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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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'm no stranger here, but I've been on hiatus for a bit. Real life has been really crazy for me, but I have managed a ton of trips to Disney in the mean time. I've learned a lot about myself and our trip planning and what makes us happy and what doesn't make us happy.
Who's us? Here's us in May:
That's me (Maria), DH (Jason), and DS (Michael)
I have a confession: I am an over planner. In August, we did a short family trip to celebrate our family reunion. My husband was finally freed from being stuck behind the Canadian border for 18 months while we got his paperwork sorted out. So, he lived in Canada and I lived here with our son. It was nerve wracking. So, what better place to spend our reunion than Disney? Well, I over planned it, we had a series of mishaps which made us miss something I felt was pivotal, I had a complete meltdown and ruined the evening for everyone, but blamed everyone else for ruining my evening. I had an epiphany that trip and decided I was throwing out the plans and learning to let go. Every trip since has been wonderful, so we're going to give another long family trip a go after a short successful one in May.
I work really hard. Like, all the time. The reason I do this is so that I can have a roof over my head that I find comfortable both inside and out and meets my moderate needs, but with high standards. Hence my first floor lake side condo in Florida.
Seriously, that's our building. We're the unit on the left.
I've camped before - a total of 3 times. Each time was a disaster. It also seemed silly to me as if it were merely just practice for if I ever decided to stop paying my bills and ended up homeless. I'll tell you, out of all the bills I have to pay, I've never been late with a housing payment and I chock it up to those three camping experiences. It was that bad. The very last time I camped, as I was throwing 3 days worth of wet clothing and bedding into my washing machine and shivering in a hot shower, I vowed that was the last and final time I would ever camp.
Yet, here we are with a reservation at Ft. Wilderness campsites in August.
Now first of all, this was not my idea, but I'm going along with it. A lot of conditions had to be met.
1. It had to be at Disney. I figure if it goes south and the tent changes from "free standing to "free ballooning"(I didn't coin that phrase, but it's hilarious and appropriate), I can get a room somewhere on property. Also, I trust the amenities at Disney and if I can't have a bathroom in my room, then I want to know where I have to "go" is clean and easily accessible.
2. We had to have some sort of temperature controlled environment. This is more due to medical issues (I have MS) than comfort. However, I live in Florida full-time and I know not to be outside in August unless you like to flirt with death.
3. I'm not cooking any sort of breakfast at any time. Ft. Wilderness has a breakfast buffet and therefore, solves this problem.
Now, August is not my ideal time to go. I would have preferred October-May. However, with a middle schooler and my husband on his last year of school, there was a small window of time where both of them had the same weeks off and of course, it was August.
We recently had a stay at Coronado Springs during Star Wars Weekends and absolutely loved it. In fact, I wanted to return there for this trip, but it was $800 or so for a week with the passholder discount, and my husband convinced me we could buy our camping gear for that and try camping.
So, with an $800 budget, we've set out to get everything we'd need for camping.
So far:
The tent. It has 2 window/vents on the ground meant for circulation or something like that. They're also the perfect size for window air conditioning units.
Window A/C unit. See above.
10'x10' easy up gazebo. We'll use this over the picnic area so we're not dying in the sun when trying to eat. Plus it will be a nice shady place for me to prep food.
A 24" LCD/DVD TV combo. I CANNOT survive if I don't get to wake up to the Disney resort station playing that happy little music and reminding me how much is out there in the bubble just waiting for me to discover.
A 5 drawer storage unit. I figure I can pack all of our little stuff in the drawers and use it in the tent as a stand for the TV.
Misc gear for the tent.
We still have other stuff to get like:
lanterns
raised air mattress
bedding
fire pit
Now a word about the bedding. We were in Walmart picking up a few things the other day and I asked hubby if there was any bedding that interested him that was on sale. He pointed to some black and white set, but I immediately vetoed it because: "it doesn't match the tent". He gave me some line about nobody caring, and only the trees where there to see us, but I promptly informed him that maybe someone would wander in or around or campsite and comment about how nicely coordinated the bed was to the tent. He just doesn't think about things like that. Besides, I just wanted to see if he liked the same thing I liked. I already picked out our bedding and it's sitting in my shopping cart just waiting until I am ready to purchase everything.
We're still working on it. We look on craigslist to buy used stuff if we can, otherwise, we just wait until we think we've found the best price for the item that will suit our needs. For example, hubby bought a used dish set for camping. It's metal. How do I know this? I know this by the sound it makes rattling around in the back of my trunk. This has helped me decide that dishes are stupid and paper plates will be just fine. See how that works?
Feel free to share your camping tips such as:
"cancel this stupidity and go book a real room"
__________________
Last edited by TheMadonna3; 07-15-2014 at 11:54 PM..
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I am so excited to read about your trip! I've always wanted to camp out at WDW even tho it does seem a little crazy to some people. The tent looks great and I love that it has a place for the AC Units. I know that will be essential for you.
