Does anyone take a vacation to somewhere just because flights are cheap? - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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I have not. But I have considered it. And I've tried to convince my sister to do it.... She has never flown on a plane, nor has her children. She always talks about wanting to fly somewhere. I keep telling her just to go online and find the cheapest flights she can and go there!
Years ago the airlines used to have "student fares" and they were CHEAP. Every now and then they'd come up with an even cheaper student "special fare". On the spur of the moment I went to London for the weekend once, and when I was in high school used to fly from Boston to NYC for the day ($12 round-trip!).
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Yep - many times. We flew to Venice a couple of months after 9/11 because we got two flights for about $40 and we figured why not. I've found many cheap airfares in recent years for around Europe and we've taken day trips or short or long weekends as a result, as it makes a weekend away affordable.
I've never done but I do get tempted sometimes. However since I don't drive (never gotten my license) I can't rent a car so I can't just book airfare, hotel & a car on the spur of the moment and go. I have to research transportation and find a hotel that's near transportation which kills the whole book at the last minute and go idea.
ABSOLUTELY, though a lot of our $-inspired trips were by way of a layover or other convenience. DH use to travel for a living, so we would look at what was on the way, or if there were layover options. We turned a fueling stop in to 2 weeks in Fiji once!
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I'm too much a must-plan type to go wherever the cheapest fare would take me. I want a nice hotel reserved well in advance which isn't that easy to do unless you'll take potluck from the deep discount booking services.
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Last edited by Her Dotness; 12-01-2014 at 09:02 AM..
I definitely would, but I have never been lucky enough to find such low fares. (Although India is probably the one place I would turn down...I have no desire at ALL to go there, which is not really the case with anywhere else.)
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India is a dream of mine, though I would want to spend TIME there. DH lived there for 3 months before we were married, just for the heck of it. It was an amazing experience for him.
We have done this several times...there is an offer called "Blind Booking" that we have participated in while living in Germany. You just enter the dates you want to travel and you book..."blindly"!! You pay the fees (and it is cheap! I think it was under $50 Euro per person one way) and you get what you get! Now, sometimes, the travel is early in the morning and late at night which can be a pain. But, if you are up for adventure, you can quickly tour another European country for a weekend very affordably. But, you never know where you may end up!
We traveled to Berlin and Rome this way. The whole family. It was fun!
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"Disneyland has that thing - the imagination and the feeling of happy excitement - I knew when I was a kid."
--Walt Disney
Well, yes and not really. I booked a trip to DC last summer because there was a one day sale on Jet Blue offering ridiculously cheap airfare ($29 one way) but in fairness, I had been thinking about a DC trip, the cheap airfare just helped me pull the trigger.
We haven't done that, but last summer we went to Vermont for a week because we got a deal on a condo - $165 for a 2-bedroom, 2 bath (not a night, the whole week!!)
It was actually one of the most fun vacations we've taken. WDW is where we've usually gone, that or DCL - and there, everything has to be scheduled. It was nice to do what ever sounded good that day. We had 2 things we HAD to do a certain day, one because we had to schedule it (river-rafting tour) and one because they are only open once a week (wolf park).
We have done this several times...there is an offer called "Blind Booking" that we have participated in while living in Germany. You just enter the dates you want to travel and you book..."blindly"!! You pay the fees (and it is cheap! I think it was under $50 Euro per person one way) and you get what you get! Now, sometimes, the travel is early in the morning and late at night which can be a pain. But, if you are up for adventure, you can quickly tour another European country for a weekend very affordably. But, you never know where you may end up!
We traveled to Berlin and Rome this way. The whole family. It was fun!
This is so cool! I have never heard of that, but would totally do it if it were an option at any of my airports. Now that my youngest is getting older-she is 11-I will be looking at more options farther away.
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