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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
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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.
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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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Pre-trip report – part one: I wonder if we can meet up with Melanie
Dates: Thursday 6 – Sunday 9 June Adventurers: Me, Cheryl (40) and DH Mark (47) Destinations: Disneyland Paris and Paris Resorts: Kyriad Marne La Vallee Torcy, Dream Castle Hotel at Disneyland Hotel and the Renaissance Paris La Defense. Meets: Melanie (Principessa_di_Fata), her DD Meri and her mom and Hazel (thomhazel) and her family Celebration: meeting new and old friends and revisiting Disneyland Paris and Paris
I’ve been following Melanie’s (Principessa di Fata) pre-trip report about her upcoming A Little Trans-Atlantic Magic trip ever since she started it at the very tail end of last year. It took her a little while to actually post her itinerary, and when she did, I discovered that she’ll be arriving in Barcelona on 1 June, and planned on staying there for a few days.
Now I’ve always wanted to meet up with her, but our plans have never worked out. I would’ve loved to have got together with her on her Germany trip, as Neuschwanstein Castle is on my must-do list (one day! ), but it wasn’t to be. Maybe Barcelona would work out. We could easily do it in a weekend (that’s the beauty of living in the UK, there are so many countries we can easily get away to ), so I looked at airfares, but this wouldn’t work out either. It turned out that it was the end of our school holiday half term week, so of course they would be insane.
I carried on reading her report, and a few weeks later, in late February, she posted this:
“Then I need to look into this high-speed-rail that I just heard about, that goes from Barcelona to Paris, and opens on 4/1. Depending on cost and timing... I just might be able to talk mom into a few nights in Paris. I'm not sure how my odds are there... but it's a thought! A thought I blame you all for putting in my head. I'm envisioning one full day to do Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower, and one full day for DLP (lol, what?)... and then maybe if we do 4 nights (yeah right) a full day at Versailles. We'll skip the museums this go-round because Meri will get very quickly bored looking at paintings. But we can see the outside of the Louvre, and do some other fun stuff.
Anyway... yeah. I don't know that we can AFFORD that, but woo that would seriously end the trip with a huge, ginormous bang if I COULD talk mom into it... just sayin. I'm not getting my hopes up, but I'm going to price it out and see what I can do. ”
Well, that was it – I had to get in touch with her, as if this worked out, and their visit to Paris fell the following weekend, now that we could do…
We barely had to wait any time, before Melanie confirmed that the Paris segment of their trip was on and for the weekend of 8/9 June. We messaged to and fro, and she came to the conclusion that visiting Disneyland Paris on a Friday would make more sense with the crowds, as they were likely to be lower then, than during a weekend.
Ok, so having changed jobs last year, and with my new job, you get your holiday year from the month of your birth. Now this presented some problems, given that I took the majority of December off for our little trip to WDW, our cruise on the Fantasy, Disneyland and California. It meant I really didn’t have much holiday left for this year, so this was a problem…
However, I’d forgotten our privilege days. We get two and a half each year, with one day coming in early June, so I suddenly realised I could use that for the Friday without taking any more holiday off. That works! My manager quickly approved that and Mark got the day off as well, so we were set.
The first thing I did was to get tickets for Disneyland Paris, as there was an amazing deal for tickets. You could get a one-day, two-park pass for £50 each ($75), which is great value. The usual price is £63 (or $95), so that was quite a saving.
I then set about looking at how we were going to get across to Disneyland Paris and Paris. Melanie and I had already talked about going to Versailles on the Saturday, as the one thing I wanted to do there was see the fountains. We’d half glimpsed them from outside the gardens back in 2010 when we stayed in Versailles on the way back from Spain, but that hadn’t been ideal at all. I really wanted to see them properly, but having visited the palace, I wasn’t that bothered about seeing it again. Melanie felt the same way, figuring the palace wouldn’t hold that much interest for Meri and she and her mom had seen the palace before, so the plan was to head to Versailles on Saturday.
As we planned on Melanie’s pre-trip report, Hazel (thomhazel) piped up to say that she lived quite close to Versailles, and I suggested that she come over and say to hi! Well, one thing led to another, and before we knew it, we were planning lunch at the local café that she’s raved about to me as having the most amazing crème brulee. Oh wow, this is working out perfectly! With her family, it ended up being a booking for 10 of us for lunch that day!
Then the plan is to head for the Bois de Boulogne for the afternoon, somewhere we’ve never visited, but Melanie mentioned it as part of her plans and it’s on the same side of Paris as Versailles, so it made sense to go there that day. And let’s be honest, we’d probably need to walk off the crème brulee lunch!
