new aircraft on that route, so maybe some just don’t have Upper Class in them... I guess Orlando routes may not have that much demand for Upper Class.
However, on the way back, there was an Upper Class and there were seats available. Well, it’s much more beneficial on the way back anyway, as it’s an overnight flight, so we immediately went for that and paid the price to upgrade. Let’s just say it was pricey, but I think it’s going to be worthwhile, as we’ll be arriving home on New Year’s Day, and I’ll certainly be back into work the next morning, so hopefully I should be all refreshed for that, after an Upper Class flight home!
As everyone will know, bookings for the new Be Our Guest restaurant at the Magic Kingdom opened in August, and my wonderful travel agent Sara offered to try and get us a reservation there. She managed to get us in for 5:20pm on Sunday 9 December, and that’s all that was left on day one of booking for that night. Sadly, that wouldn’t work for us, as we had the Candlelight Processional at 5:00pm, so with deep regret, I cancelled it a few days later. I’m sure I made someone else’s day anyway... I figured I’d keep looking and if it was meant to be, then I’d find something, and if it wasn’t, then I wouldn’t....
The next thing I wanted to sort out was our accommodation for Death Valley. I wanted to stay at Furnace Creek, and at first, I hoped to stay at the Inn there, but when I saw the prices – something like $400 a night I realised that was definitely out of our price range. So I settled for the Ranch instead, which was a much more reasonable $165 a night. I was so glad to finally have that booked, as let’s be honest there were very few other options in that area... I decided to go for two nights there in the end. It would leave us with a long drive from Joshua Tree National Park, but at least we’d be there, fresh and ready to visit Scotty’s Castle in the morning.
Speaking of which, I was fascinated to find out that you could book in advance to visit Scotty’s Castle, something which I’m sure was new to the Death Valley National Park website, as when I’d looked a few weeks earlier, I didn’t remember seeing anything about it on there. I went ahead and booked the combo tour, which gives you both a tour of the house itself and the underground tour. After much debate, I went for the first tour of the day for each, as then we could do one at 9:00 am and the next at 10:30am and then have the rest of the day free to explore the park. Hopefully that would work.
The next issue was finding car rental for both Florida and California. I had priced up Avis a couple of months earlier and knew what they were charging then. I got a nasty surprise when I went back to make the booking, as the prices had gone up. I was not impressed at all by that. I started to shop around and found that Dollar, who we haven’t used before, were much cheaper (and I’m talking like about $150 cheaper here! ) and literally everything was included in their price, including additional drivers, which is more than you get with Avis, so I went with them. It’ll be interesting to see what we think of them...
When details come out of a new Segway tour at Epcot, called Keep Moving Forward, I immediately knew this was something we’d have to do. I called up and got a booking on the 8:30am tour for the first morning we’d be in Disney, which I was told was the earliest that they could offer. A couple of weeks later, I heard from someone that they’d been able to book a 7:45am tour and I called back and, sure enough, there was a tour at that time on the day I wanted, so the Cast Member changed us on to that. At one point, she said “you’ll have to be at Guest Relations by 7:30am, so that’s going to be an early start. I told her that suited us fine, as we’d be jetlagged and probably up at 5:00am or so, so that really wasn’t an issue.
It was about this time that my friend Elaine confirmed that she and her husband would be coming down at the same time as us in December, staying a week, so I immediately looked into which meals we could still add them to, so we’ll also be seeing them. Some had already gone, but I was pleasantly surprised at how many still had openings. Of course, Be Our Guest still had no openings – no big surprise there.
I knew that I also wanted to spend some time at some of Orlando’s other theme parks on this trip. Part of that was down to the fact that we hadn’t been back to Busch Gardens Tampa in five long years, but part of it was also research for PassPorter’s Walt Disney World for British Holidaymakers I decided to go for the three-park pass, which would allow us to go back to SeaWorld, which we love anyway, and now has the new TurtleTrek in it, and to go and sample Aquatica for the first time. thewave: Now just to find some cheap tickets...
I looked both on the Busch Gardens website, and at a few sites in the UK, and finally found one which had good reviews, where the tickets were just £160 for the two of us (about $240). Bear in mind that the three-park tickets on the official website were $125 each without adding on tax, and you can see that was a pretty good saving. Although I had no idea what the company would be like, the tickets arrived safely enough, which worked for me.
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We leave on 15 December, so I think we will just miss you.
I didn’t receive the money until summer 2012. Once I had got the money, I decided to put a little bit of it towards paying for some of the items for our December trip, as the bill was still looking worringly large for items we still had to buy over the next five months... 
I will admit I was staggered by how much those prices were going up when the announcement was made. I have a horrible feeling that the various restaurants around Disney will follow suit by all raising their prices at the start of the new year... we’ll see. 
), I was through to someone. She had a look and told me that there would be no Upper Class at all on the flight out to Orlando. I clarified with her, whether that meant that all the seats were booked or just that there wasn’t an Upper Class and it was the latter. 
I decided to go for two nights there in the end. It would leave us with a long drive from Joshua Tree National Park, but at least we’d be there, fresh and ready to visit Scotty’s Castle in the morning. 
Some had already gone, but I was pleasantly surprised at how many still had openings. Of course, Be Our Guest still had no openings – no big surprise there. 
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