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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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 was talking to someone at work today who comes from Indiana originally and she'd also lived in Kentucky and more recently Germany. We got talking about trick or treat and she told me a story that just shocked me...
Every year, when her kids were done collecting the candy, she'd take it to the local ER to get it X-rayed. I honestly thought she was joking, but she was deathly serious. I asked her why, and she told me because in her area, there were reports of razor blades and staples being put in chocolate and candy. I was just so shocked.
Has anyone else ever done this or heard of something similar? I am still just stunned by what she told me...
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It's sad but true When I was little, candy had to be checked because of that very reason. We weren't allowed to eat anything until it had been gone over. I never had a problem, but that way of thinking has carried over into parenthood and DD doesn't get anything until I check it.
I recall hearing those rumors literally 30-35 years ago but never learned that any such incident was confirmed.
What used to annoy me was women carrying tiny babies who after you'd given their older kids candy would stick out a bag saying, "For the baby." Ummmm, yeah. Like I think a baby that's hardly a month old is going to get any of this candy. Were they going to save the candy till the baby got teeth maybe?
It was touching, however, that every year I taught in one small town, one of the football players would stop by my classroom and assure me that I needn't worry about my home getting any trickery. This guy's buddies and he would make sure nothing was done.
So, there's still more good than bad in people. I just think that with so much information coming at us via multiple news sources, it's difficult to separate fact from fiction, and people have become unnecessarily cautious oftentimes.
__________________
“People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.” —Winnie-the-Pooh
Yep I didn't go tricker or treating as a kid, and I wasn't keen on strangers. I loved to watch all the kids come to my grams' house though. I'll never forget the year a neighborhood kid's dad nearly got into a fist fight with the neighborhood whacko. This unsavory neighbor, who happened to live next to my grams thought it'd be real funny to hand out apples after a recent scare/rumor. Some people just don't have any common sense. Cheryl, in 2000 a Minnesota man was charged with "intent to harm" (I think) because he put needles in candy bars and handed them out to kids. Sickos some people!
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~ Jenn **Disney is REAL LIFE Magic, so much more than optical illusions **
When I went trick or treating (decades ago), there were always warnings not to eat the apples because "people would put razor blades in them". We were told to search the wrapped candy for holes in the wrappers lest someone had inserted or injected something in them. I think this was mostly urban legend. Did some sick people do such things at some time? Possibly, although they may have gotten the idea from the urban legend itself. I never personally recall hearing of any actual instances of tampered with candy/treats on Halloween. And yes, local hospitals would offer to x-ray the candy. My theory is that was offered more to ease minds and calm the hysteria more than anything.
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This was a big thing in the 80s. Its one of those urban legends that I didn't think people actually did. This also became the time, at least where I live, that trick or treating at the mall became big, because it was safe. My parents knew most of the people who lived in our neighborhood and we never went to the homes of people we didn't know.
If you watch the show called The Goldbergs, this urban legend, along with eating Pop Rocks and Coke, were discussed on the Halloween episode.
I work in a hospital imaging department. The techs that have been around a long time said there was a year or two back in the 70s where they did do that but most hospitals quit doing it because while X-ray could detect foreign objects, it could not detect poisons that could be injected into candy. SO...they stopped because it was just not a clear cut way to prove candy was 'safe".
I'm sure glad I was a kid in a very small Kansas town in the 50's. We went for blocks and blocks, hitting every house with its porch light on. Didn't matter if we knew the people or not.
The one we really loved was a lady who, when she recognized neighbor kids, would invite us in for homemade caramel apples and hot chocolate. Another neighbor would hold out a big bowl and insist we grab a fistful with each hand. Sometimes, she'd insist we hadn't gotten enough and must try again.
One year, I came home with a big brown grocery bag over half full. I must've walked a couple miles that year as I was old enough to go on my own after taking my little sister who'd have been about three around our block.
That was one big advantage to living in such a small town, pop. 3600, that long ago.
__________________
“People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.” —Winnie-the-Pooh
Whether it was truth, rumor or urban legend, I know by the time I was something like 8 (in the early 80's), my mother used that as an excuse to stop taking my brother and I trick or treating.
The times I've taken Abby, I have inspected her candy before I've let her have it. There have been a few times that I've had to toss things because the packages have been opened or the candy looked funny but I think it was more due to production problems more than tampering by people (but I still didn't take the chance)
I know this definitely happened in the 70's. And you definitely couldn't eat candy before you got home to have it inspected. We did the same for our kids, and threw out any partially opened pieces (or sometimes claimed to throw away the ones we really wanted to swipe from the kids!! ).
It's sad but true When I was little, candy had to be checked because of that very reason. We weren't allowed to eat anything until it had been gone over. I never had a problem, but that way of thinking has carried over into parenthood and DD doesn't get anything until I check it.
Yep I didn't go tricker or treating as a kid, and I wasn't keen on strangers. I loved to watch all the kids come to my grams' house though. I'll never forget the year a neighborhood kid's dad nearly got into a fist fight with the neighborhood whacko. This unsavory neighbor, who happened to live next to my grams thought it'd be real funny to hand out apples after a recent scare/rumor. Some people just don't have any common sense. Cheryl, in 2000 a Minnesota man was charged with "intent to harm" (I think) because he put needles in candy bars and handed them out to kids. Sickos some people!
I work in a hospital imaging department. The techs that have been around a long time said there was a year or two back in the 70s where they did do that but most hospitals quit doing it because while X-ray could detect foreign objects, it could not detect poisons that could be injected into candy. SO...they stopped because it was just not a clear cut way to prove candy was 'safe".
That's a good point, and my goodness, poison too... how naïve I feel now. I'm just totally shocked by all of this.
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When I was little, candy had to be checked because of that very reason. We weren't allowed to eat anything until it had been gone over. I never had a problem, but that way of thinking has carried over into parenthood and DD doesn't get anything until I check it.
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