Our First Bounce Back Pre-Trip Report (9/13/14-9/20/14) - COMPLETED 9/6 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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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.
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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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Our First Bounce Back Pre-Trip Report (9/13/14-9/20/14) - COMPLETED 9/6
Even though I’m still five months away, I’m super excited about our next adventure, so it’s time for my pre-trip report.
First a re-introduction to the Cast of Characters:
Erin: Soon to be turning 45 this December and just maybe it everthing goes well I’ll be celebrating a solo trip someplace special…hint (Disney) Meanwhile, I’m just having fun going over the day to day plans of our family trip.
William: DH 46, who really enjoys Disney, but dislikes planning, but willing to help out if needed.
Joshua: Who will be turning 15 this coming November. He is now taller than me and recently started showing the beginning signs of a moustache. (I am so not ready for this).
The planning for this upcoming vacation started on our second to last day of September 2014 vacation. We really enjoyed our stay at Port Orleans Resort, so much that I was overjoyed when I found their bounce back offer in the welcome booklet and that it was currently offering the free dining package. So, with a quick call, I was able to make our next reservation for the following September dates 9/21/2014 – 9/27/2014. Now I had an official countdown, only 362 days before we would be heading back to Disney.
Well, the family and I came back home and life went on as usual. Joshua, who turned 14 this past November, continues to do well at his school. He is currently participates in weekly life skill and work adjustment classes. The ultimate goal is to provide him with the skills, tools and resources necessary to successfully transition to the highest possible level of independent adult living. The school has a proven record of helping many of the students there in finding jobs in the community. So, far Joshua has shown an interest in the hospitality field and enjoys doing table place settings and preparing the rolled napkins with utensils. His class also participated in the DC Fall Special Olympics and I’m proud to say he brought home the gold.
On the eve of our last trip Elmo, our seven year old Maine Coon mix, suddenly passed away. Our other cat, Zoe really missed her friend and although it took a little while, we finally found the perfect playmate for her and great new addition to the family, Bonnie a brown/tabby mix Maine Coon.
At the time we made our reservation, it was for a six night stay with a 6 day magic your way tickets without the park hopper option. Of course, that meant we could only do one park per day and that the closest we would come to park hopping was on the one day where we would be heading to MNSSHP. Around the beginning of December, my DH and I felt that we needed more time at Disney, especially since I really wanted to spend one full day at Hollywood Studios, instead of a half day like we did on our last trip. So, we did what any fun loving Disney fans would do, we added on an extra day at the beginning of the trip and decided to stay there from Saturday to Saturday.
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Great start and a great time time to go. My DW 1st trip was in Sep 3 years ago and we had a great time low crowds On hint be prepared for high temps and humidity
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I just wanted to let you know
… as of today April 1, 2014, we are: PAID IN FULL!!!!
That’s a whole lot of Disney Gift Cards (45 of them to be exact)…and a whole lot of savings!
Shortly after booking our bounce back offer, I started making my payments online. I didn’t want to take any chances of spending our vacation money anywhere else. So after my initial booking deposit of $200.00 the very next Saturday following our vacation, I made my scheduled payment, which was based on our package price divided by the time left until our pay due date of August 8th. Later that week, I had to pick up a few items at Target and noticed they had Disney Gift Cards, so I picked one up and was happy to learn that my Red Card gives a 5% discount on them along with the rest of my items, that I purchased that day. After learning this, I quickly went home and set up a spreadsheet to figure out how much I could possible save at this point based on the 5% discount. After doing a few calculations, I quickly discovered I could save little over $100! I then started purchasing them on regular bases and started logging them into my spreadsheet for tracking purposes. Around the end of October, as I was picking up some grocery items for our dinner, I received a $5.00 target gift card during checkout for some purchases I had made that day. I wasn’t really sure if this would work or not, but when I got home I wanted to see if I could apply this gift card toward the purchase of a Disney Gift Card and I was beside myself, when I got to the online check out….not only did I get my 5% percent discount, but I was also able to apply the gift card too! That was a savings of $7.50 off one card. Arm with this knowledge, I started scouring the weekly ads for their target gift cards promotions. Of course, we only brought those items which we would have normally purchased. Most of the items were from the grocery section, health/beauty and pet area. We ended up with an additional $300.00 savings off our Disney vacation package! This was addition to the free dining that we got with the bounce back offer.
