A Marriage Proposal, a Little Gustav and a Whole Lot of Magic! TR - Page 9 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
Welcome! We're happy you've found the PassPorter Community -- the friendliest place to plan your vacation to Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Disneyland, and the world in general! You are now viewing the PassPorter Message Board Community as a guest, which gives you limited access. As our guest, feel free to browse our messages by selecting the forum you want to visit from the list below.
To post messages and ask questions, join our FREE community today and you'll get access to tools and resources not available to guests, such as our vacation countown timers, "living" avatars, private messaging system, database searches, downloads, and a special PassPorter discount code. Registration is fast, simple, and completely free. Just click the Join Our Community link.
If you think you've already joined, log in below now. If you don't remember your member name or password, please visit our Member Name and Password Recovery page. You are also welcome to contact us.
Craig and I completely overslept today! We set the alarm time but didn't put the alarm on - but no worries. We had an 8:05 reservation at Boma, we were out of the room by 7:45, got a cab very quickly and were at the AKL for 8:05 (then it took us about 10 minutes to figure out where the restaurant was - but we did find it!). We were seated very quickly and had John as our server. What a wonderful person! He was definitely a highlight. The AKL was so beautiful and wonderfully themed - I can say the same for Boma. Here's a pic with the buffet in the background......
From Boma we headed directly over to AK. Interestingly, we waited a long time for the bus! I think we could have walked there quicker....but we met this very interesting woman from Vancouver and had a great time talking to her. She was there alone with her two young children (her husband couldn't take time off work) - she was such a sweet lady! As soon as we got to AK we went directly to EE - neither DFia or I have ever ridden EE so we wanted to make that a top priority. We picked up a fast pass and then headed to the Safari. There was virtually no wait - what an amazing "ride". Although I was on the safari right when the AK opened, I was incredibly impressed by amount of animals they had, including a baby giraffe and elephant! They were so cute!
Interestingly, as soon as we got in the truck, I looked up at the list of animals that could be seen on our trip, I picked out the Okapi and told DFia I was making it my mission to find him! The Okapi is the coolest looking animal (horse body, zebra legs and giraffe head) - Although we had a great trip, I never saw him.....which was driving me nuts. However, on the walking portion outside the safari, THERE HE WAS! I was so excited .....we got a ton of pictures of him, but here's one....
Another exciting moment was when I came face to face with a meerkat. I'm a huge fan of Meerkat Manor, and yes I tried to get an autograph but they weren't cooperating (Mickey should have a talk with those guys!)....at least I have a picture for proof!
After our walk we headed over to ride EE. How much fun! We both loved it! For all of you in Disney this day, you may remember how INCREDIBLY hot it was.....WOW heat....we finally gave in and bought one of those fan mister things......which was great! However, I also forgot a hair tie (for you women out there with long hair you know how uncomfortable that is...) so I set out to find a hair tie. I found one, with those dangly, sparkly mickeys - DFia thought it was so cute, I kinda felt like a 5 year old, but if you can't feel that way in Disney where else can you?! That $8.00 purchase (which in reality is outrageously expensive) may have been my best purchase in the World.....(this is probably the reason why when I got home I went to my hairdresser and made her chop 9 inches off )
After we did a few rides like Dinosaur and other smaller attractions we headed over for lunch.....what an escapade! The other days we avoided lunch during peak times, but for some reason we were starving (I think we were so excited to get to the AK we didn't eat that much at Boma). We stopped at Restaurantosaurus. It took over an hour to get our food! Which, looking on the bright side, meant Dfia had enough time to find an open table....I thought the man behind me was going to kill someone! So what do I do - oh the conflict resolution student in me talks to him.,...I actually think I calmed him down a little bit....maybe that's hopeful thinking .
It was a very strange experience though. No one really seemed to know what they were doing, although they had a million workers! We weren't in a hurry, so I really didn't mind, but for instance, Dfia wanted a sprite, one of the girls had spilt coke all over the counter and in some drinks (including many sprites that now looked brown) and one of the workers tried to give me this sprite/coke mess of a drink.....to me it's common sense to throw out the sodas that had another drink spilt into it, but anyway I asked for a new drink and they gave me a new one without a problem, but they never dumped out the other drinks leading me to wonder if someone else had to drink them . The food was pretty good and we were right back in action asap! (On a side note, as soon as I got through the line, there was no line! Don't you hate when that happens??)
