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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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 am just curious about how the majority of you get to Disney. Do you tend to drive or fly? Our trips have been about 50/50, with the majority of our "driving trips" to be early in our marriage. Now I really prefer to fly because of the time factor and convenience of the DME.
I am from NC. It takes 12 hours to drive, so that usually takes up two full days to travel roundtrip. However, flying only takes 1.5 hours. Therefore, if we take morning flight, we are able to spend a full day at the parks on the day we arrive.
We always fly SW, so we get really good deals- often it is cheaper to fly than buy gas round trip!
Please tell me where you are from and your transportation preference. If you fly, which is your preferred airline and why.
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we drive from long island, ny. ususally takes us around 17-18 hrs. last time we took the autotrain from va and we really enjoyed that but now that the kids are in school i'd like to start flying to save time but dh is definitly not into flying.
We've driven for the past 4 years or so. It takes around 18 hours each way. We figured the cost of flying versus the cost of gas + hotel to drive. It costs us around $1000 to drive, and it would cost us approximately $2500 to fly.
We asked ourselves if it was $1500 worth of "better" to fly, and for us it's a no. We'd rather have that money to spend while we're there. Our kids are older and do fine in the car. For someone with younger children or children who don't travel as well, it might be $1500 worth of better for them to fly down. It just depends on your family.
If we would drive it would take 18 hours non stop. This is not even something that sounds good to us. We have 3 kids all under 6. This is what I look at always pick flying. 1. I can't stand my DH driving. 2. hotel stay. extra $$ we would need down and back 3. Cost of meals down and back 4. More vaction time to take off work and less time at the world 5. The idea of puting extra miles and wear and tear on your car. 6. If you fly, chances are your delays are shorter, traffic jams could delay you 6 hours or more at any given time. Sorry soo long, but until the kids are older, and my husband drives better, we are flying! We like flying NW airlines, always direct and always the cheapest. We like airtran as well.
We always drive for our summer trips even though it is a 24 hour drive. We break it into 2 days extra each way. The kids are off school, by DH is retired and I don't work in the summer either. Even with the high cost of gas last summer, and including hotels and food (we pack a lunch for each day and only eat out for dinner) it cost us HALF of the cost of airfare for 4 people. We even have low cost air carriers such as SW, Jet Blue and Air Tran locally, but it still costs us less to drive. We love to fly and have done so when we have gone in October, December and January because we have less time overall to spend.
This year we are driving to Washington, DC and spending 2 nights there and we are doing the tourist thing. The next day we will make it to Georgia and catch the light house at St. Simons Island and stay overnight. The next day we will rent a boat at the Okefenokee swamp to see some gators in the wild, then we will be at WDW by check-in time at 3 pm. On the way back we are going to stop at Monticello in Virginia and Skyline Drive on the way home. My kids (now teens) love visiting all the historic places along the road and we try to do something different every year. One year we went to almost every lighthouse from Virginia to Daytona Beach on the way down/back. One year we did a NASCAR speedyway tour on the way down/back and hit 5 of them. America is a beautiful country with lots to see and do so we take advantage of it whenever we can.
We drive from upstate NY, it's about an 18 hour drive. My parents always travel with us and my father will not fly.
We find it easier to drive straight through overnight while DS3 is sleeping.
Its about a 14 hour drive and we usually break it up into a day and a half. That said we have only done it once!! By the time we got there I was a nervous wreck and the kids were on my very last nerve. Now we fly. 2 hours and we're there. Direct flights on SW.
We always drive, although my first few trips to Florida were by air (visiting grandmother AND the Magic Kingdom). With three of us, and my FIL living in Jacksonville area, we just find driving works best. We view the trip as part of the vacation, breaking it up with an overnight in Santee, SC (tried driving through once--never again). Then we visit a day and a night at my FILs and leave for WDW the next morning.
We stop again at Jax on the way back, after having eaten Krystal burgers in Daytona and driven up the coast highway to spend a couple of hours on the beach at Flagler. Having our car means we can be totally flexible, even deciding to add another day to our WDW stay one year. We always allow a day to be home before going back to work so we can extend our visit with family or just mosey off the path to see something special on the way back. So I don't see us flying; if anything, we would try the Autotrain which leaves from near us.
We drive. It is about 18 hours total and we drive over two days both ways. We treat the drive as part of our vacation and do picnics for our meals at parks in nice places I plan for in our route.
The cost of gas + hotels is more expensive than if we flew say Southwest but probably the same if we flew American. But my DH has long legs and the seats on the airplanes are just miserable for him and make his hips really hurt from having to keep his long legs folded up.
Another reason we drive is I really like being able to pack what I need since our trips are usually 10 to 12 nights and I hate having to plan around weight limits or extra baggage charges. We tend to buy wines and such on our trip as we go during the F&W festival. We can't do that if we fly as you cannot ship alcohol from Disney or at least you couldn't the last time we flew. It's okay if you are just going to get maybe one or two bottles but I don't like the risk of having it in our check-on luggage which you have to do now.
I also have had things stolen out of my luggage and frankly I would rather just drive and be able to take my nice camera as opposed to be worried about theft or having to carry it on.
It's a 12hr drive for us so we Fly....It costs us $550 to fly my family of 6 via Air Tran out of Baltimore versus $700 in rental cars and gas....hubby dosen't like to drive our vehicles due to the mileage. plus then we get a full day of parks and it's only a 2hr flight....
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Christine, Proud Air Force wife, Mommy to 5! and a super cute puppy
We drive on summer vacations, but have always flown to WDW .
Mostly because we manage to tack WDW onto a trip to Fl for another reason -- Thansgiving with my brother, my husband's business trip -- and we're pulling DD out of school. Driving would make the trip too long. So we spend the money to gain the time.
we drive from long island, ny. ususally takes us around 17-18 hrs. last time we took the autotrain from va and we really enjoyed that but now that the kids are in school i'd like to start flying to save time but dh is definitly not into flying.
We are also from LI but I will never drive to FL again. We fly SW out of Islip. The airport is is only a 15 min drive from our house. We got round trip airfare for 6 for $1198. Can't beat it!
Were in GA and according to mapquest it would be a six hour drive. Last year we flew Delta. It was the cheapest non stop flight and we always have a good experience with them. They dominate the flights out of Atlanta. I wish we had jetblue; they always seem to run good deals. I strongly prefer to fly than drive. Unfortunately right now the airline prices for our trip are over $300 each r/t and there are six of us. That's more than I'm willing to spend. I'm really keeping an eye of the flights in hopes they come down (like half) otherwise we might just suck it up and drive because that just seems like a waste of money. For a six hour drive, we would not need a hotel, so it should cost us like $300 r/t to drive. Very cheap!
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We love to fly and have done so when we have gone in October, December and January because we have less time overall to spend.
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