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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Flowers Family Celebration 2011 – PTR
I neglected to do a trip report when we went to WDW back in 2008, so after reading over several PTR I decided I should really attempt to write up our own. We had been talking about returning to WDW after our first successful trip in 2008. We were spurred intobooking this one when I received the notice that free dining was returning at the end of this summer. So we headed over the AAA office and booked our trip for August 29, 2011. I am calling it a celebration because we will be celebrating our 20th Anniversary, my husband birthday (which is the day we fly to WDW), and the kids’ birthdays. Since our anniversary fell during the week of Spring/Easter Break we opted to wait for free dining and less busy time of year to celebrate.
The cast of characters in our family are myself, SandiF, DH, DS (he will be 17 when we go), and DD, (13). I grew up with many trips to Disneyland growing up in California. I even have several tickets left over from the days of A through E tickets, and can remember us trying to figure out the best to use them! DH and I celebrated our first anniversary there in 1992 and enjoyed every moment of it! We went back in 2008 as a family and is was as just a magical as I remembered in 92! DD is just excited to be able to return and relive the magic! DS is older, but seems to be excited in his own quiet way of taking another trip to the world of magic.
We, or rather I should say my DH had considered for about a day to maybe drive from CA to WDW, thankfully after I did some research my DH realized that it wasn’t really a great idea. Whew, the rest of us were quite happy about that. I was able to book an awesome internet price with Southwest Airlines, and later got an awesome deal on a rental car from Dollar. We had a rental car before and loved the ability to be to jump in and go where we needed to.
We are booked to arrive at the Port Orleans Riverside Resort on August 29th, and stay until the 8th of September. We decided to stick with this resort since we enjoyed it so much last time. ( My DH and I also stayed there when it was called “Dixie Landings.”) We are hoping to get a room in the Alligator Bayou section like we did last visit, love that particular area of the resort.
As soon as I booked our trip, I started making our ADR’s, gathering information and figuring out what we would need. Once I figured out what everyone just had to do, I did change our ADR’s several times, but noticed that things were booking fast and our options were becoming very limited! We had to pick one day for the beach. Last time we did Kennedy Space Center in the middle of our stay, the break from Disney was nice. I also made a list of few things I knew I need to work on to take with us. I got a lot of great ideas from the passporter community! I love planning trips, especially to WDW!
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Last edited by SandiF; 07-27-2011 at 06:43 PM..
Reason: changed formating so you could read it
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(Part 2)
I immediately starting making our ADRs as soon as I booked at the end of April, with a few changes along the way, we made our final plan a few weeks ago. They seem to determine our days, so we will go with those first in this part of PTR.
Arrival Day: I have late reservations for T-Rex, calling them directly got a reservation with no problem. Last time we didn’t make dinner plans, and were miserable trying to find a place to eat. Not good when you are tired from a day of flying and waiting in line for an hour to check in!
Day 1: Sci-Fi Dinner Theater for a late lunch. DS wants to eat here since we didn’t last time, but DD isn’t all that thrilled, said she remembers it smelled funny when we took a look at it in 2008. I think they will be both enjoy it since they are familiar with the movies because we are MSTK3 fans.
Day 2: Early dinner at The Garden Grill, our family enjoyed this so much this last time we ate their twice. I see the menu is different, so hoping we like it just as much as we did last time. DD is looking forward to seeing Chip and Dale.
Day 3: Up for breakfast at the Crystal Place, one of our favorite places for a buffet breakfast. Later for dinner, just me and DH at Les Chefs de France, I have to see Remy, really that is the only reason I am going.
Day 4: Dinner at the Nine Dragons in China. DD’s choice, we have to go she said, we just have to go. I don’t know why, but we are going. I hope it’s good!
Day 5: Cinderella’s Royal Table for me and DD. We opted for breakfast since the lunch menu looked a little too out there for our tastes. DH and DS will be going on the Keys to the Kingdom tour, since DD is not old enough, my solution was to have breakfast at the Castle, which seemed to ease the pain a bit of not being able to join the tour.
Later on this day we have reservations for the 50’s Diner, but I am not sure will keep them. Although I enjoyed it last time, no one else really wants to go. I am hoping they will change their minds.
Day 6: The Liberty Tree Tavern, another favorite, we opted for lunch since dinner is a set menu. Later than night we are planning to eat at Cosmic Ray’s, one of our favorite counter services.
Day 7: The Fantasmic Package at the Brown Derby for dinner. A must for my family, I don’t know why they love it so much, but they choose this restaurant over the other two restaurants for the package!
Day 8: Beach day, and everyone has requested breakfast at Cracker Barrel on the way to Clearwater/Tampa Area. If they have their way they will be having dinner there on the way back to WDW.
Day 9: Lunch at The Coral Reef. Going here for the fish, turtles, sharks, and hopefully some good food also!…if we are lucky we will get right next to the window like we did last time.
Day 10: Our last day in WDW! Breakfast at the Tusker house, another favorite of our family. It was hard to choose between Chef Mickey’s and this, but the Tusker House won. We really enjoyed it the last time.
Some of our favorite snacks are ice cream, funnel cakes, churros, and mickey shaped pretzels. Also looking forward to the yummy pastries, with some fun coffee drinks or specialty teas. The kids also want to eat at Pizza Planet, another favorite counter service for them. We haven’t tried it but hear good things about the Counter Service near The Garden Grill, have that one our list this time around. Any other suggestions for counter service are welcome!
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I'm pretty sure I'm the bearer of bad news. I am almost positive that Remy only appears at Chef's de France at lunch time. You won't see him if you have a dinner reservation. Other than that everything sounds great!
I'm pretty sure I'm the bearer of bad news. I am almost positive that Remy only appears at Chef's de France at lunch time. You won't see him if you have a dinner reservation. Other than that everything sounds great!
I asked another thread and the latest he is there is 5:30, so I hope that information was current. Several passporters reported they saw him recently at dinner. Guess we will see..
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