When the Luxor was originally built, I was told there used to be a moat on the interior with boats. When we stayed there, I tried to inquire about it -- if there were any pictures of it showing the area it operated in. Nobody seems to know anything about it. Can you shed some light on its truth or fantasy.
Happy to.
When Luxor opened in 1993, the interior was heavily Egyptian-themed. That included hieroglyphics on the walls; scarabs, the Egyptian symbol of good luck, all over the casino; a replica of King Tutankhamen’s tomb (and a King Tut museum that came later); even a Sigma Derby game that used toy Egyptian barges instead of race horses.
And yes, there was a free Nile River ride.
Near the registration desk, you boarded flat-bottom barges that floated all the way around the base of the pyramid. A guide regaled riders on Egyptology as they passed palm trees and pieces of "ancient" artwork of the walls.
Together, Anthony Curtis and Deke Castleman rode the thing (yes, they go back that far) and tell us that Anthony, more of thrill seeker, was unimpressed, while Deke, who likes just about anything that moves, was more amused. They recall that the ride was supposed to drop off passengers at various places, such as the inclinators, restaurants, and escalators to the second-level attractions.
One of the problems with the "ride" was that, since it was promoted as public transportation, the wait was so long, guests could walk to their destinations way faster than they could ride. So the barges were then promoted purely for entertainment purposes as the Nile River Adventure, though the entertainment was rather tame.
The other situation was that riders reported seeing ghosts of the three workers killed during Luxor's construction whenever the river passed through dark tunnels. (It's perhaps no accident that Luxor is purported to be haunted, since the purpose of the ancient Egyptian pyramids was to serve as monumental tombs for their pharaohs -- built with the idea that they would act as a kind of resurrection machine or as a means to magically launch the deceased pharaoh's soul directly up through the night sky and into the heavens.)
The river ride remained in place for just three years and it's a measure of how insignificant it was, especially in comparison to the other attractions that opened with Luxor, that it was never mentioned in the Advisor.
You can see a 20-second clip of the Nile River Adventure in a six-minute promotional video from 1993 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNQJDkfLrNg. It's in the first minute, so you don't have to watch the whole thing.
I, too, took a ride on the boat - back in the dark ages. Too bad nobody remembers it. I do, and it was fun. I agree, kind of silly ("Hokey") but fun. I can believe the humidity caused problems because I remember that, too! Leprechaun