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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Our cast of 11 characters includes my husband and I, our 3 kids (DS7, DD5, DD4), and 3 sets of grandparents…
It all started innocently enough…
Last year my DH and I were discussing the fact that we had never taken a big family vacation. We wanted to do something that the kids would love, and that we would have fun with too. Given their ages, we considered going to Disneyland. It’s a short trip for us, living in Arizona. By the time the next year rolled around though, all the kids would have already been to Disney once or twice… so it wasn’t as special. We also considered Disney World, but for such a long plane ride, would it be too much like Disneyland? And would we get any rest and relaxation?
A co-worker of mine had been on a Disney cruise and spoke highly of it. The thing that stuck with me most of all was “We hardly saw the kids, they were having so much fun!” Don’t get me wrong, we didn’t want to take a vacation where we spent no time with the kiddos, but not having to be their sole source of entertainment sounded pretty appealing. We looked into the itineraries and thought a 3 or 4 night cruise sounded pretty good.
I started researching the cruise, reading trip reports and reviews, and the more I read, the more I heard the same thing from those who had been on the shorter itineraries… “It was too short!” And next thing you know, we were talking about 5 nights. Disney had a new Bahamian itinerary starting in 2010 called the 5 night Double Dip, with two days at their private island, Castaway Cay. It sounded perfect!
While talking to one set of grandparents, we mentioned the cruise and were surprised to hear “We want to go too!” Well, one thing led to another and now all 3 sets are coming with us. (I am now urging DH to consider the wine package) Just kidding! (not really)
We booked our May 2010 Disney Wonder cruise in June of 2009, and promptly told the kids. They were 3, 4 and 6 at the time, and telling them about a vacation that was a year away was silly, but unavoidable given our excitement.
Fast forward to Christmas… now, the kids have turned 4, 5 and 7. One of their gifts from me was a countdown calendar I made using Disney cruise line photos I found on-line. I wrote the number of days left until our vacation on each day, and told them we would take turns marking them off. With something like 160 days to go, it was still hard for them to fathom, but we started marking the days off, and occasionally got out the Disney cruise DVD for them to watch.
When we booked our plane tickets, we decided to go a few days early to give us a chance to relax in Florida before the cruise. Our original plan was to stay at a hotel on Coco Beach for the 3 nights before the cruise, and that’s what we told the kids we would do. Well, you know how that goes, the more time we had to think about it, the more the Disney magic beckoned to us. We decided that flying all the way to Orlando, having 3 days to kill, and NOT seeing the Magic Kingdom would just be a shame. So, forget the R&R, we can do that on the cruise!
We started planning our Disney World portion of the trip, and decided to keep it a secret from the kids. In keeping with our “go big or go home” theme, we couldn’t just stay anywhere, we had to stay at a Disney property as close to the park as possible. We booked our stay at the Polynesian Resort. GP set #1 is going with us on this portion of the trip, and we will meet the other two sets of GPs in Port Canaveral at the Radisson the night before the cruise.
We are 9 (!) days away from leaving on the trip now, and we have managed to keep the MK portion a secret from the kids – it is KILLING my DH. We still haven’t figured out a way to tell them, or when we will let them know. We fly into Orlando at 5pm on Thursday, and will take the Magic Express to our resort. We want to go over to the park as soon as we can once we are all checked in and stay as late as the kids are able. Then we will have all day Friday to spend there too. Right now we are thinking that we will try and wait until we are at the Polynesian to tell them.
My DH is making fun of me, but I have started the packing process already. I put each of the kids outfits in individual Ziploc gallon bags (shorts, shirt, undies, etc.). Yes, I’m that kind of crazy. I roll up the clothes and then squeeze all the air out to make a nice, neat little package. I write their names on the bags too since the girls have many identical things. This way the kids can be responsible for getting dressed each day, or each time they need a new outfit, and then we have the empty gallon Ziplocs, which are always useful. It also makes fitting everything in the luggage easier, and neater. DH asked me if I was going to do that with his outfits too. Ha ha ha. (I just might!)
