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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Well, we went into a travel agent called Flight Centre last week and booked our flights to Tokyo, (including Disneyland!), Hong Kong, (including Disneyland!), and Singapore, (including Universal!) for the end of this year!
I was really pleased with the final price, as I had done some internet searching myself, (including Kayak), and Flight Centre got all 4 flights for me for about a third of what I was expecting to pay - yay, result!
Another good thing is that we are flying from Birmingham airport, close to where we live in the UK, as I had thought we would have to go from London. I don't mind going from London, but the added cost of getting there and staying overnight the night before our flight was something else I was worrying a bit about.
So - here's to our next adventure!
__________________
Silvercat
(Enjoy reading trip reports? Why not try my books, "Tiggerific Travels Parts 1, 2, 3 & the new volume 4" - available now as e-books)
Hi Cheryl - yes, I had never used them before either, but was surprised at how good they were and how cheaply they managed to get our flights for! We had to pay in full for the flights at the time of booking, but that's what credit cards are for!
We were lucky to go in there to just 'check on prices' on the day that the return flights at the end of November were released, so we got first dibbs on seats too, which is great.
I loved the way they were able to book all 4 flights, with two different airlines, as one booking too. We are doing the long-haul flights with Quatar, and the shorter ones with Cathay Pacific. We may need to add extra luggage at a later date, but with Quatar our luggage allowance is 30kg each! Much more than we normally get with Virgin Atlantic.
__________________
Silvercat
(Enjoy reading trip reports? Why not try my books, "Tiggerific Travels Parts 1, 2, 3 & the new volume 4" - available now as e-books)
Last edited by Silvercat; 01-07-2016 at 08:07 AM..
I loved the way they were able to book all 4 flights, with two different airlines, as one booking too. We are doing the long-haul flights with Quatar, and the shorter ones with Emirates. We may need to add extra luggage at a later date, but with Quatar our luggage allowance is 30kg each! Much more than we normally get with Virgin Atlantic.
I just read some of your WDW trip report. For some reason I thought you were doing this long voyage with young children. Congrats on booking your flights and many pixies that there are not too many youngsters on board.
Aargh, no small children allowed on MY trips!! Maybe because in my trip report I talked about taking my son? He is 34 so is no small child!
Ooh, please don't make me think about other folks' youngsters on board the 14-hour flight to Japan - I may have to think up ways of discreetly sticking them in the overhead lockers for the flight .......
__________________
Silvercat
(Enjoy reading trip reports? Why not try my books, "Tiggerific Travels Parts 1, 2, 3 & the new volume 4" - available now as e-books)
I often imagine I have a cattle prod and can decretely stun misbehaving people. NOt sure I could do a 14 hour flight but I truly hope no one thinks children should do one. And if there are children on your flight may they be as far from you as possible and sleep mucch of the way.
Bwah ha ha ha ha!!! We've booked our Flight to HK from San Fran (direct) for June. With our 7 yo. If you are considering flying, please avoid the June 20th on Singapore, cause we're gonna be on there, reeking havoc.
All joking aside, you are going to have an amazing trip. Too bad our dates don't match.
Have you considered adding Shanghai? That's what we are looking at next.
Oh, 7 year olds aren't too bad, they don't usually shriek for hours or kick the back of my seat constantly!
I do think we are going to have fun, we have already started booking hotels in Tokyo and looking at a 2 day trip to Hiroshima, before we get to Hong Kong. Yes, it is a shame we aren't going to be there at the same time! Have a wonderful time though, and let me know if you have any tips from your trip that I could use.
We are saving Shanghai for a bigger trip in a couple of years time, I think. That is somewhere that we want to spend a decent amount of time at, rather than trying to fit it in with a trip to other places at the same time. So I think we will look at a week there, followed (or preceded!) by a week seeing some of China's other great attractions such as the Great Wall, the panda nursery, the Terracotta Warriors, etc.
__________________
Silvercat
(Enjoy reading trip reports? Why not try my books, "Tiggerific Travels Parts 1, 2, 3 & the new volume 4" - available now as e-books)
I do think we are going to have fun, we have already started booking hotels in Tokyo and looking at a 2 day trip to Hiroshima, before we get to Hong Kong. Yes, it is a shame we aren't going to be there at the same time! Have a wonderful time though, and let me know if you have any tips from your trip that I could use.
Definitely do Hiroshima - Mark wasn't 100% sure about going there, I was the one who wanted to do it and he absolutely loved it there. It was just so peaceful and beautiful, amazing given the terrible events which happened there, but I would recommend it to anyone.
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We are saving Shanghai for a bigger trip in a couple of years time, I think. That is somewhere that we want to spend a decent amount of time at, rather than trying to fit it in with a trip to other places at the same time. So I think we will look at a week there, followed (or preceded!) by a week seeing some of China's other great attractions such as the Great Wall, the panda nursery, the Terracotta Warriors, etc.
