- Joined
- Apr 29, 2004
When was this?The last time Disney chose to "run it till it can't run no more" people died.
When was this?The last time Disney chose to "run it till it can't run no more" people died.
Did you know that the Orlando (MCO) airport has evacuation walkways all the way from airside to main terminal for its trams? Not fun to schlep your bags on with the sun beating down with all its Florida humidity, but better than waiting 2 hours for a rescue truck. For all I know all airports with elevated tram systems have such walkways.
While they do have walkways, the distance covered by the tram at MCO is far less than the distances covered by Disney's monorail. The cost to add walkways would be quite expensive and would take away from the aesthetics of the system. It will never happen. Forcing Disney to add evacuation walkways to the entire monorail system would spell it's demise.
I worked the Disneyland Monorail system for a couple of years, and my best guess is that the problem is with their intrusion system. This is the system that lets trains know when they are getting to close to one another, and will actually E Stop the train if it thinks you are getting too close. I suspect they made adjustments to it after that accident at the TTC a few years ago, but the re-calibrations are still giving them fits. We had this problem on the Disneyland Monorail system when the intrusion system was installed there (this was about 10 years ago) the trains would E-Stop, and then you have to power down the train, power it back up again and then restart the train. We had a small delay between the TTC and the Polynesian on our last trip. I noticed that the train's AC shut off, and then went back on again after the announcement that we would be moving in a few moments.
Just a guess though...
They are lucky that they had flat paved ground beneath the train for the trucks to access it. Imagine if it had been at one of the locations over the water?
No, this wasn't because the monorails are ancient or falling apart. They were doing some kind of test and a tow tractor ran into a monorail.
http://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/...been-a-monorail-accident-at-walt-disney-world
That's exactly my point. Thank you.
I keep reading "monorail breakdowns are increasing" as if there's some data to back it up.
WDW has 12 trains which can run 18+ hours per day. Breakdowns are unavoidable and frankly, the handful of instances I've read about on the 'net don't strike me as being outside the acceptable range for mass transit.
If they were evacuating trains 2, 3, 4 times per month, that would seem troubling. A couple times per year seems to fall within expectations even if you're running a brand new fleet. 100% uptime is not a realistic goal.
We all know Disney is strongly focused on dollars-and-cents. They are undoubtedly investing a lot into maintaining the current monorail fleet--more than they would be spending to maintain newer trains. Additionally there is a very real cost associated with every breakdown; everything from the cost of response / maintenance crews, downtime for the impacted section of the line, ramping-up alternate forms of transportation, comps for impacted guests, bad PR, etc.
I think many would disagree here. People often say you would be able to eat off the ground on opening day and in the 70s today people don't think you can. Also the cleanliness of the bathrooms have been brought up a lot lately.
Heresay or not I will say that Disney parks a lot cleaner than Six flags. I don't go often enough to notice the bathrooms but I have heard a lot about them just being very unclean lately.This is all heresay. And it's tainted with nostalgia.
Heresay or not I will say that Disney parks a lot cleaner than Six flags. I don't go often enough to notice the bathrooms but I have heard a lot about them just being very unclean lately.
How? I was mentioning a theme park company that is not disney to compare cleanliness. I also mentioned i still hear things about disney not being as clean as they used to be especially the bathrooms.Now you're changing the argument.
And I think some of the complaints about the restrooms are valid. But in the "good old days" of pristine parks and restrooms, the custodial staff weren't having to deal with the huge numbers of guests that they have to clean up after today.How? I was mentioning a theme park company that is not disney to compare cleanliness. I also mentioned i still hear things about disney not being as clean as they used to be especially the bathrooms.
How? I was mentioning a theme park company that is not disney to compare cleanliness. I also mentioned i still hear things about disney not being as clean as they used to be especially the bathrooms.
All this came about IIRC because Disney had a day with extra-long hours and opened the parks to extra-large crowds. The hours were very long and the employees were overworked. On the one hand an insufficiently trained worker changed a switch to the wrong settings, and on the other hand, the front-line manager who might have been directly supervising the switchover and correcting the mistake was offsite eating at a restaurant supervising only with a radio. The switch setting was wrong, the employees on site didn't notice until too late, and the trains crashed.
Automating the trains was one possible response.
But spending more on personnel, like by doing more training and having more management and direct supervision on site at all times would also have been a valid response. Or adding a second driver to the end of every train whenever it has to reverse. Especially on the days when the parks are jammed and the hours are long. Disney is after all making far more money on those days.