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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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What a neat service at the hotel to have a wake up call just for a clear view of the mountain! Your photos of it are stunning! Your description of how you felt reminded me of the first time I saw the Grand Canyon. Before I saw it in person, I thought I've seen pictures I know what it looks like. But I was totally unprepared for the awe and wonder I would feel at seeing it. So glad you all got a cloud free view.
The wake up call was a nice service. Awe and wonder is a good choice of words to describe so much of nature.
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What great service to get a wake up call like that and then how wonderful to be greeted with that amazing view! One day, I promise, we will get to Alaska to see more of it, it's just a case of how we fit it in...
What great service to get a wake up call like that and then how wonderful to be greeted with that amazing view! One day, I promise, we will get to Alaska to see more of it, it's just a case of how we fit it in...
You absolutely must put it on your list.
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Originally Posted by Colexis Mom
Glad you saw Mt. Denali! I know when we saw it, I said my vacation was complete, and we were only on Day 2! Great pics!
Marnie, when we were traveling, I thought about your trip and how excited you were to see Mt. Denali. I also remembered you traveling on the train for a leg or so as well. It is indeed a beautiful area.
So glad to see this, Pris! I guess the warm weather made the mosquito problem even worse this year.
We had a late snow and then a quick break up which led to lots of mosquitos.....we have definately had a bumper crop this year. Pretty sure I'm a pint or so low from all the bites I've received in the last month and a half!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pris
You and Mark should definitely get into the interior of Alaska! After all, there's a National Park there! You need the stamp on your park passport. The train runs in 4 legs and we were on 3 of them: Fairbanks-Denali; Denali-Talkeetna; Talkeetna-Anchorage; and Anchorage-Seward. We were not too excited about the T-A leg and did not take the train from Anchorage to Seward, but heard it was beautiful. It is a beautiful way to travel and, in some areas, it is the only way to travel (other than plane or dogsled).
The train ride both north and south are wonderful! You get to see so much that you don't see from the highways. I have only done the train south (Anchorage to Seward) but even after years of driving to Seward, I still found the train ride to be incredible.
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Originally Posted by Pris
The room was stuffy when we first entered it, but once we opened the window and door, it got much better, not that DH would ever admit to that. I wouldn't have wanted to be there the next week when it hit 95, though! We had another lodge later with no ac as well, but it was it the woods and the temps were cooler that day as well, so it wasn't noticeable there.
We (or rather Fairbanks - I'm in Anchorage) were getting those temp exactly one month after getting several inches of snow!! It was bizarre!!!!!!!
Very few places have actual air conditioning up here....just fans and opening the windows usually do the trick.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Colexis Mom
Glad you saw Mt. Denali! I know when we saw it, I said my vacation was complete, and we were only on Day 2! Great pics!
BTW....It is officially Mt McKinley and Denali National Park. There have been several attempts to change the mountain's name to Denali, but they have failed. Living here, I have a tendency to use the names interchangably, but those are the official names. Also, there are actually SEVERAL different versions of Denali (or The Great One - which is what it means), depending on which Alaskan Native group you are talking about. Just a bit of Alaskan trivia.......
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Jennifer / Eeyore is my favorite!! OMG - He's sooooo grown up!!!! And an EAGLE SCOUT!! I can still remember my cute little Tiger Cub! 2016 Reading Goal - 75 books
We had a bit of a surprise this morning as we discovered no hot water! Needless to say, the showers were quite quick. Apparently it was out throughout the entire Anchorage Marriott due to boiler issues. I’m certainly glad I wasn’t working the front desk that morning. I suspect there were a lot of disgruntled guests. We put our bags out and headed out for some breakfast and a walking tour of downtown Anchorage.
After a couple of hours we returned to the hotel where Bill was waiting with our bus to drive us to Girdwood. On the way we stopped at the Alaskan Wildlife Conservation Center. This is a wildlife sanctuary where they take in injured and orphaned animals. If they can’t be returned to the wild, they are given a home here. They have muskox (including 2 babies born in April), moose, caribou, black bears, brown bears and eagles to name what I remember. We spent a little over an hour here wandering around and grabbing a quick lunch.
