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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Wow I sure did miss alot Cheryl. Love the updates. too bad no photos from Valley of the Kings but I did check out the website links. I'm curious, dod you know, where the temples actally houses of worship for the "common folk" or where they more just for the kings and queens to declare how powerfully they are?
My understanding is that the temples were generally for the pharoahs and the priests, although they would have some events each year for everyone to attend.
Wednesday 26 January – part eight: in the middle between the Japanese and Americans
When the film finished, we did go outside, with me first slathering on the factor 50 suntan lotion. I needn’t have bothered. When I got outside, at around 4.40pm, the sun wasn’t exactly that strong, so I ended up going back inside and washing it straight off again! We stayed outside for a while, taking photos of the tranquil scene in front of us.
It soon started to get colder, so we headed inside. We wanted to get online to let people know, with all the demonstrations in Cairo, that we were fine, but I couldn’t work the Internet out. The Sheraton advertise it everywhere and, the way they do, you assume that you just go online, but : you get there and you have to enter an access code. When I rang reception to ask them about it, he say that we had to come down to buy a card. We got one for 30 minutes.
I was amazed how many people had messaged me on Facebook to check if we were ok. Ok, so I guess the news of the demonstrations made it into the American media then... We checked e-mails, the weather, to see that it would be in the 80s for the next couple of days over here and around the low 30s at home.
We headed down for dinner just after 6pm and who did we run into again? The American students! We chatted with quite a few of them and told them that we’d seen them earlier at the Valley of the Kings, for the birthday celebrations and getting on the felucca. They had a free evening tonight, so we wouldn’t see them at another Sound and Light show. They leave tomorrow night on an overnight train to Cairo, so I’m not sure if we’ll see them again this trip.
Some of the pictures on the wall of the hotel
It was quite entertaining, because first they came in and were seated at one end of the restaurant. Then, a few minutes later, the Japanese group who’d been on our flight down to Luxor, came in and they were seated down at the other end of the restaurant. Basically, we were the only ones in between them – it felt like we were in the middle of some diplomatic incident!
We had a bit of a wait for food, allowing all the students to go through first, then we loaded up. There was a bit more in the hot food selection for me tonight and the desserts were lovely, as you can see from my plate:
We finally snagged ourselves a seat by the window, although to be honest, at night, there’s not a lot to see there, so I’m not sure we’ll worry again, but at least we proved that we could get a seat there.
The view from our table at dinner
When we went down to get our ride to the Sound and Light show at the Karnak Temple, we saw some of the Americans again, who asked what we were doing. When we told them, they said they might join us. Already, a group of them were outside, waiting for a taxi to take them to the show.
It took a bit longer to get there than I’d thought, but that had a lot to do with the fact that, in between the hotel and Karnak Temple is a) Karnak Temple itself, which we were about to find out was not exactly small and the Luxor Temple. Of course, with those in place, you have to drive all the way around both, so it took a while. Finally, we got there and there were already heaps of coaches there, although on the plus side, at least it wasn’t full, far from it. I’d hate to see this place when it’s full.
Our driver came with us to get us the tickets for the show and it’s quite a hike to get there, first through the shops (surprise, surprise) where one guy yelled “I can tell you’re English from the way you walk”. Ok, I wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or an insult? Then we had to walk to the ticket booth. Essentially, from where we’d parked, we ended up having to do three sides of a square just to get to the entrance – and we weren’t done yet. : Our driver told us where he’d be at the end of the show and left us to it.
We weren’t sure what to expect. I thought it would be just like Giza, with a show that you were seated for, but it couldn’t be any more different. We made our way to an area, where others were waiting in front of a rope. For one horrible second, I thought that the whole show might be done here, as we were in front of the temple, with a row of sphinxes either side. We took lots of photos while waiting there.
Apparently, according to what we heard from someone else waiting, the first show tonight was in German. We weren’t actually sure what time our show was due to start, and when the people started streaming out at about 7.45pm, I started to think that it must have a start time way past 8pm, as presumably we would have to walk all the way to the end. The stream of people just kept coming and coming. There seemed to be thousands of them! Looking behind us, the numbers were swelling, but it didn’t look to be anywhere near as many as the number coming out at the moment, so that was something.
Just as I was figuring the show really couldn’t start at 8pm, the final few stragglers were moving out and suddenly they cut the lights. Ok, that’s got to be the sign to the dawdlers to get moving, and sure enough, it was. On the dot at 8pm, the show got underway, starting where we were standing. It’s divided into about four different sections, the first taking place where we were waiting.
At a certain point in the show, which is very dramatic with lots of swelling music, you’re then allowed to move forward to another point. This is in a courtyard, with two giant pillars in front of you and columns to each side. The lighting here is used to show which pharaoh created different parts of this courtyard, which was really interesting. I certainly learnt more just in this section of the show, by them doing things this way, than in the whole of the Giza show.
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Our driver came with us to get us the tickets for the show and it’s quite a hike to get there, first through the shops (surprise, surprise) where one guy yelled “I can tell you’re English from the way you walk”. Ok, I wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or an insult?
That's hilarious! Do we all have different walks based on our nationality?!?
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Wednesday 26 January – part nine: Giza could seriously learn from this!