I knew that Melanie wanted to go up the Eiffel Tower on the Sunday morning, something we’d already done. I was thinking of staying somewhere near La Defense, as that’s near Bois de Boulogne and I wanted to go up the Grande Arche de la Defense on the Sunday morning, as we’d never done that. Well, after talking it over with Melanie, she decided to come and join us. So those were pretty much our plans for our weekend away…
Anyway, back to how the heck we were going to get to Paris… there are two main options, and neither involves flying. If we want to fly, it’s about a 40 minute drive to Gatwick, then of course, you have to check in a couple of hours ahead of your flight, before flying out to Paris. Where we live, we’re about 20 minutes from Ebbsfleet, and about half an hour from Ashford, both of which have international train stations, with Eurostar services out to Paris, so that was our first option. I could get some reasonable prices on it, but of course, you still have to find your own way all around Paris. Bearing in mind Disneyland Paris is to the southeast of Paris, while Versailles is to the southwest and it’s an about an hour’s drive between them, just to give you an idea of how far apart they are. I did try and look for a hotel in Paris that might be convenient for both, but I wasn’t coming up with anything obvious.
The second choice was Eurotunnel. Based in Folkestone, about 40 minutes’ drive away from us, you turn up and check in half an hour beforehand, then you drive on to the train with your car, and 35 minutes later you’re in France. I figured that, as we’d be visiting different parts of Paris, this was the most sensible place to get there, as then we could drive between our destinations.
We worked out that we could both leave work a bit early on the Thursday, and went ahead and booked the Eurotunnel, leaving at 4:20pm. Because France is an hour ahead of the UK, that meant that we’d arrive in Calais just before 6:00pm. As it’s just under a three hour drive to Paris, we didn’t want to go any later than that, so we decided to go ahead and book that one.
Ironically, we opted for the same time on the way back on Sunday, although as we’d be going back in time an hour when we went home, we’d arrive back in the UK at 3:55pm, which seemed like a reasonable time to get back home after a nice weekend away in Paris.
I wanted a cheap hotel for the Thursday night, as literally we’d be arriving there after a fairly long drive, going to bed, then setting out the next morning for Disneyland Paris. I found the Kyriad Marne La Vallee Torcy for just £60 ($90), which had good reviews on TripAdvisor. It’s about 15 minutes’ drive from Disneyland Paris, so that works out perfectly for us.
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I just hope my creme brulee lives up to my hype. When I booked the cafe I did warn them to have a large batch made just in case all 10 of us decide we want some.
Ohhh I'm so eagerly waiting to hear all about the weather, crowds and 20th birthday celebration shows. I wanted to add that your new signature photo is adorable!!!
I'm so excited for you to meet Melanie and Meri! She is one of only 4 passporters I've met in person (not including Meri - who is a PP-in training I guess?! - who is delightful!), and I know you'll just love her!
Good thing the restaurant has been warned of the impending creme brulee rush!
Always looking forward to DLP... rumor is they may be starting a Half Marathon there for 2014 or 2015! Looks like I've got another medal to earn (I hope)!! Can't wait to hear all about this weekend!
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I just hope my creme brulee lives up to my hype. When I booked the cafe I did warn them to have a large batch made just in case all 10 of us decide we want some.
Well I'm a dead cert for the crème brulee - I have to sample it.
Ohhh I'm so eagerly waiting to hear all about the weather, crowds and 20th birthday celebration shows. I wanted to add that your new signature photo is adorable!!!
Thank you! Everyone seemed to like it from the trip report, so I thought I'd make it my signature pic.
I'm so excited for you to meet Melanie and Meri! She is one of only 4 passporters I've met in person (not including Meri - who is a PP-in training I guess?! - who is delightful!), and I know you'll just love her!
I can't wait to meet her and I know we'll love her!
Quote:
Good thing the restaurant has been warned of the impending creme brulee rush!
Always looking forward to DLP... rumor is they may be starting a Half Marathon there for 2014 or 2015! Looks like I've got another medal to earn (I hope)!! Can't wait to hear all about this weekend!
Oh wow - I had no idea about that. How cool! Keep us posted and maybe we can pop over (if it's at a weekend) and see you.
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), but it wasn’t to be. 
Maybe Barcelona would work out. 
), so I looked at airfares, but this wouldn’t work out either. It turned out that it was the end of our school holiday half term week, so of course they would be insane. 
It meant I really didn’t have much holiday left for this year, so this was a problem… 
My manager quickly approved that and Mark got the day off as well, so we were set. 
Well, one thing led to another, and before we knew it, we were planning lunch at the local café that she’s raved about to me as having the most amazing crème brulee. 
Oh wow, this is working out perfectly! With her family, it ended up being a booking for 10 of us for lunch that day! 
If we want to fly, it’s about a 40 minute drive to Gatwick, then of course, you have to check in a couple of hours ahead of your flight, before flying out to Paris. Where we live, we’re about 20 minutes from Ebbsfleet, and about half an hour from Ashford, both of which have international train stations, with Eurostar services out to Paris, so that was our first option. I could get some reasonable prices on it, but of course, you still have to find your own way all around Paris. Bearing in mind Disneyland Paris is to the southeast of Paris, while Versailles is to the southwest and it’s an about an hour’s drive between them, just to give you an idea of how far apart they are. I did try and look for a hotel in Paris that might be convenient for both, but I wasn’t coming up with anything obvious. 
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