That five drawer set is a cool idea! Especially the part about it being the TV stand too.
The only real camping tips that I have are: bring some bug spray, be flexible and have fun!
Great start! I have camped many many times, and after each trip I say "why did I do that?" LOL.....you should be fine with the a/c units. Just make SURE you have a good quality mtatress, as that can make or break (your back) I mean your trip
I am so excited to read about your trip! I've always wanted to camp out at WDW even tho it does seem a little crazy to some people. The tent looks great and I love that it has a place for the AC Units. I know that will be essential for you.
That five drawer set is a cool idea! Especially the part about it being the TV stand too.
The only real camping tips that I have are: bring some bug spray, be flexible and have fun!
I think I'll have fun, I'm just scared of everything being wet. We've taken extra precautions like waterproofing an already waterproof tent, waterproofing the rain fly, and sealing the tent seams, even though those too, are supposed to already be sealed. It turns out they were sealed already with tape, but I put sealant over the tape because I am that scared
Quote:
Originally Posted by DLinNH
Great start! I have camped many many times, and after each trip I say "why did I do that?" LOL.....you should be fine with the a/c units. Just make SURE you have a good quality mtatress, as that can make or break (your back) I mean your trip
Yes, we purchased a raised air mattress made by Beautyrest so I think that should work well. I'm debating on if I want to buy a raised one for my son or not. We have a regular one that we were going to use for him, but for some reason, I'd feel better if it were raised off the ground. I get anxiety about silly things sometimes.
So, we're getting ready to head out to a BBQ and I thought I would stop in and share for a bit before we headed out.
I started a thread in the resorts area asking for experienced campers to give me some tips. There have been a few good ideas so far that I didn't think of, so I added that to my list, like towels. I am used to not needing towels since they're in your room and all that I didn't even consider bringing shower AND pool towels. We've also added citronella candles to the list even though we purchased a bug zapper. There were also waterproof matches added in there because I felt it just couldn't hurt.
My stackable drawer tower has proved to become the most useful thing I have purchased because I am putting all of these little things into it like dish towels, shower towels, ponchos, extension cords, duct tape, etc.
We settled on a 5 day cooler over a thermoelectric cooler for keeping our stuff cold with a small disposable cooler on the side for keeping ice for drinks and refilling the other cooler as needed. The 5 day cooler was a savings of $60 and that helps stick to the budget for buying supplies.
Most of our food will be made in aluminum foil packs. I have receipes for salmon and chicken, both of which use lemon, so I figured that would save money if both used some of the same ingredients. We'll of course have hamburger/hot dog lunch/dinners, and we even have some ADR's, but I am interested in seeing what I can make in a foil pack. I also purchased a cast iron dutch oven that I'll need to "season" before we leave. It almost seems as if I'll have nothing to cook in it except maybe beans...
I have an entire virtual cart sitting on Walmart's website just waiting for me to press the "check out" button, but since they have a crummy return policy on air mattresses, I am waiting until we get a bit closer to our trip.
Sounds like you are well prepared! I have never camped, and really have no desire to do so, but I'm looking forward to seeing how everything works out for you!
Foil packs are a great idea for camping! We went "glamping" in a Tipi set up a few hours south of us and I had all these high expectations for what I could cook on a grill... turns out we can't even successfully light a grill We used the toaster oven a lot LOL! But the Tipis also had a little one-burner convection plate which we found very useful!
We've actually gone to using Coleman camp cots - they are fairly comfortable, and they have an actual metal frame with a foam pad, rather than the inflatable raised air mattress. We got ours from Walmart as well - and they were fairly comparable in price.
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Hi again! With regard to sleeping off the ground - you should make sure for your kiddo that they are off the ground. It will be so much better for all of you. I'm not sure about the cost/space constraints, but on Walmart website, they have a foldable cot. I would look into that. Also, you should be sure to get one or two "shower caddies" - they are super handy and cheap. They have different sections, and are plastic. You can fill them with all your bathroom needs and take it with you easily to the comfort station. Don't forget cheapo flipflops for the showers. I realize that Disney showers are super clean, but still - just saying
And I forgot to mention, when you cook in foil packets (very good idea BTW) try boneless chicken tenders with creamy chicken cup a soup (dry mix) sprinkled on top along with a little dry mix of hidden valley ranch dressing. Dot with butter and add some vegetables.
Guess I have camped more than I give myself credit for!
About This Page: 
Well, I over planned it, we had a series of mishaps which made us miss something I felt was pivotal, I had a complete meltdown and ruined the evening for everyone, but blamed everyone else for ruining my evening. I had an epiphany that trip and decided I was throwing out the plans and learning to let go. Every trip since has been wonderful, so we're going to give another long family trip a go after a short successful one in May. 
Besides, I just wanted to see if he liked the same thing I liked. I already picked out our bedding and it's sitting in my shopping cart just waiting until I am ready to purchase everything.
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The tent looks great and I love that it has a place for the AC Units. I know that will be essential for you. 
DLinNH
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