We were then allowed to move further forward again, this time, stopping just in front of a row of columns, leading to an obelisk. Here, they talked more about how the god Amun was worshipped, for whom this temple was built. They set the scene perfectly, with a night-time scene being depicted, complete with crickets chirping and the occasional dog howling. It was during this part that a fox, at least that’s what everyone thought it was, walked between two of the columns. Someone later asked one of the guides with us if it was part of the show, but : - although it was superb timing and really added to the atmosphere!
We were then led on a fairly leisurely tour of the Karnak Temple, passing various elements and rooms of it, before being led up to where the rest of the show would take place with seating. As we walked up to the show area, we passed what looked like a castle wall, all lit up in blue. There were sounds of people working as we went past and we both thought how much it reminded us of Nijo Castle in Kyoto, Japan, when it was lit up at night. It was a very cool effect, but the whole show was full of them. As we reached the seating, we had a superb view of the sacred lake with the temple behind it, all lit up.
Once seated, we were then taken through a potted history of the Karnak Temple, with Tutankhamen emerging as the surprising hero, who salvaged the place. The pharaoh who had ruled previously to him, I forget the name, decided that another god, other than Amun, should be worshipped, but after he died, Tutankhamen took over the temple and ensured that it was brought back into use.
The show was superb and we got lots and lots of wonderful shots of the various effects that they used. I will be honest, I was a bit sceptical about seeing this, after the disappointment of the Sound and Light show at the Giza pyramids, but my goodness, this was 100 times better.
The only downside, and it was a pretty big downside, was the woman sitting next to me, who halfway through the show decided to light a cigarette – and not just any cigarette, but a Marlboro. I know the smell instantly, as I get violently sick whenever anyone lights up a Marlboro anywhere near me. Both Mark and I are vehement anti—smokers and have been all our lives, but we both find Marlboro the most objectionable. There was nothing we could do to stop her, as obviously there are no laws against it, but I think she got the message after I started to cough very loudly. Soon, I couldn’t stop it, as the smoke was down my throat. At one point, I honestly thought that I would retch and, I’m sorry but if I had, then I would’ve definitely turned her way!
I was absolutely disgusted by her and could barely walk on the way out, I was coughing so badly. Honestly, it’s like an allergy for me and really does hit me badly. I told her, as she passed us, in no uncertain terms what I thought of her. We think she was using a translator, but I’m sure she got the idea. Grrr.... She speeded up and got away from us, but as I was struggling to breathe and swallow, we ended up as one of the last to head out. Somehow, along the way back, I managed to get some photos, after using up some of the water we fortunately had left in the rucksack, but I was in a bad way the whole way back to the van.
As we headed out of the complex, a couple of minutes later, all the lights went out, just as they had before our show started and, sure enough, the next show in French then started. It’s certainly a good system they’ve got going here, with the shows very well timed.
As we walked through the bazaar that we had to go through to get back to the van, the guys in there were all trying to hustle us. It really puts me off looking at anything. Maybe if they learnt not to shout at everyone, they’d get more sales.... One guy accosted someone who spoke English and the guy followed him. Eventually, the man turned round and said he had no money on him, at which point the guy started screaming “why do the English never have any money on them?” Perhaps because we’re coming to a show in transport, so why the heck would we carry money with us on a night like that?
We made it safely back to the van, with my throat now red raw from all the coughing, and still killing me. As soon as we got back to the hotel, which seemed to take a lot less time than getting there, we headed to the kiosk near the entrance, so I could get a bottle of Sprite. I was told that it was closed, but the guy called someone over, who got me a bottle of Sprite. I have never been so glad to see a drink in my life! : By the time I’d drunk that back in the room, I was starting to feel a bit better, but I still wasn’t great. My voice was starting to go from all the coughing. I hope that woman realises the impact of what she’d done...
We headed to bed, not long afterwards, with me hoping that my throat would feel better in the morning...
The weather today was The best thing today was The worst thing today was The funniest thing today was Today we tried And the result was The most magical moment today was
The show looks awesome, but I can't believe the woman smoking! I know most of the world doesn't have laws against smoking outside, but common courtesy should have prevented her when at a theater and sitting so close to others!
(BTW, anyone else think of Steve Martin when Cheryl mentioned "walking like an Englishman"? Remember, "King Tut"?) Am I dating myself?
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We stayed outside for a while, taking photos of the tranquil scene in front of us. 
: you get there and you have to enter an access code. 
They leave tomorrow night on an overnight train to Cairo, so I’m not sure if we’ll see them again this trip. 
Looking behind us, the numbers were swelling, but it didn’t look to be anywhere near as many as the number coming out at the moment, so that was something. 
Holly: 
My normal everyday computer routine!
That's hilarious! Do we all have different walks based on our nationality?!? 
Deb
She speeded up and got away from us, but as I was struggling to breathe and swallow, we ended up as one of the last to head out. Somehow, along the way back, I managed to get some photos, after using up some of the water we fortunately had left in the rucksack, but I was in a bad way the whole way back to the van. 
One guy accosted someone who spoke English and the guy followed him. Eventually, the man turned round and said he had no money on him, at which point the guy started screaming “why do the English never have any money on them?” Perhaps because we’re coming to a show in transport, so why the heck would we carry money with us on a night like that? 
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