What are you using for please wait?

I would just like to see how people are handling long running PHP scripts. I have been using a page in the middle that says "please wait" and then using a META tag that forwards the user on to the intended page. This has been working well up until now. I now have a page that is posting an array on to the next page. The array can have as many 1500 elements pulled from a database. It works fine when I post directly to destination page. The problem is that the query can take up to 2 minutes and the I am not giving the user any indication as to what is going on. I can't figure out how to pass the array on to the destination page with a forward page in the middle. I have used hidden values for this in the past but 1500 hiddens seems schlocky. I am now looking into a possilbe other method for letting the users know it will be a minute with the middle forward page. I have found a few javascript loading functions but have not been able to implement them successfully. Please E-mail directly if you are using a more elegant solution. Thanx in advance, PHP is better then Elvis BEH