O.K., now back to our regular schedule broadcast:
This was the first time in which I would have the opportunity to book my ADR’s 180 +10 days due to staying at a Disney Resort. On my last vacation we booked the trip mid April five months out from our travel date, so I had a very difficult time in securing a reservation at BOG. I did manage to snag one closer to my vacation time, however it was at 9:20 in the evening and worse yet, we never made it. If you’re interested in finding out what happened you can view my previous trip report in my signature line. Needless to say, I am determined to make it this year. So about 2 weeks from my 180 day mark, I started preparing for it. First, I started by setting my alarm clock at 5:20 a.m. , so I would have time to get both my PC and my I-Pad ready. My goal was to hopefully get a reservation for BOG around 5:30 in the evening, which would be way better than what I was able to get last year. With my find table button ready in both places, I quickly learned the art of multi-tasking by pressing both find table buttons at the same time. On my I-pad, I selected Dinner time, which if anything was available would give me more options and on the PC, I selected 5pm, with the knowledge the website would also list times before and after by at least an hour if any other times were available.
I got pretty good at this and on many mornings, I was lucky enough to see the times, which I was seeking. Now, there was one morning, where I woke up and started off by getting my I-pad ready first. As I opened up my Disney Experience, it kept coming up an error message I tried a few more times to no avail and decided to turn my attention to my laptop, since it appeared the app on the I-Pad was having issues. As I turned on my lap top, my home screen came up and right there on the screen, I was able to determine quickly on why I was having difficulty with my I-Pad. “Internet Connection Not Detected.” I quickly ran downstairs to check on the server and came to discover that during the night our two cats, while playing, accidently hit the off switch on the power strip bar in which our server had been plugged. I quickly fixed the situation and ran upstairs to see what was available. It was a little pass six, but there were still plenty of times available. So, I made an additional note to move the power strip bar to a different area, so it would get accidently turned off. After all said and done I was glad that this only a test day and not the real one, which will actually come a lot sooner than later.
Coming up next: This is not a test...this is the real thing. It's ADR Time.
Great start and a great time time to go. My DW 1st trip was in Sep 3 years ago and we had a great time low crowds On hint be prepared for high temps and humidity
Thanks! We gone a few times now in September, so we've become accustomed to the weather down there. I'm just hoping for a little less rain this time. It down poured almost the entire time we were there last year.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cam22
Congrats on PIF! Smart purchase of Disney gift cards at Target! We've done that for the past several trips. Hope all went well with booking your ADRs.
I never knew about Target before this vacation and was pleasantly surprised on how much we saved. It maybe the deciding factor on booking future vacations.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hugmonster
Good luck with ADRs.
Thanks!
Quote:
Originally Posted by lfredsbo
Congrats on being PIF! I have been purchasing Disney gift cards at a Target each pay period and taking advantage of the savings as well
My favorite part of purchasing the gift cards beside the savings, was using it as a countdown for how many we would need until we were paid in full.
