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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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 wanted to share some ways that I am saving for our April 2013 trip. I keep trying to think of new ways to save little bits of money for our Disney trips. We are able to bank large sums from my DH's travel, but I want to try to save as much as I can without hitting the bigger lumps he gets. So I started doing lots of little things to save up money. I already have saved up a little less than $1,250 using these methods and am still counting.
1. Not Eating Out - For every meal we eat at home (breakfast, lunch and dinner) I put $2 in the Disney savings. We save a lot more than $2 but I want to keep it small so we don't feel the affect. We have 264 (792 total meals) days till our trip and we eat 98% (712) of our meals at home we will save $1,424
2. Side Job - I do some side work for my mom's business and my paychecks are about $51 after taxes. I put these directly into savings. There are 19 pay periods before the trip totaling $969
3. Bank Incentives - We receive a cash incentive from USAA for using our debit card as a debit card using the pin (so we always use the pin whenever possible). We also earn interest on our account, and any ATM fees are returned to us (since we already paid these out of the account I put this money in the savings) Monthly this equals about $20-60 depending how our month is. With 9 months till the trip that is $180-540.
4. Disney Rewards card - My DH travels a lot! He has to pay OOP for most of his travel expenses and then is reimbursed by his company. We have him pay as often as possible with our Disney Rewards card. This is a very rough number because the amounts vary a lot! But based on his travel schedule up till the trip I estimate total rewards to be $200-500.
5. Change Jar - We toss all our change in a jar. This amounts to about $100-200 depending on how much change we have.
6. Direct Transfer - I have an automatic transfer from my checking to my Disney savings for $25 a week. 37 weeks till the trip = $925
7. Don't Spend $5 Bills - Anytime I get a $5 bill I won't spend it. I will put it in a hidden place (my kids would take these out of the change jar), until I have $100 and I put it in the savings account (it's not easy for me to deposit cash, I have to deposit it locally then transfer to USAA). . I will guesstimate that we will save about $400-500 over the 9 months.
8. Rebates - Any rebates for purchases we make I put directly into the Disney Savings. This can be a small amount or large depending on what we buy throughout the year, but I would estimate it at around $100 (this could be significantly higher, but just to keep it real).
That is all the ways I am saving right now for our April 2013 trip. So the total savings would be between $4,298-5,158, add that to the $1,250 I've already saved and it's $5,548-6,408. Not bad by doing little things that I don't even really notice.
I would love to hear more ways people save little bits of money for their trips.
We also save change and all $1 bills. We also buy a $25-50 Disney gift card a the grocery store each week when we buy our weekly groceries. I also do some surveys and any money I get goes directly towards Disney. And lastly, I sell things we no longer need or use through a yard sale and on ebay. I make several hundred dollars at the yard sale and I make a couple hundred on ebay selling gently used clothes my kids have outgrown.
What we do is DH takes $200 a month from his paychecks and puts it in his safe. I take $200 a month from my money and put it in my savings. Then any money I make from selling tote bags in my Etsy shop goes into savings and by the end of the 12 months we usually have $5500 or so.
We don't wait every 12 months to go though so DH ends up paying most of the expenses for our adults only trips himself.
But last October's 10 day trip and this upcoming November trip, we have each paid for half of together.
We don't normally go out to eat very often, maybe once or twice a month so I am not going to stop doing that. We rarely go to the movie and I am not a shopping type of person, so the money I spend is very little.
I don't cost DH a lot of money and he realizes that.
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10/27-11/6/11 All Star Music Family Suite (QSDP) --Family trip
1/26-2/1/12 Quality Suites Lake Buena Vista --Adults Only trip
4/16-4/21/12 Rosen Inn --Adults Only Trip
10/27-11/4/12 All Star Music Family Suite (DDP) --Family Trip
4/14-4/19/13 Quality Suites Lake Buena Vista- Adults Only Trip
11/10-11/17/13 Wyndham Bonnet Creek- Adults Only Trip
11/2015 Wyndham Bonnet Creek- Family trip
The money I save using coupons I take back as cash. I then put this money aside.
On the rare occasion I get a $20, I won't spend that, but put it aside as well. When DH takes money out, he will not give me a $20 because he knows I won't spend it, but will use his smaller bills instead. So he will ask the cashier or teller for smaller bills to give to me.
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I have been buying a Disney gift card every week when I go grocery shopping. I have done this for the past few trips and it really helps paying for meals and shopping.
I'm a single mom, so there usually isn't a lot of extra money to set aside, but I like the idea of putting aside $2 for each meal eaten at home. That isn't such a huge amount that I couldn't handle that.
I buy a $ 25.00 Disney gift card every Friday, I save all our change, I save all our 1.00 bill's, I cash in soda bottles/water bottles and turn around immediately and load a Disney Gift card with the soda bottle/water bottle money, I use coupons and take that totaled save and add it to our vacation account. If I receive birthday/Christmas or other cash gift's I put that in our Disney account too!!! It add's up quick and I love watching the account grow.Get's us excited for our Family Disney vacations!!!
Registered Message Board Members save 30% off PassPorter guidebooks! When you register you'll have access to a discount coupon good for 30% off the list price of PassPorter books in our online store.
Thanks everyone for chiming in with more great ideas. I may have to add some of these to my methods.
I sadly can't do the gift cards, I only shop once every 4-6 weeks, because the store is 1 1/2 hours away. Before I moved my church did scrips (they sell gift cards and the church gets a percentage of the purchase back) and ordered every two weeks, I bought $50 every two weeks then.
I started to buy gift cards with our school program. They get a small amount of money back, and we get our gift cards.
We also have a Disney Visa. This really adds up and helps with the extras the kids want or a shirt I would normally never pay 40.00 for.
I am also tucking away $1 and $5 dollar bills to try to have a little unplanned money.
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