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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Sounds like you really made the right choice switching tours. And wow on that photo of Mubarak. Definitely a small piece of history right there in your photograph!
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Can you say beast of burden? Poor little guy looks a little overwhelmed with the man on top. How much weight can donkeys handle I wonder?
Poor little guy does look like the load is heavy, although they can carry quite a lot. An average donkey weighs about 550-675 lbs and can carry about 30% of it's weight. That donkey looks pretty thin, though.
Poor little guy does look like the load is heavy, although they can carry quite a lot. An average donkey weighs about 550-675 lbs and can carry about 30% of it's weight. That donkey looks pretty thin, though.
I never knew that! : You learn something new every day!
We sat in the room for a while, seeing the latest developments on the news, until housekeeping arrived, then we vacated and headed out for lunch.
As we got to the lobby, we decided that we’d book a felucca ride for later this afternoon. We’d talked about doing it, but it was a case of deciding which package to go for. Every one we looked at had something in it that one of us couldn’t eat – it was chicken in one option and cheese in another, so we went for the cheapest option at 85LE each ($15) for tea, coffee, English cake (not sure what that is... we’ll find out! ) and cookies.
At first, we were told that the departure time was 4pm, but then it changed to 3.30pm, which we were fine with. At least it should be cooler by then and we’d presumably get to see the startings of the beautiful sunset.
I chose a table partially in the shade, but partially in the sun, as I wanted to enjoy a bit of both. As soon as I started to get hot, I’d just move under shade.
While we sat waiting to be served (nothing happens quickly in Egypt! ), we saw someone up a palm tree, hacking bits of it off. No health and safety here at all!
Interestingly, while we sat there, we could see the difference between Friday prayers and the ordinary call to prayer five times a day. It went on for much longer, although eventually you got used to it and it became background noise. At that point, I was very glad that we weren’t in our original room. I cannot begin to imagine how loud it would be there, with all those mosques... Once the prayers were finished, there were what sounded like a few car horns and we did wonder if this was a small scale protest outside, but there was no way of knowing.
We ended up ordering the mixed seafood grill, which while nice, was not what it stated on the menu. It was supposed to come with saffron rice and grilled vegetables and in fact turned up with fries and salad....
Mark went for the mixed grill, with koftas, steak kebab, chicken and lamb chop....
We both had an Amy’s Tattoo and some Sprite to go with it, but this time we asked for no ice in the cocktail. My stomach’s been a little iffy over the last couple of days and we figured that having ice in the cocktails perhaps wasn’t the best plan... :
When we were done eating, we headed back to the room. Housekeeping was still there, but he was just finishing. Fortunately, Mark realised that he hadn’t refreshed the towels a minute or two later and was able to catch him just in time.
We headed out on to the balcony to soak up the sun, but it was way hotter than yesterday. We were out at Karnak Temple at this time and there’s no way it was this warm then. We both managed about 20 minutes outside, before giving up and heading back inside. How on earth people can stand to sit out there for hours and hours and hours, I have no idea. We sat in the back part of the suite for a while, just reading, before turning on the TV and seeing the protests elsewhere in Egypt. It sounded terrible on the streets of Cairo. I was so glad that we were flying into the airport and then out again a couple of hours later.
I figured that, before we had our felucca ride, I’d make more use of the Jacuzzi bath. Did I mention how worthwhile this upgrade was?
We headed down and saw the woman who’d make the booking disappearing somewhere else so we grabbed someone else and he took us down to the felucca. Now it was just our luck, but there was no wind at all today, so they couldn’t put the sail up. You seriously couldn’t have made this up – every other day we’ve been here, we’ve seen them out with the sails unfurled, but not this afternoon.
I felt so sorry for the young guy who rowed us out. He really was pushing himself and, despite the fact it was now 3.30pm, it was still pretty hot. He was sweating buckets! We headed out all the way across the River Nile, with him rowing the whole way.
That is too bad you couldn't ride under sail! So much better than rowing!
Hoping you aren't about to collide with a bigger ship, from the sounds of your teaser.....
Friday 28 January – part seven: cut off – now this is getting scary!
Once we got there, the other guy then basically punted us along the shallow side for 20 minutes or so. When we got there, we saw another felucca that looked like it might be stuck, with a young child – and I mean about 10 years old - pulling it out. The guy on our boat explained that it was very shallow here and Mark reckoned it was only about a foot deep, which really surprised me.