We rerode the safari! You have to! On the way back to EE, a nice guy our age came up and asked if we wanted fast passes! He was leaving, and was so sweet to give them to us - as he walked away, we looked down and saw they had expired a few hours earlier....I don't think he knew how the passes worked, but it was so sweet of him to try and help us out (we had fast passes for EE as it was....but I kept the fast passes he gave me for a scrap book, its great to have them as a souvenir - a very nice memory)! We also did the Kali River Rapid (something I had never done) - thank goodness we had a fast pass for it because the ride was so short! The line was 70 minutes long, we didn't wait longer than 5 minutes with our passes, but it would have been tough waiting the full amount with a ride that was over seemingly as soon as it started....but we did get soaked and it felt GREAT!
At this point, Dfia and I didn't feel too hot (I think the heat caught up to us) so we headed back to the hotel to relax. We took another dip in the pool and then got ready for our dinner at the Luau!
Oh my goodness the Luau experience was definitely an interesting experience......
We do have a cute picture while we were still in the room.....
We got to the luau, waited in line happily. Then the ticket lady came up and took our tickets and wrote VOID all over them....... Dfia had "ripped" the tickets along the perforated line, apparently "Mickey doesn't like that" (a quote but another man who did the same thing that we met a few minutes later down the "walk of shame"). Dfia was pretty upset, we didn't know what we did wrong and this lady was incredibly rude and I felt very bad that he felt so badly....plus everyone around us was looking at us like we were awful people! So we got our picture taken....we told the girl helping the photographer our situation and she was said "they rip them anyway what does it matter?" So I felt better she was confused as well. I was originally going to buy this picture, but after that ticket lady made Dfia feel so bad I was definitely NOT going to buy the picture....(when we saw it later we were kinda blurry anyway, but it was cute). We went down to the ticket counter and got another set of tickets, this is when we met the man I quoted above. His wife was so upset she refused to go down there with him and also refused to wear her leis . Gave us a good chuckle.
From that point on we had a great time! Leo was our server, another great guy! I ordered the "red wine" - confused because they didn't tell you what kind of wine it was....I found out why! It tasted awful! I laughed so hard, there was no way I could have finished the glass. I then decided it tasted like something I know....I found out exactly what it tasted like. If you ever had that wine, it tasted like the smell from the Burning Rome room in Spaceship Earth at Epcot. If you think I'm kidding try it out! We told Leo - who almost died laughing and was then thought about it and said we were right - he also said the chardonnay was worse! So don't drink the "white wine". He brought me a glass of bud light and all was well. The food was good, but the show was absolutely spectacular! Those entertainers are so talented!
Just before the show started, Leo brought me another beer (which I knew I was never going to finish, but I thought it was really nice). As the show started Dfia and I held hands....after one dance I went to clap and knocked over the FULL beer . Now it didn't just fall normally.....first it spilled beer all over the table and went all over me and my white pants and also filled my new bag. Then the glass slowly fell off the table - I made a fatal attempt to catch it, but no it broke all over the place! In trying to catch it I knocked it away from my bag that would have broke its fall....there was broken glass all over the floor and the lights are off. I started picking up the pieces and realize it was a dumb idea. All the families sitting around us were glaring at me - I don't know if they thought I was drunk, I certainly wasn't, but it was so embarrassing. I finally went to get some help. A server came and helped me pick up the mess.....although I was still sad....the fire dancer came on and was so good I almost forgot my embarrassment.
When we got back to POFQ I jumped back in the pool to get the sticky beer off me! Felt so good! Too bad my clothes had to wait several days to get cleaned....but they were just fine! Interestingly, although we had some major mishaps this day, it was one of my favorite days at Disney. I'm such an animal lover, nothing could have made this day "bad" in my book.
Up next...
HS, Epcot, MK and dinner at California Grill!
Fabulous pictures of the animals. We went to AK when they first opened and it wasn't my favorite park but it has grown on me and now it's my second favorite. We're doing the behind the scenes tour at AK in a few weeks. I hope that our safari is as successful as yours.
So sorry about the Luau mishap. I'm sure it was very embarrassing but I think we've all had a "my face was red" moment at Disney.
Great photos of both you and your Dfia. Congrats again on the engagement.
