I thought the monorail was going to close in early 2006?

[Laz]

I just checked the Disneyland web site, and they are not saying that the monorail is closing. I thought I had read where it was going to close in early 2006 because they were rebuilding the tommorrowland station? Can some one confirm or deny? We are going in April of 2006.

 

[BrerMama]

I read recently that they are going to put it on a shorter route so that they can work on the track over the lagoon. Then in late 2006, they will refurb the station. But it will be running a shuttle route from DTD to the park for the first half of the year at least.

Again, I can't remember the exact details, but I had heard it would be closing too and thought the shuttle idea was interesting.

 

[abby]

Anyone know when it starts? We arrive at DL on January 27th

 

[BrerMama]

Taken from the wonderful Mouse Planet DLR update:

The other change is related to the Disneyland Monorail. We've known for a while that it didn't appear the monorail would shut down in January as had been previously expected, but we knew something was still up and haven't been able to get details. Though we haven't been able to indepdently confirm the details provided last week by Al Lutz at Miceage.com, they do match with what we knew. He details that the monorail will go into “shuttle mode” in January so that work can proceed in the lagoon. Taking a segment of the track out of commission means that the monorail can still run, though rather than completing a loop, monorails will run back and forth along a segment of track. During this mode of operation the monorail will leave the Disneyland Hotel station in the opposite direction as normal, and then come back from Disneyland as normal. This also essentially limits the monorail to running only two trains at a time. Complete closure for Tomorrowland station reworking will happen in the last quarter of 2006.

When a similar “shuttle mode” was used in 2002 during the constrution of Disney's California Adventure, it greatly increased the wear and tear of the monorail fleet. It'll be interesting to see if the more-worn monorails experience similar issues this time around.