Back on February 18th, Disney announced that they would be extending the Food and Wine Festival by pushing it up a week. At first I wasn’t too concerned regarding the crowd levels during our trip. I then soon came to learn about ESPN holding their inaugural Disney Fit Challenge during the week we were going. A few weeks went by and I felt compelled to change my dates, because I didn’t want to chance higher crowd levels due to the activities that were scheduled for that week. So after much thought we decided that the week of September 14th would be more suitable and hopefully less crowded, since there was no activities scheduled other than the anticipated MNSSHP, which we planned on attending. This decision of changing our dates took place on the eve of my 188th countdown day, which would now become my 181st day. I made the call to Disney on the evening of Sunday, March 16th and after waiting and listening to Disney music for thirty minutes, I was greeted by a friendly CM, Carol, who helped with the changes to my reservation. She also noted that I would be able to schedule ADR starting tomorrow and gave me the direct phone to Disney Dining just in case I wasn’t able to book online. I thanked her and within a few moments our dates had been changed from 9/20-9/27 to 9/13 thru 9/20. After I got off the phone I turned around and set my alarm clock for 5:30am, I knew I would have to wake up early on St. Patrick’s Day, since that would now be my 180th day. I was so excited that at first I had a little difficulty falling asleep at first, but by 10:50 I was soon sound asleep.
I actually woke up about ten minutes before my alarm went off. I got up and went into the bathroom and washed up. Afterwards, I proceed to sign on to my computer and pulled up MDE and signed on to the site. During that time while I waited for 6 am to roll around I did a little reading on my I-Pad, drank my coffee and watched the snow coming down outside my window. Yes, it was snowing on St. Patrick’s Day. As all of this was going on, I happened to glance down at and realize I wasn’t wearing anything green. So I quickly walked over to my closet and grabbing a shirt I changed to my green shamrock colored shirt. By now it’s three minutes before the online dining reservations are available and I’m sitting in front of my computer with my cursor on the submit button and my finger is on the mouse ready to click to see if any tables are available for my first reservation choice, which happens to be, Be Our Guest Restaurant. Those last three minutes before dining opened up seem to last forever. The clock finally showed 6:00 and within a few seconds I hit the submit button and the famous searching icon came started up and I waited anxiously to see if there was anything I would be able to work with for the day I wanted to go, which happened to be Wednesday. Finally, the times showed up and I couldn’t believe I was able to make the following reservation:
I was so happy, that I wanted to scream out for joy, but the rest of my family was still asleep and I didn’t want to wake them up yet. This was even a better time then what I was originally hoping for, since it meant that we would be there when it first opens back up for dinner. Within a few clicks, I reserved the time for our family.
On our last vacation, we booked our vacation 5 months out, so I didn’t get the opportunity to book at the 180 day mark and of course at the time there was nothing available at Be Our Guest. Well, about 10 days before our trip, an opening for dinner showed up and even though it was at 9:30, which was kind of late, I made my reservations for it. Well the night of the dinner, my son was not in a favorable mood and we ended up not going. I was extremely disappointed about the events of that evening, so I was really looking forward to going there on this trip.
Then it was time to finish scheduling my other ADRS. I was able to schedule everything that week based on my plans that I had worked on few weeks ago at this point we have reservations for the following:
We also have reservations for the Fantasmic Dinner at:
We almost chose Mama Melrose, but decided to go here instead, since we wanted some control on how long our dinner was going to be and it seem to have more choices too.
Here are some ADR’s that I was able to make for the rest of the week:
This next one happens to be DH's favorite, so he was very happy to learn that we would be visiting again:
The best part is both times we’ll be eating before rope drop and have a great opportunity to ride KS first thing on both mornings.
For Wednesday, I was able to grab Joshua’s favorite restaurant:
For our last two days we’ll be enjoying the following:
That last one means getting up pretty early. I would have made it later but I’m hoping to catch the Magic Kingdom Welcome show, which would be a first for us.
Well that's it for the ADR.
Next up...Day to Day Plans.
About This Page: 
, so it’s time for my pre-trip report. 
Meanwhile, I’m just having fun going over the day to day plans of our family trip.
So, with a quick call,
I was able to make our next reservation for the following September dates 9/21/2014 – 9/27/2014. Now I had an official countdown, only 362 days before we would be heading back to Disney. 
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Pixie Dust
We've done that for the past several trips. Hope all went well with booking your ADRs.
Dreams, Wishes, Hopes... these are the parts of childhood we should never lose.
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