From no trip to celebrating 20 years together… planning it all in less than 100 days! UPDATED 6/30 - Page 89 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Saturday 4 March – part seven: watching the dolphins play
Our next stop was just round the corner here…
As you can see, it wasn’t exactly a busy day here:
We made our way inside…
… and made a beeline for the Commerson’s dolphins exhibit. The last time we’d come here, we got the feeling they were a figment of the park’s imagination, as we just couldn’t find the darned things anywhere. Well today more than made up for that.
We loved how they played around the tubes that people would plunge through, and that’s exactly what I remember reading about when they first opened the park, that the idea was the dolphin’s playful nature would draw them to the tubes, and indeed it does.
Eventually, we tore ourselves away from watching them, and wandered through the park:
This section is Cutback Cove, which is their wave pool. They have a countdown to when it starts, which is neat. When it did start, I was standing there, thinking “this doesn’t look too bad”, but my goodness, it does produce a serious wave!
Another park I've never been to!! I am excited to hear about your adventures here!! Those dolphins are beautiful and look like they somehow got mixed up with penguins!!
Now that my kids are older, they would totally dig this. It's never been on my radar before! Just seeing those dolphins would be worth it for me! You sure picked an excellent day for this with very few visitors.
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Another park I've never been to!! I am excited to hear about your adventures here!! Those dolphins are beautiful and look like they somehow got mixed up with penguins!!
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Saturday 4 March – part eight: “my day at the park”…
Next we came to Ihu’s Breakaway Falls of Aquatica, which scared the living daylights out of me. Then out of one of these tubes popped a small kid, I want to say around six or seven years old. I just stood there staring at her, wondering how the heck she does that, but as Mark said, kids that age don’t know fear. True.
This is the children’s section of the park, Kata’s Kookaburra Cove. If only we’d had something this fun when I was a kid… sigh.
Now this is Roa’s Rapids, their lazy river, but as the name suggests, the current is pretty mean in places, and it’s not a very lazy river at all!
The cabanas here certainly seemed a lot more exclusive than the ones at Discovery Cove, and yet they’re much cheaper, starting from just $49.
These two are both family tube rides, although watching them, there wasn’t much family to them in my eyes, but then again, I am a bit of a wimp when it comes to water park rides…
We carried on walking…
With that, we were back at the entrance. This was the first time we’d walked the whole park, as last time we were here, it was closing due to inclement weather, so we only saw part of it. I have to say, it seemed pretty small to me.
On the way out, I was slightly concerned to see that Commerson’s dolphins are apparently now blue!
As we exited the park, I got asked to complete a survey about “my day at the park”, but I had to be honest with her, and say that we’d only come to explore, and we hadn’t actually ridden anything.
We headed back to the car, and as we left the lot, we could see various rides at SeaWorld opposite. It’s weird how both this place and Busch Gardens make their coasters so visible in a way Disney would never consider. I’m guessing, as they’re both under the same ownership, it is a deliberate decision, but isn’t it fascinating how different people do different things?
This will be the last update from me for some time, as we're about to head off on our Scotland road trip. If you haven't already joined me in the pre-trip report over in the Globetrotting trip reports forum, I'll be doing live update from that trip while we're away.
Aquatica looks like a fun family park and something we would have done when the kids were younger. . Glad you enjoyed your tour there!! I am telling you, you are really getting me psyched about the WL!!
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Well today more than made up for that. 
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Pixie Dust
Those dolphins are beautiful and look like they somehow got mixed up with penguins!!
Mind you, I'm not sure if I'd have my eyes open if I did one of those rides! 
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