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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Thursday 27 January – part six: wow, the sand really built up here!
We walked back to the bus and it was just a few minutes’ drive to the Luxor Temple.
This is a lot smaller than the Karnak Temple, but as Miriam observed, it’s very beautiful. She loves the art of the new kingdom, the most recent set of pharaohs and I can understand why. Whenever you see the statues, they’re smiling and look natural. It’s amazing how they were able to depict them in this way.
Miriam stood by one of the remaining statues of Ramses II at the entrance to the temple and explained the engraving in it, which was all about the mother and father of the Nile.
She also told us that there’s just one obelisk left here now, but there used to be two. The second one was taken to the Place de la Concorde in Paris, which we’ve seen a number of times before.
Much of this temple was built by Amenhotep III and then added to by Ramses II, who seems to have done a lot of temple building over the years. Even Alexander the Great left his mark on this place, painting himself praising the Egyptian gods, so that the Egyptians would accept him. In parts, there were friezes where the Romans painted over what the pharaohs had created, so I guess everyone left their mark on this place.
When you enter, the first thing you notice is that there’s a mosque here. Miriam told us, that like every mosque in the world, they do the call to prayer five times a day, but every time they do through the sound system, it’s damaging the temple. It’s such a shame.
There’s an interesting story about the mosque though. It was built by the Arabs in the 13th century and was left standing high, as sand accumulated through the rest of the temple. When you see how high the mosque is, it brings it home to you how much sand built up over the years. No wonder this place was lost for so many centuries....
The mosque overlooks the Court of Ramses II, overlooked by statues of the great pharaoh himself.
Just a little further on are statues of Tutankhamen and his wife.
Then it’s through more columns..
... to reach another courtyard. Here the columns represent the planets, but how on earth did they know about the planets all those thousands of years ago?
Luxor temple is so beautiful. I am still amazed at all the carvings and statues. I wonder if there are enough craftsmen in the world today that would be able to duplicate all these temples and statues.
Luxor temple is so beautiful. I am still amazed at all the carvings and statues. I wonder if there are enough craftsmen in the world today that would be able to duplicate all these temples and statues.
I don't think that we'd be able to. We watched a TV documentary where they got craftsmen to use the tools that they had in ancient Egypt to try and carve out a smaller version of the Sphinx. Even with power tools, they couldn't do it.
Thursday 27 January – part seven: that wasn’t the place to tether donkeys! :
As we approached the temple, we saw areas where the Romans had put their own images over what had been there in ancient Egyptian times...
Amazingly, they also put these holes in to tether donkeys at some point in the past. Much as I love donkeys what a waste of history!
Finally, it’s into the temple itself, where Alexander the Great depicted himself with the Egyptian gods.
The view outside of the temple
In one section, one of the pharaohs, and I can’t remember which one now, depicted himself as having been born from a god to make himself more appealing to the Egyptians. Interesting how he convinced them to like him!
Here, Miriam took her leave of us and was heading home. She told us to take as long as we liked and that our driver would meet us when we came out. We had toyed with the idea of going to the Winter Palace Hotel in the centre of Luxor, where Noel Coward and Agatha Christie had stayed over the years, but we were both too tired. All too soon, we were also tired of all the hustlers in the temple. There were very few people at that end of the temple and they all wanted to take our photo and tell us something about it. We kept saying that we knew, because we’d had a guide, but they just wouldn’t take : for an answer.
Here’s the problem. The Egyptians can be very pushy at times, because they’re desperate for people to spend money, either by doing something for them or by selling them something. Now if they were to back off a bit, there’s every chance that a lot of people, us for sure, would certainly buy things. The problem of tipping all the time won’t go away. The only way that’s going to change is if people are better paid and I guess that’s something we can’t change. But I can’t help but think that at the moment, things are entrenched. The Egyptians think we’re rude, because we just tell them : all the time and have to be quite aggressive with it, which we don’t want to do. We end up doing it, because we get so used to everyone wanting something out of us, which is a horrible position to be in.
Anyway, as we moved back through the temple, we encountered a lot more people and the problem subsided. There were still lots of tour groups arriving here, as the sun was starting to set. It made for some beautiful shots with the lighting.
Next: experiencing some genuine Egyptian TV and food!
I agree with you about the hustlers. It is so different from what we know at home, and it si just overwhelming when you are traveling. It is a shame, as we've passed up some things we might have purchased only because we knew if we bought from one person, we'd have crowds of others descending on us to buy from them as well.
I am still "blown away" by all of the temples and carvings. I would love to one day be able to see them. It is to bad that there is so much pressure to buy things and that it is uncomfortable to have to say no all the time. As much as I would like to buy something if the seller is pushy or rude I won't do it.
I can't stand pushy people. By the end of that trip I would probably be the one saying to a person before they even got a chance to speak to me first. That just kind of ruins parts of the trip.
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Even Alexander the Great left his mark on this place, painting himself praising the Egyptian gods, so that the Egyptians would accept him. In parts, there were friezes where the Romans painted over what the pharaohs had created, so I guess everyone left their mark on this place. 
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