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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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We are going to be in WDW from Jan.30 to Feb.5 2011. In starting to plan our days for which parks on which days I subscribed to Touring Plans for the crowd levels (and to get the Lines App for my phone whilr we're there ). I see that 4 out of our 7 days are listed as very LOW crowd levels with descriptions of the days as "wow, it's like we have the park to ourselves" and "is the park even open? Mickey are you there?". We've never been at this time of year. Are the crowds really going to be that low?? It would be great if they were, but I don't want to get my hopes up.
We went earlier in Jan this year (7th-16th) and it was far more busy than I expected (not even from the marathon weekend so much as the tour groups- holy moly!) I wasn't expecting to have the parks to ourselves at all, but it was definitely much busier than I expected (I think a few times we hit some parks on bad days too.) DH was watching the wait times on his phone later in Jan and they dropped significantly so you should be good. We'd like to do a trip during that time in the future (first I'm tackling the marathon though so it will have to wait.)
Between Martin Luther King Day and President's Day are the lowest times for crowds. I have been there twice at that time and never had to wait long for anything. Walked right onto Space Mountain, BTMRR and Splash Moutain. I think the longest line we had was for Test Track at Epcot.
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The thing to remember about the TouringPlans info is that those are now done as a percentile ranking.
1's are in the 1-10th percentile of business, whereas a 10 would be in the 91-100th percentile.
I haven't been during off-peak times, but the descriptions are obviously an exaggeration.
Having said that, I'm looking forward to my first off-peak trip this November, where according to touringplans.com, we'll be there for a couple 1's, a 2 and a 3. If I remember to, I'll post my observations about how busy the parks are when we get back, but that's not until basically right before Thanksgiving.
We went the last week of Jan a couple years ago and yeah, the crowds were that low. The only real wait we had was on Soarin'. About a 90-minute wait, but the queue for Soarin' is so fun, the time flies. Everything else... pretty much walk on or maybe a 10 or 15 min wait. That's why we're going back Jan 2011!
(However, I must mention, when we were there in Jan Splash Mountain was closed for refurb or something. I think they take advantage of the super-low crowds to fix up the more popular rides.)
We love visitng WDW in January! We did that a few years ago, and are doing it again in 2011 Even though we went around MLK day, we experienced low crowds. Weather was awesome! (we much prefer it to be a bit chillier than way hot ) We were able to swim a few of the days.
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We are leaving for the World Jan 27th. I'm hoping for low crowds. But it has to be lower than early June. I'm trying not to buy touring plans this time. The past 2 visits they changed the crowd levels at the last minute, I picked those dates, in hopes that would be a better time to travel.
We went January of 2009. The crowds seemed pretty low to me. The longest line we waiting in was the character autograph lines (too bad you can't "fastpass" those!). The weather was also very nice while we were there. Very mild. We wore jeans and t-shirts most of the time and would throw on a sweater or sweatshirt in the evenings. IMO it was too cold for the pools and waterparks, but there were MANY people at WDW that week that didn't think so. Have fun!!
January is a great time to go. Sometimes, you will see that there are a lot of refurb's going on so you might miss an attraction or two, but the weather is great and the crowds aren't that bad.
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That's a great week to go! My DSis and I went about 3 years ago and it was wonderful! I don't think we waited more than 20 mins for any of the big rides and never used FP.
We got to WDW the Monday after New Year's this year and didn't have to wait for anything but the absolute most popular rides like Soarin'. We didn't get a Fastpass for anything, walked right onto every other ride or waited at most five minutes to get on.
It was more crowded than usual for that week we overheard a woman say. However, "crowded" looked like nothing much to us compared with how it was in mid-July on our previous trip.
The only day we noticed parks seeming very crowded was the one day we got decent weather, sunny and mid-70's.
Great time to go unless you're unlucky enough to get an Arctic blast as we did. Luckily, that doesn't happen at all often which is why we felt especially cursed.
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). I see that 4 out of our 7 days are listed as very LOW crowd levels with descriptions of the days as "wow, it's like we have the park to ourselves" and "is the park even open? Mickey are you there?". We've never been at this time of year. Are the crowds really going to be that low?? It would be great if they were, but I don't want to get my hopes up.
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Even though we went around MLK day, we experienced low crowds. Weather was awesome! (we much prefer it to be a bit chillier than way hot 
) We were able to swim a few of the days. 
). The weather was also very nice while we were there. Very mild. We wore jeans and t-shirts most of the time and would throw on a sweater or sweatshirt in the evenings. IMO it was too cold for the pools and waterparks, but there were MANY people at WDW that week that didn't think so. Have fun!!
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