Any tips or tricks you all have to offer for our trip are welcome!
What a wonderful family trip....and lots of spoiling for the kids from the 3 sets of grandparents...LOL. Your plans sound great, we are planning our first cruise for next year and even though we go to WDW each year we had to plan a few days at the parks too, like you said, how can you be in Orlando and not see the castle. have a great trip.
What a wonderful family trip....and lots of spoiling for the kids from the 3 sets of grandparents...LOL. Your plans sound great, we are planning our first cruise for next year and even though we go to WDW each year we had to plan a few days at the parks too, like you said, how can you be in Orlando and not see the castle. have a great trip.
I know - I am hoping the kids aren't permanently spoiled when we return home! Love theTinkerbell photo - she is my daughter's favorite too!
DH just couldn't take it anymore. We are telling the kiddos tonight about the MK portion of our trip. Here is our plan...
None of them really know that Disney World exists, (they have each been to Disneyland), so we are going to play a Disney trivia game. Some questions will be about our cruise (How many ships does Disney have? What is the name of our ship? etc.), and some will be about Disneyland (How many "Disneyland's" are there? Which one is the biggest? What is the one in Florida called?), and then back to some more questions about the ship (so they dont get tipped off yet).
Next, we are doing a treasure hunt. Each child gets a clue for a place to look. One at a time they will have to go find the envelope that matches their clue and bring it out into the living room, open it, and show it to the other two.
The youngest will go first. Her envelope has a picture of our family that says "We are ..."
The middle will go next. Her envelope has a picture of an airplane that says "going to..."
And the oldest will go last. His envelope has a picture of the castle at MK that says "Disney World!"
After that, we will let them eat dinner on a picnic blanket in the living room while we watch the Disney World DVD together.
Should be fun, and a good way to keep them in line on the long plane trip to Florida next week. (Next week!!!)
Well, as with all things that involve small children, you just can't know how it will go!
The kids loved the trivia game, and the treasure hunt for their clues. The minute they all opened their envelopes though, instead of figuring out what it said ("We are going to Disney World!"), they said "Now we will hide the clues and the adults will find them!"
I had to ask DS "What does it say?" for him to read the sentence. He just looked at me. Then I said "What do you think that means?" He thought about it and said "Are we really going there, for real?" YES!!!! "Cool" was the reply. Cool? I was hopping up and down and my DH was videotaping the whole thing, laughing at me.
Hmm... maybe the DVD will get them more excited. We popped it in and DD (4 year old) wanted to know when it would be over so that she could go play.
What did they get excited about? Well, the 2 second clip of the Magical Express came on and I said "That's the bus that will pick us up at the airport". "WE GET TO RIDE A BUS??!!"
We tried. I honestly don't think they get it yet... but know they will be thrilled next week when we get to the MK!
About This Page: 
!) days away from leaving on the trip now, and we have managed to keep the MK portion a secret from the kids – it is KILLING my DH. We still haven’t figured out a way to tell them, or when we will let them know. We fly into Orlando at 5pm on Thursday, and will take the Magic Express to our resort. We want to go over to the park as soon as we can once we are all checked in and stay as late as the kids are able. Then we will have all day Friday to spend there too. Right now we are thinking that we will try and wait until we are at the Polynesian to tell them.
I roll up the clothes and then squeeze all the air out to make a nice, neat little package. I write their names on the bags too since the girls have many identical things. This way the kids can be responsible for getting dressed each day, or each time they need a new outfit, and then we have the empty gallon Ziplocs, which are always useful. It also makes fitting everything in the luggage easier, and neater. DH asked me if I was going to do that with his outfits too. Ha ha ha. (I just might!) 
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Pixie Dust
Love theTinkerbell photo - she is my daughter's favorite too!
PassPorter Guide Author
Disney Magic - Oct 2015
UPDATE: I knew he wouldn't make it!
We are telling the kiddos tonight about the MK portion of our trip. Here is our plan...
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