Is It Time Already?! OKW and POR, November 2013 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
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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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Glad you still had plenty of time before your flight even with the later start. Your room at OKW is beautiful. Sounds like you all had a good time at DTD to start the trip. I used my Dr. Spot bar yesterday to remove a rather large ink stain I had gotten on the cuff of one of my favorite shirts. A pen at the place I volunteer at just blew up on me. All my co-workers were afraid my shirt was ruined. I may need to get more bars when we go back to share with them.
Awesome updates! I love the room, and of course you know I love food photos, lol! What a great gift bag from Laurie! I'm not surprised at all that she was so thoughtful!
Glad you still had plenty of time before your flight even with the later start. Your room at OKW is beautiful. Sounds like you all had a good time at DTD to start the trip. I used my Dr. Spot bar yesterday to remove a rather large ink stain I had gotten on the cuff of one of my favorite shirts. A pen at the place I volunteer at just blew up on me. All my co-workers were afraid my shirt was ruined. I may need to get more bars when we go back to share with them.
I don't remember seeing it at Basin when it was at DLR, but now I have my own Dr. Spot bar! I'll definitely be trying it on my next bad stain!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Principessa_di_Fata
Awesome updates! I love the room, and of course you know I love food photos, lol! What a great gift bag from Laurie! I'm not surprised at all that she was so thoughtful!
I'm so glad your bags weren't lost! *phew*
I hope you'll be able to follow along while you're on the ship! There will be plenty more food photos!!!
__________________
Huge Disney Fan...Always Have Been...Always Will Be!
Disneyland 60th Anniversary Celebration TR here!
2013 WDW trip here!
2011 trip to Hawaii here!
Great updates and pictures Jeannie! Glad you've made it to the bubble and had a great night at DTD!
It was really wonderful to finally be there!
Quote:
Originally Posted by lauriep
Grrrrrr! What a pain!
I don't have Word on this laptop, so I can't really pre-write the document. I might start emailing myself a paragraph at a time so at least I won't lose the entire update!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cam22
I would say there is some imp messing with your updates. Sounds like it needs to be gone so we can keep reading.
Yes...imp, go away please! This time somehow the cursor must've been in the upper right corner because all of a sudden my browser closed and everything was gone! Ugh. I'll try again tomorrow night...hopefully it will be a bit quiet late in the evening!
__________________
Huge Disney Fan...Always Have Been...Always Will Be!
Disneyland 60th Anniversary Celebration TR here!
2013 WDW trip here!
2011 trip to Hawaii here!
Ok, my faithful trip report readers, I'm going to try to do a quick update here before I run off to work!
At some point in the middle of the night (I know this because I could tell through my closed eyelids there was no light out), I heard one of those golf cart engines whiz by outside our room. A few minutes later, I heard another one. Then another. And another still. Then I heard a larger engine start up...and run...and run...and run without stop. At this point I thought someone was trimming trees with a giant buzzsaw or something! I have no concept of how long this all went on, but it went on for what seemed like an eternity. After a long while, I thankfully fell asleep again. Then, I heard the golf cart engines again, and then I'd hear beep beep beep beep beep every few minutes. Ugh! At this point, I knew it was morning because I could tell through my still closed eyelids there was light out. I finally opened my eyes and looked at the time on my phone, and it was 8:30am. Oh well, I figured I'd be waking up around then anyway, but I lay in bed a little longer just to get my brain to wake up too. Next thing I know, I got up and it was 9:50am!!! Well, I guess I needed that sleep because I'm pretty sure I had been up for at least an hour or two with all the ruckus outside our room! Oh well, I thought in my head we happened to hit the day the grounds crew did their gardening or something.
Evan woke up as soon as he heard me puttering around. Sophia was way off in dream land! I tried waking her up around 10:15, but she didn't want to budge. Finally, around 10:30, I told her she had to get going or else we'd waste an entire park day!
I gave Evan some milk and cereal, since there was no way breakfast would be still served anywhere at this hour! When Sophia finally got ready, she had some food as well. Around 11:15, I picked up my phone to look at MDE to figure out when our first FP+ time was. I went to My Plans and discovered...I had made a breakfast reservation at Olivia's for 9:30 that morning! Oh no! Sigh...I don't know what I was thinking expecting us to be awake and ready for breakfast at that hour, but c'est la vie! I tried to cancel on MDE, but of course it wouldn't let me. I was going to call, but I figured at this point it was pretty obvious we weren't going to make the ressie!
__________________
Huge Disney Fan...Always Have Been...Always Will Be!
Disneyland 60th Anniversary Celebration TR here!
2013 WDW trip here!
2011 trip to Hawaii here!
I can't believe all the noise with the carts. You'd think they could get quiet electric ones-- better all around. I hope you didn't get charged for the missed breakfast ressie! It's really rough with the time change. You almost need to book an extra day just to recover a bit-- and plan nothing for that day, just lolling around by the pool and sleeping!
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I can't believe all the noise with the carts. You'd think they could get quiet electric ones-- better all around. I hope you didn't get charged for the missed breakfast ressie! It's really rough with the time change. You almost need to book an extra day just to recover a bit-- and plan nothing for that day, just lolling around by the pool and sleeping!
Well, on the day Bell Services drove us to our room, I was thinking we got the oldest cart in the bunch...but it turns out pretty much every single one of those carts was that loud!