__________________
ºOº ~*~
Oct '99: CSR ~ May '02: CR ~ Nov '04: SOG ~ May '06: SOG ~ Dec '07: Solo @ Pop ~ May '08: Pop w/friends ~ Oct '08: SOG ~ Dec '09: Pop w/LeAnn ~ Sept '10: Solo @ Pop ~ Spring '11: AKL ~ Jan '12: Pop for 1/2 Marathon ~ Sept '12: 1st trip for DL 1/2 Marathon? ~ Feb '13: Pop w/pals? ~ Mar '13: Tokyo Disney w/PP's?
Your pictures of the animals were fantastic! We were at Epcot in the morning of that day and Typhoon Lagoon in the evening and you were right about the heat. Glad you were able to have a good day despite a few bumps in the road. Vacation truly is all about rolling with the punches. Can't wait to hear more!
I just love the pictures of the animals. Mine always come out horrible. Seems like you had a great day. The beer spilling story reminds me of when we went to the laua and my DS spilt his coke all over him. He refused to go up with the the other kids when it was there turn. 9 inches of hair. You'll have to post a picture.
wow - 9 inches off your hair - need a pic please
awsome day at the ak
we do the safari at least 2 times also
sorry about your beer incident - glad it did not ruin your luau experience
hurry back with more please
PassPorter Guide Community Rank: Legend Extraordinaire
Join Date: Feb 2000
Location: Southwestern Florida, USA
Concierge Level: 7
Posts: 39,153
Post Thanks / Like
Likes (Given): 39
Likes (Received): 114
Thanks (Given): 18
Thanks (Received): 46
Pixie Dust (Given): 1
Pixie Dust (Received): 8
I am all caught up!
I am glad that you are having such a wonderful time!
Your day at IOA sounds like fun! I rode Hulk one time and got so very dizzy that
I knew I would never be able to ride it again. My son on the other hand rode it over and over at least 4 times in a row!
Your shirt was not only cute but prophetic!
I am so glad you got to ride EE!! Great ride!
Sorry for your problems at the Luau! But all in all - your day sounds wonderful!
I understand about the need for having a hair tie! I also came home from Florida this past
June and cut off about 6 inches of hair! You should post a picture of your new do!
Great updates!
Great update! What a fun time at AK! You got some awesome photos of the animals! What a weird experience at Restaurantosaurus. Nice score on the FPs - just so you know, you can use a FP past the expiration time, as long as its on the same day. The Luau sounds nice! Looking forward to more
First of all - congrats on the engagement!! Now, did I miss the end of this TR? Is it in another thread? I wanted to know how the rest of your trip was. Hope you had a great time.
Registered Message Board Members save 30% off PassPorter guidebooks! When you register you'll have access to a discount coupon good for 30% off the list price of PassPorter books in our online store.
About This Page: 
- but no worries. We had an 8:05 reservation at Boma, we were out of the room by 7:45, got a cab very quickly and were at the AKL for 8:05 (then it took us about 10 minutes to figure out where the restaurant was 
- but we did find it!). We were seated very quickly and had John as our server. What a wonderful person! He was definitely a highlight. The AKL was so beautiful and wonderfully themed - I can say the same for Boma. Here's a pic with the buffet in the background......
.....we got a ton of pictures of him, but here's one....
. 
. The food was pretty good and we were right back in action asap! (On a side note, as soon as I got through the line, there was no line! Don't you hate when that happens??)
. Dfia had "ripped" the tickets along the perforated line, apparently "Mickey doesn't like that" (a quote but another man who did the same thing that we met a few minutes later down the "walk of shame"). Dfia was pretty upset, we didn't know what we did wrong and this lady was incredibly rude and I felt very bad that he felt so badly....plus everyone around us was looking at us like we were awful people! So we got our picture taken....we told the girl helping the photographer our situation and she was said "they rip them anyway what does it matter?" So I felt better she was confused as well. I was originally going to buy this picture, but after that ticket lady made Dfia feel so bad I was definitely NOT going to buy the picture....(when we saw it later we were kinda blurry anyway, but it was cute). We went down to the ticket counter and got another set of tickets, this is when we met the man I quoted above. His wife was so upset she refused to go down there with him and also refused to wear her leis 
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
ºOº ~*~ 
Disney Magic - Oct 2015
Linear Mode