We then headed on to our resort for this evening, Alyeska, a beautiful ski resort. Alyeska is surrounded by 7 hanging glaciers and is the home to two black diamond ski runs. It is the home to several Olympic skiers. Our tour included tickets to the tram up the mountain, so we headed over to ride up. While waiting for the tram, the operator pointed out a black bear grazing on dandelions right beside the parking lot of the resort. He was quite content and stayed in the area for some time.
The sights at the top of the mountain were beautiful.
We wrapped up the evening at one of the resort restaurants, then settled into our room with the tv and our books.
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Your trip is bringing back all the wonderful memories of our trip last May! We didn't get to see Mt. McKinley while we were in the park, but we did from the train headed from Denali to Anchorage. We didn't do the Talkeetna stop - we just stayed on the train all 8 hours to Anchorage.
Cheryl - You and Mark MUST get to the interior of Alaska!! The cruise just barely touches on the state. Chris and I area already discussing our next trip back - which will have to be 2 weeks and cruise-less. We figure it will take at least 2 more trips to get to all the national parks in the state.
Thanks, Jennifer, for adding the Alaskan perspective to the weather here. We were reminded several times about the late mid-May snow. The guides pointed out to us that the tree leaves, grass and other greenery were only in about the second/third week of growth. Everything was so lush and beautiful, it was hard to imagine that. We did see several lakes and areas that still had some ice on them, which we were told was unusual for early-mid June.
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More beautiful scenery. I promise this is on the "must-do" list, it's just the length of that list that worries me, as I have vacation plans from now until 2017 (I am not joking here ) and still more to go on the list. Sigh. Now if only I could win the lottery, then I could speed up seeing all those wonderful places on the list...
Thanks, Jennifer, for adding the Alaskan perspective to the weather here. We were reminded several times about the late mid-May snow. The guides pointed out to us that the tree leaves, grass and other greenery were only in about the second/third week of growth. Everything was so lush and beautiful, it was hard to imagine that. We did see several lakes and areas that still had some ice on them, which we were told was unusual for early-mid June.
I've lived in Alaska for almost all of my life....at least all that I can really remember well. The weather this past summer has been HOT!! We have been getting some rain in Anchorage this past week or so, which is good because our fire danger is really high. In fact up in Fairbanks where you were, they are battling a pretty good sized wildfire that is actually starting to threaten the town. There have been lots of evacuations of homesteaders and a couple of Iditarod mushers.
For those of you considering a trip to Alaska....the cruises are WONDERFUL, but you don't really see Alaska....its (please forgive the pun) just the tip of the iceberg!!! I very much recommend some kind of land/sea package or if you can swing it, cruise one time and then do the land part on a second trip! There is so much more to see here, from Seward to Fairbanks....it's amazing!! Even after all the years of living here, I still sometimes stop and just say "Wow....I can't believe this is home!!" As to the wildlife....I am used to opening up the front door to go to work and finding it in my driveway...and I live IN Anchorage, not out in the boonies! I have encountered bear, moose, porcupines, ermine and wolves. Every day is an adventure!
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Jennifer / Eeyore is my favorite!! OMG - He's sooooo grown up!!!! And an EAGLE SCOUT!! I can still remember my cute little Tiger Cub! 2016 Reading Goal - 75 books
Last edited by jenifermg0; 07-09-2013 at 03:41 AM..
Great pictures from Ayleska ! We weren't able to fit that in!
Thanks. It was very pretty, but, in retrospective, we would skip it next time. It wasn't nearly as enjoyable as the other places we saw. The resort, however, was quite fancy, and I enjoyed the pampering it offered, since we don't usually stay at high dollar hotels.
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Your photos of it are stunning! 
Your description of how you felt reminded me of the first time I saw the Grand Canyon. Before I saw it in person, I thought I've seen pictures I know what it looks like. But I was totally unprepared for the awe and wonder I would feel at seeing it. So glad you all got a cloud free view.
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One day, I promise, we will get to Alaska to see more of it, it's just a case of how we fit it in... 
) and still more to go on the list. Sigh. Now if only I could win the lottery, then I could speed up seeing all those wonderful places on the list... 
We weren't able to fit that in! 
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