I suspect that the black smoke you can see in this shot were probably the starting of trouble in Luxor that day... Not the greatest view!
We then headed back across the Nile again, with the other guy finally taking the lead and doing some work!
From there, we let the current take us, drifting past the various docked boats. Some of them are docked four or five deep and this afternoon, they were three deep. How that works in practice getting on and off the boats, I’m really not sure. As Mark pointed out, these are very noisy boats and, the more I see of the boats they use on the Nile cruises, the less sure I am that I would want to go on one. They’re small, but perhaps a little too small. Let’s say there’s one really annoying person on board. Well, on these, it would be almost impossible to get away from them. There’s also only a couple of places you can go – either to your room or the top deck. It doesn’t look like there’s the variety of things to do that you’d get on say the Disney Dream. As I say, maybe not our thing....
We got back to the hotel after almost an hour. I was glad we’d opted for the cheapest felucca ride, as there was no sign of any tea, coffee, English cake or cookies. Still for 170LE for the two of us, which really was great value, I wasn’t about to complain. :
We headed over to the shopping area to buy my camel. I’d seen a small toy camel a couple of days earlier and had fallen in love with it. It was already “my” camel the second I saw it and there was no way I was leaving without it!
With him and a postcard in hand, we headed to the reception to see if the Internet was working or not. We’d heard from the various news reports that it wasn’t in certain parts of Egypt, but assumed as Luxor was – touch wood – so far trouble free, perhaps we’d be fine. Apparently not. The guy on reception told us it was country wide, so there was no point in us purchasing a half hour or one hour access to go online then....
Perhaps even more frightening, he also told us that the cell phone network was down, as another option I was thinking of was to text a couple of people to let them know that we were fine, but that wasn’t going to work. We were totally and utterly 100% cut off. You know what? For a lot of people out here, that’s probably exactly what they want to be, but for me, I found it very scary. Suddenly, those demonstrations that had been going on around us for the last few days were suddenly coming very close to home. To have the power to be able to shut down the Internet and cell phone communication scares me. It impacts on every single person in the country, whether they’re a part of it or not and I’m not sure it sends out a good message to tourists.
Miriam had already told us earlier in the day that she had a tour booked this afternoon and then another tomorrow, but after that, she had no idea. She said that the tours may stop altogether, because tourists would be too scared to go out on them, which would be a crying shame. You may think that’s overkill, but : because her brother works in Soma Bay, where we were once thinking of going after Luxor (but it was too pricey) and already the tourist trade is drying up there. He’s a receptionist and usually they have five people working at the Sheraton there, but today there are only two, as there are so few people for them to deal with. If they don’t work, they don’t get paid, just to compound the problem even more. Scary times. For once, I’m glad that we’re going to be going home tomorrow...
Talking of that, we hadn’t heard from Youssef, our Virgin Holidays rep, with details of our pick-up tomorrow, so we asked at reception about whether there were any messages. I loved the way they said : but then when I showed him the piece of paper with Youssef’s name on, he said “oh yes, he phoned quarter of an hour ago while you were out on the felucca”. I got him to call Youssef, who told me the pick-up time would be 11.10am.
I checked that flights were still coming into Cairo from London and he told that “so far, so good”. I made him promise to let me know if things changed in the meantime. The good thing is, that by the time the pick-up comes round tomorrow, with the time difference, our flight from London should already be in the air to Cairo. I’ll feel a lot happier, knowing it’s on its way. The last thing I want is to be trapped at Cairo Airport. If I’m going to get trapped anywhere, I’d much rather be trapped here in Luxor. For those who’ve already read the tale of our Egyptian Escape, do remember that this was written in real time, before all those events!
Next: what do you mean there’s tear gas in the hotel?
Things are definitely getting ominous--the smoke in the distance and then learning that internet and cell service is gone. I'm getting that anxious feeling, even knowing how it all turns out and that you've been home and safe and sound for some time now!
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: You learn something new every day! 
) and cookies. 
), we saw someone up a palm tree, hacking bits of it off. No health and safety here at all! 
Once the prayers were finished, there were what sounded like a few car horns and we did wonder if this was a small scale protest outside, but there was no way of knowing. 
We sat in the back part of the suite for a while, just reading, before turning on the TV and seeing the protests elsewhere in Egypt. It sounded terrible on the streets of Cairo. I was so glad that we were flying into the airport and then out again a couple of hours later. 
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