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezp
That's insane about the noises during the night! I wonder what on earth was going on.
We were in a corner unit, so we had a window out the front and the patio door out the back. The sounds seemed to be coming from out front on the road and behind the building...sort of behind the headboard where we can't see.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Colexis Mom
Sorry about the noise and missing the breakfast ADR!
It certainly wasn't the best start for our vacation, but I think I'm the only one who was affected by it. Both kids slept through it...they can pretty much sleep through anything!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cam22
My goodness what were they thinking making all that noise so early in the morning.
I thought maybe it was later in the day than I realized, but it was still early enough that the room was still dark, so I can't imagine what time it was!
__________________
Huge Disney Fan...Always Have Been...Always Will Be!
Disneyland 60th Anniversary Celebration TR here!
2013 WDW trip here!
2011 trip to Hawaii here!
We finally left the room around 11:30am. We made the very quick walk to the South Point bus stop (I'm guesstimating maybe 200 feet away?). Our first destination was Epcot. We all enjoy Epcot, and we knew we'd end up at Magic Kingdom in the evening so we wanted to get a "taste" of two parks today. I think we waited maybe 5-10 minutes for the Epcot bus. As the bus stopped, I realized what had been making the beep beep beep beep beep sound so early in the morning. It was the bus stopping and "leaning over" as it picked up guests. Ok, one mystery solved then. Mystery or not, I was not looking forward to hearing that sound every morning and every night! It must be terrible for the rooms right next to the bus stop!
After picking us up, we stopped at three other bus stops (the last one was Hospitality House), and then we were on our way!
Between the movement of the bus and Evan's excitement at looking at everything whizzing by, it was almost impossible to get him to look at me!
We got off the bus at Epcot and started the walk toward the front gate. I was trying to take pictures of the kids walking ahead of me, and at one point a bus CM photo bombed us! It was hilarious! I'll include that picture in the pictorial.
Soon after this, I realized I had forgotten to bring the kids' parkhoppers voucher! It was safely tucked away in my backpack that was in our room! Oh no! Well, nothing for us to do but at least see if Guest Services can help us. If that didn't work, we'd just have to head back to the room. This was just the first snafu of several during our trip, lol!
Luckily, since Megan had helped us purchase the parkhoppers through Disney, I just needed to present my ID and credit card used for the purchase. Crisis averted! After that was taken care of, and the parkhoppers were added to the kids' Magic Bands, I asked about the new DAS for Evan. The CM explained how it work, and it was pretty much as it's been described. Take the new DAS card to a ride, and they will fill it in with a return time that's the standby time minus 10 minutes. That works very well with Evan. While structure is good for him, he's learned to be more flexible in the last few years. Plus, at DCA and Radiator Springs Racers, he's learned that sometimes we need to get a return time. This new system, very fortunately for us, will wor well because we'll just spend the time we would've spent waiting in line either getting something to eat or exploring the area.
Well, the CM took Evan's picture and said he'd be right back after he got the DAS card printed. He came back a few minutes later and asked if he could take Evan's picture again. Ok. Then he came back again after a few minutes and said his printer wasn't cooperating. We could go into the park and try Guest Services there. Well, I didn't want to have to wait in another line so I asked if I could just wait and see if he can try one more time. He tried, and it didn't work. At that point I thanked him and said we'll just have to go into the park and try the other Guest Services.
We had forgotten the kids' birthday buttons in the room, so I asked the CM if he would give them new ones. This time he did what I had been expecting...he really took care to design cute buttons for the kids, completely with Mickey balloons flying above their names!
Before we left, he said to hang on, and he gave us two FastPasses for anything in Epcot that day since we had to wait so long trying to get the DAS. That was really nice of him. As it turned out, I think we only used one of them because the crowds weren't very big that day!
We entered the parks...Magic Bands worked like a charm (including mine, on which I had added my AP before the trip). We walked past the PhotoPass photographers because I needed to get my voucher activated. The line for Spaceship Earth was non-existent, so we went on that first. Loved it! It's probably my favorite ride in all of WDW! Of course the kids had to play in the games area after the ride (after we emailed home our videos!).
I love this pic because the reflection on Evan's face looks like a mustache!
After a few games, I had the kids go with me to Guest Services to take care of the DAS. This time it was done very quickly. Sweet!
After we got the DAS, I left the kids in the play area at Spaceship Earth while I walked over to the photo center to process my PhotoPass voucher. I brought the entire package that was sent to me. In fact, I never even opened it. I handed the whole thing to the CM, and she chuckled and said she'd never seen it like that before! She was so sweet. After she processed my voucher and gave me my card, she repackaged everything and sealed it up again so nothing would fall out.
I headed back to get the kids, and then we headed out to see where our feet would take us!
__________________
Huge Disney Fan...Always Have Been...Always Will Be!
Disneyland 60th Anniversary Celebration TR here!
2013 WDW trip here!
2011 trip to Hawaii here!
About This Page: 
Your room at OKW is beautiful. 
Sounds like you all had a good time at DTD to start the trip. I used my Dr. Spot bar yesterday to remove a rather large ink stain I had gotten on the cuff of one of my favorite shirts. A pen at the place I volunteer at just blew up on me. All my co-workers were afraid my shirt was ruined. I may need to get more bars when we go back to share with them. 
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