2017 WDW Passporter Guide [multiple updates with info on LIVE! Guides!] - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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2017 WDW Passporter Guide [multiple updates with info on LIVE! Guides!]
I emailed Passporter the other day to find out when the printed (book) for WDW 2017 would be available to purchase but to my dismay when I received a reply it stated that due to low sales of print editions that The Live! Guide Format and PDFs (which will be available sometime in December) are all that they are offering at this time.
I love my Passporter book and use it in my planning and always take it with me. I know this is the age of tech but some of us prefer the old way. I don't want to put it in my phone and to print the pages I want doesn't seem very cost effective. So So sad!!!!
I know change is hard, but sometimes it can also be really awesome. And the new LIVE! Guides are pretty awesome. Allow me to tell you about both the reason for the decision and about the new LIVE! Guides:
Why are there no print books for 2017?
We are releasing PassPorter's Walt Disney World 2017 as the LIVE! Guide (and PDF) only. This is due to the decline of print books and falling PassPorter print sales, which have brought us to the point where a print run is no longer financially possible for us right now. We also love print books (perhaps more than anyone, in fact), but if we cannot afford it, we cannot afford it. We are not some big company that is looking at our bottom line and ditching the print books so we can make more money. We are an extremely small company that is just trying to make ends meet and we got to the point where there was no money for our traditional print runs.
This does not mean we won't be able to offer PassPorter's Walt Disney World in print in the future, just not for the foreseeable future. We are investigating print on demand and micro print runs for the benefit of our passholders and supporters. Alas, print is no longer the best way for PassPorter to help people plan vacations, as is evidenced by the decline in book sales over the years. But if we can swing it, we are happy to offer print editions for our loyal supporters.
If you pre-ordered a copy of PassPorter through Amazon or another online venue, who is promising a particular ship date that they are guessing at, we recommend you cancel that order and purchase a pass to the LIVE! Guide. If you absolutely must have a print edition, 2016 editions are still available at Amazon.
Why would anyone want to use a LIVE! Guide?
The innovative LIVE! Guide system (which I designed and coded myself just for PassPorter) is mobile-friendly, interactive, cloud-based, and always up-to-date. It has features print does not have and cannot compete with. For example, it has a built-in system for you (and your family members, if you choose) to mark the attractions and eateries, and then compare who is interested in what in a handy chart. It has special tools that let you markup the book with your own comments, right in the page itself, and then view and sort all those comments. And when you're ready to print, the system lets you generate a custom PDF with all of your comments and markups -- print and carry only the pages that interest you. The PDF pages are sized to fit the PassPorter binder. This is just the tip of the iceberg -- the system has so many awesome features, and they are all based on reader feedback. I've been listening to all your comments over the years and I've put them into the LIVE! Guide. Plus, I can fit more information into the LIVE! Guide, too!
Folks used to carry their PassPorters with them while in the parks, but I haven't seen anyone carry one for years. They do have their phones, though. And the LIVE! Guide was built to be mobile-friendly first -- the text is specially formatted to read on phones. I made sure my aging eyes could read it on my own phone (and I don't have a big-screen phone). This is NOT a traditional e-book. It's special.
You can see the LIVE! Guides for yourself right now. The entire front matter and full first chapter of every LIVE! Guide are free to everyone. This page will take you to all of our currently available LIVE! Guides: http://www.passporter.com/guide/]htt...ter.com/guide/
I am ALWAYS happy to answer questions about anything we do here at PassPorter. Send me an e-mail at support@passporter.com or reply to this thread. If I am slow to reply to this thread, it's only because I now do the work of several people and I'm always way too busy -- it's not because I don't care. I've poured my heart and soul into PassPorter and continue to do so.
Thank you for caring about PassPorter and continuing to support as change with the times! It really means the world to me.
I could do some of the planning with just looking online, but I really enjoy the pockets for each vacation day and we like filling in the pages each night.
I just bought the deluxe edition for our last trip so I was looking forward to buying the refills this time around and the pockets were what makes this tour guide the best. Printing out the book is just not the same. It would be a lot of work to print, cutout the pages to fit the binder and punch holes in every page. Please reconsider printing a version.
I'm so sad to hear this!! I have used the guide for all my trips since 2003!! I so prefer the book over the digital copy. I can't carry my ipad with me through the parks and it's to small to see on my phone. I'm going to miss the book with all the places to write down important info and times and keep the daily budget etc.
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I am definitely a print hardcopy person. I generally will not purchase anything that does not have a "real" book. I truly hope that this is reconsidered. I hate to have to find an alternative planner...I love the Passporter guides and have given them as gifts as well as personal use. Nothing will compare.
This makes me so sad. I so look forward to having my book for months before my trips so that I can plan and dream and write down all my plans and refer back to them for to do and not to repeats��
I, too, have been waiting for the 2017 print edition to come out. My family always marks up the pages & maps during our vacation planning sessions. Printing out the restaurants, rides, and maps would be way too time intensive to be practical. I really hope they reconsider that decision! I have always recommended that first-timers to WDW pick up a copy to get themselves organized. Has anyone here come up with any home-grown viable alternatives to the printed Passporter?
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2017 WDW Passporter Guide [multiple updates with info on LIVE! Guides!]
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I was looking forward to buying the 2017 copy. Call me old fashioned but I enjoy reading printed versions of books.
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