I'm half pencilling in a China trip in late 2018. Have you looked at some of the guided tours? Virgin Holidays do one that takes in all those places and it starts in Shanghai and finishes in Hong Kong. It's a two week trip, so I figure add a couple of days before for and after for both parks... maybe you should look into something like that?
I did have a quick look, but they seemed to be shockingly expensive! I'll take another look next year, as at the moment I am now knee-deep in planning this year and next! I'm thinking definitely China in late 2018 though ....
So last night I booked this : 2 nights at a hotel near the train station in Tokyo, followed by a package that included a bullet-train journey to Hiroshima and a night in a hotel there, then a train back the next afternoon, followed by another night at the first hotel, before we fly to Hong Kong. That way we can leave the majority of our luggage with bell services as we will have an upcoming reservation with them, and just take overnight bags to Hiroshima. It's a very early train, so we should get plenty of time to explore the peace garden and also do a ferry trip to the island with the Tori gate.
That just leaves the Disney bit at the beginning of the week (before Hiroshima), and we are looking at 4 days for that.
Today I went onto the Disneyland Hong Kong website and booked us 3 nights at the Disney Hollywood Hotel, and 2 day park tickets. This will then leave us with another 3 days in Hong Kong, so I will need to find a hotel for those days.
Then this weekend we are having one of our infamous 'breakfast meetings' where we go out for breakfast and spend a couple of hours discussing important stuff. We have some house renovation/remodelling details to sort out, plus I haven't told DH yet about all the plans for this year's holiday so far, and I want to start tackling next year as well as I understand the 2017 itineraries for the Disney Cruise Line come out in March, so we need to pin down when and where we are going next year.
I'm getting there!
__________________
Silvercat
(Enjoy reading trip reports? Why not try my books, "Tiggerific Travels Parts 1, 2, 3 & the new volume 4" - available now as e-books)
Last edited by Silvercat; 01-21-2016 at 08:17 AM..
I did have a quick look, but they seemed to be shockingly expensive! I'll take another look next year, as at the moment I am now knee-deep in planning this year and next! I'm thinking definitely China in late 2018 though ....
It is a lot of money, but it does include economy flights (and we know how much those can cost alone ), some meals and a full itinerary. Looking at some other sites, they're pretty cheap - I've seen much higher prices just for the tour and no flights out there...
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So last night I booked this : 2 nights at a hotel near the train station in Tokyo, followed by a package that included a bullet-train journey to Hiroshima and a night in a hotel there, then a train back the next afternoon, followed by another night at the first hotel, before we fly to Hong Kong. That way we can leave the majority of our luggage with bell services as we will have an upcoming reservation with them, and just take overnight bags to Hiroshima. It's a very early train, so we should get plenty of time to explore the peace garden and also do a ferry trip to the island with the Tori gate.
That sounds like a great plan and you will love Miyajima (the Torii gate place) - we absolutely adored it.
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That just leaves the Disney bit at the beginning of the week (before Hiroshima), and we are looking at 4 days for that.
That sounds about right - we did three days and could easily have done four.
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Today I went onto the Disneyland Hong Kong website and booked us 3 nights at the Disney Hollywood Hotel, and 2 day park tickets. This will then leave us with another 3 days in Hong Kong, so I will need to find a hotel for those days.
I'd be interested to see if you feel that's enough time at Hong Kong Disneyland, given I'd like to go back there on the back end of our China trip and we were last there in 2008, when it was a lot smaller. With the hotel for the rest of your Hong Kong stay, your first decision will be whether to go for Kowloon or Hong Kong Island. We were on Hong Kong Island, although to be honest, I don't think it makes that much difference, provided you're near a subway station.
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Then this weekend we are having one of our infamous 'breakfast meetings' where we go out for breakfast and spend a couple of hours discussing important stuff. We have some house renovation/remodelling details to sort out, plus I haven't told DH yet about all the plans for this year's holiday so far, and I want to start tackling next year as well as I understand the 2017 itineraries for the Disney Cruise Line come out in March, so we need to pin down when and where we are going next year.
Oh yes, I hear you about that. I'm intrigued to know what they're planning for next year, but I hope it doesn't interfere with my plans for a Scotland road trip... I know, I could do it any time, but I can tie it in with a visit to my parents for their 50th wedding anniversary and hopefully we'll have American friends joining us for that...
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I've never used Flight Centre before, but maybe I should look into them in the future.
<--- Disney Fantasy 2016!
), some meals and a full itinerary. Looking at some other sites, they're pretty cheap - I've seen much higher prices just for the tour and no flights out there... 
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