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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
Welcome! We're happy you've found the PassPorter Community -- the friendliest place to plan your vacation to Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Disneyland, and the world in general! You are now viewing the PassPorter Message Board Community as a guest, which gives you limited access. As our guest, feel free to browse our messages by selecting the forum you want to visit from the list below.
To post messages and ask questions, join our FREE community today and you'll get access to tools and resources not available to guests, such as our vacation countown timers, "living" avatars, private messaging system, database searches, downloads, and a special PassPorter discount code. Registration is fast, simple, and completely free. Just click the Join Our Community link.
If you think you've already joined, log in below now. If you don't remember your member name or password, please visit our Member Name and Password Recovery page. You are also welcome to contact us.
Hi everyone on this forum, which seems to have some very smart Disney people! (No, I am not buttering you up; I mean it.)
I had an idea for a way to use the live guides for my trip.
Background: my mom, who is very organized, suggested a few years ago before our family trip to Europe that I buy a plastic document holder (you can buy these at Staples, Walmart, etc.) with a zipper or snap closure, and then use it to put airline itinerary printouts, hotel confirmations, train tickets, etc. This has proven very useful, and I've also printed out information about places we plan to visit, train schedules (it has become very hard, read impossible, to obtain printed train timetables in Europe anymore), information about the nearest supermarket to our hotel, etc., and put then in this folder to bring on the trip.
So I had the following idea. Supposing that just prior to my leaving on my trip, I would print out so much of the Live WDW guide and the DCL Live guide (both of which I've bought) as is relevant (excluding hotels I'm not staying at, ships I'm not traveling on, ports of call I'm not visiting, restaurants I've no plan to eat at, thrill rides I'm never going to ride on a bet) to my trip. I would put these in one of those brown expandable folders you can get. Then, at Disney World, I could remove the part of that printed stuff that is relevant for that day and put it in my plastic folder, put that in my little totebag I carry around with medications, glasses, sunscreen, letters from my doctor, etc., and bring it with me to the park I'm visiting that day. On the cruise, I could just use it as reference for whatever experiences I'm planning for the day, leaving it in my stateroom the whole time.
So, as the subject line says, I'm looking for a sanity check for my idea. Is it sensible, or is it loony?
Thoughts?
By the way, if anyone who's down at WDW this coming week runs across a family of four from Tolland CT, you may have run into the music director at my parish; she and her husband and two kids are going down for the week. She's plotted a surprise school vacation week trip for the kiddies; she told me that she and her husband have spent the last few days being "suitcase fairies" for their kids, clandestinely packing their suitcases before departure on Monday. They plan to spring the whole thing on them Monday morning. Rebecca told me she plans to go up and wake the kids up as though they were going to school and when she gets the "but mom, it's vacation," reply, she will tell them, "that's right; look in your closet," where they will find their packed suitcase with an envelope on top with the airline confirmation, boarding passes, and Disney World tickets. (No hotel info -- they got to do this because a work colleague is letting them use a vacation timeshare he has near Kissimmee).
__________________
Joe
“Laughter is timeless. Imagination has no age. And dreams are forever.” – Walt Disney
It's certainly doable. I say give it a try and see if it works for you. I realized awhile back that it's a waste of my time and energy to bring anything other than trip documents with me as I just don't reference them during my trip. I've never cruised so it might different if I was cruising. I do however make sure that I have access to my confirmations in various formats by not only bringing paper copies with me but also forwarding the email confirmations to my TripIt account.
On our first several trips and even Disney Cruises, I packed our Passporter guide books. There were times I had questions and they were helpful in getting those questions answered. I also remember using the stateroom layout in the cruise guide book to help select the stateroom for our next cruise that I was booking on board.
I can understand the want/need to have the information at your fingertips, so what ever format works for you will do the trick!
I agree with Jody - if that's something that works for you, then do it. I am another on who has lists and information at my fingertips. Some of that information is on my device that I will take into the parks but I don't use it much as I prefer the printed out copy of my itinerary (I actually take several in case one gets wet or destroyed) with me in the parks to reference. I also use index cards with my ADR's and FP's listed on them zipped into a plastic bag attached to my husbands scooter basket for even quicker reference. It's what works for me. I'm so bad that I even take an extra copy of my packing list with me to make sure everything I took comes home again. Everyone travels differently but someone who doesn't/wouldn't do that shouldn't discourage you from doing it for your trip. It is your trip after all so do it your way.
question for revral: what's tripit? Sounds interesting....
https://www.tripit.com/ It's a website & app that you create a free or paid (I use the free) account with and then you can email your various confirmations etc. to. You create your trip (ei. Disney World September 1 2018 to September 16 2018) then when you have a confirmation you email it to TripIt and it's "filed" in to the appropriate trip and you end up with not only access to all of your confirmations and anything else you email to it but also a timeline of your trip. You can have multiple email addresses linked to one account which is what I've done. I created my account with my regular travel email address and then added the email address I use for all things Disney I can send things to my account from both email addresses.
Registered Message Board Members Get Our Free Newsletter! When you register you'll have the option to sign up for our weekly PassPorter Newsletter. It's chock-full of feature articles; news; tips; contests; photos; and special offers in our online store.
Oh, hey, I like it! I've got a rudimentary version of that by creating a "travel" folder in my Microsoft Outlook.com inbox.
I think I shall investigate this -- would come in handy both for this trip and for the next trip (with mom and dad in Jan. 2019 to the Philippines).
Thank you! And have a Disney evening! (See, this is why I like this website -- people actually give serious answers when people ask questions, and then you can learn of things you've never even known to exist!)
Joe
__________________
Joe
“Laughter is timeless. Imagination has no age. And dreams are forever.” – Walt Disney
We had a stroller last trip and I took my Passporter and also some printouts I had with a touring plan. I had park maps I'd printed that were color coded for general times to hit various rides (this was back in the days of paper fast passes, may they rest in peace), and identified restaurants as QS or TS so we could pick (we didn't do ADRs last trip but still had great luck getting in where we wanted to eat). I could pull the appropriate map and basic touring plan info out of my binder (in sheet protectors) and toss it in the stroller. I referenced the sheets and the passporter the entire trip. It worked well for us. I never tried to keep it all on my phone before as I am very visual and like being able to see the whole page without scrolling!
About This Page: 
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
]Read all about our Disney Experiences on the Williams Family Blog: 
Linear Mode
