Monorail Expansion??

[marymrg]

On the bus from the Magic Kingdom yesterday, the lady in the "purple pants" said there will be an announcement at the end of October regarding the monorail. She said it has to do with the fact that gasoline has now gone up to the price that it would be cheaper in the long run to expand the monorail.

I'll believe it when I see it, but you never know!

 

[Onemoretime]

I'll assume she was talking about diesel fuel and not gasoline.

Still an odd comment to make because the price of diesel has been WAY too high for the last three years or so. The price of gas is actually dropping quite quickly. When we arrived at WDW on the 15th, the Hess station was $2.74. We filled up there today at $2.54. We arrived home this evening to find our price at $2.28.

 

[rocketriter]

Even though the price of gas may be coming back down for now, Disney management may feel that the handwriting is on the wall. It's hard to imagine the US continuing to offer gasoline prices substantially less than those paid by much of the rest of the world. A Disney monorail would be the good news to that bad news.

 

[Onemoretime]

My point though was that the price of diesel - which is what they use in their buses - has been very high priced for at least the last three years. What took them three years to figure this out.

With the multi billion dollar expansion estimates that have been talked about here for the last couple years or so, way doesn't Disney invest that caqpital in hydrogen cell technology. WDW would be the perfect opportunity to be an example of the true EPCOT Walt envisioned.

 

[manning]

My point though was that the price of diesel - which is what they use in their buses - has been very high priced for at least the last three years. What took them three years to figure this out.

With the multi billion dollar expansion estimates that have been talked about here for the last couple years or so, way doesn't Disney invest that caqpital in hydrogen cell technology. WDW would be the perfect opportunity to be an example of the true EPCOT Walt envisioned.

And diesel is cheaper to refine than gasoline.

 

[Bstanley]

Really manning? I thought I had read that it had become more expensive over the last couple of years to produce diesel because of the need to reduce the sulphur content to lower levels. That was why the prices were going up even before the storms. I know that around here diesel is almost 10% higher than premium gas.

In any case with diesel up 30% this year I would hope that alternate transportation would be on the table for economic reasons at the very least. - if not for Environmentality!

 

[Onemoretime]

Pulling the sulphur out was a pretty simple task.

One of the factors in the price of diesel fuel - beyond simple greed- is the high road tax that is on diesel.

 

[spectromagicmom]

Do you think the bus drivers say this to be kidding? I was told the same thing about the announcement at the end of the month... Monorails can hold up to 3 bus loads blah blah blah. Some of our friends were listening but I just took it as a joke but it is FUNNY that they both said the announcement would be at the end of the month hmm?

 

[Bstanley]

Ok Doke.

Are the taxes on Diesel different than those on Gasoline?

 

[marymrg]

Do you think the bus drivers say this to be kidding?

It didn't sound like she was joking. She said it kind of matter of factly......to stay tuned. And, I can't remember exactly if she said fuel, diesel, crude oil or gasoline but the gist was that the monorail runs on circuits and very little electricity. Again, I have no engineering knowledge so don't know if that's true or not either.

 

[Lord Fantasius]

It's too unfortunate that Disney has to justifiy on a purely short-term economic basis the need to expand the monorail. While the monorail itself does not direcly utilize any fossil fuel, the electricity needed to operate it has to be generated somehow, and at this moment I think they still use fossil fuels for that, don't they?

I think the monorail will only be expanded after the powers-that-be stop trying to justify it on a narrow-focused economic model. And yes, while I still think you can justify it in an economic model if you take into consideration the long-term impact on the imagination of young children and consider it one factor in the complex equation that draws people back, it becomes a much larger-encompassing model and one Disney, Inc., does not appear to put much faith in these days. At times, I wonder whether they ever project out past the current generation profit margin.

Oh well, until then the rumors will remain only rumors.

-R

 

[2Xited4Disney]

I have done Chem projects on the future of gasoline, the final deduction made was at the our current usage of oil the worlds funds will be running dry by 2075 (assuming we don't find more oil). Disney seems to always be thinking of the future. If the Magic Kingdom wants to be in buisness too see the 100th anniversay then eventually they will have to switch to something other than oil product... although as the previous poster said electricity has to be produced some how.....



although after saying all that I WOULD LOVE a monarail expansion to all the resorts and all the parks..... see that will never happen but wouldn't it be cool and futuristic

 

[manning]

Really manning? I thought I had read that it had become more expensive over the last couple of years to produce diesel because of the need to reduce the sulphur content to lower levels. That was why the prices were going up even before the storms. I know that around here diesel is almost 10% higher than premium gas.

In any case with diesel up 30% this year I would hope that alternate transportation would be on the table for economic reasons at the very least. - if not for Environmentality!

You may be right. I use to work in the general office of a major oil company and had the opportunity to work with the people who know more about refining than I do. I have been out of this for over 10 years now.

What I had discovered was that producing diesel was simpler than producing gasoline. There is 18% more btu's in diesel than gasoline. about 125,00 btu's for gas vs 147,000 btu's for diesel. The higher the btu the more energy you get out the same amount of product. Gas containing 10% ethanol produces about 120,900 btu's.That is why you get less gas mileage with gas containing 10% of ethanol. Alcohol produces less btu's. Combined with engine design you could go 30% (about 15% alone from diesel) further on a gallon of diesel. As a result of reducing sulphur additives may have to be added to mantain lubricity. How much this would raise the cost I have no idea.

Because I use to work for an oil company I noticed the price of diesel going up over time to the point it cost more than gas. This has been going on way before the requirement to produce low sulphur diesel. Also I believe sulphur has to be reduced in gasoline.

 

[manning]

I have done Chem projects on the future of gasoline, the final deduction made was at the our current usage of oil the worlds funds will be running dry by 2075 (assuming we don't find more oil). Disney seems to always be thinking of the future. If the Magic Kingdom wants to be in buisness too see the 100th anniversay then eventually they will have to switch to something other than oil product... although as the previous poster said electricity has to be produced some how.....



although after saying all that I WOULD LOVE a monarail expansion to all the resorts and all the parks..... see that will never happen but wouldn't it be cool and futuristic

Projections like these are always put out. While working for an oil company I saw one that predicted we would be out of oil by the end of 1990. The BIG unknown that throws this off is nobody knows how much oil there is in the world. Technology is making it possible to drill deeper. 10,000 feet or more.

BP alone produces about 350,000 barrels per day of oil from about a dozen fields in the Gulf of Mexico. One field alone, Thunderhorse, is scheduled to start producing in early 2006 and expects to produce 250,000 barrels per day. This field is about 6500 feet below the surface. They have more of these fields under development. We have explored a small percentage of the planet.

It is said Russia has more oil than the Arabs. Their problem is getting it out of the ground, which they are working on solving with the help of the west.

 

[Bstanley]

If you go back through the last 100 years of Oil producing history I think you'll find that there has been 50 years worth of Oil left every time someone tried to predict how much was left.

Every year the planet uses more of it and every year the Oil industry figures out how to extract more of it from the same holes and extract more useful amounts of gas/etc from what has been extracted from the ground.

It's going to run out someday though and there are other compelling reasons to use some other form of energy so they should be seriously considered - but as someone pointed out - it's not necessarily a good choice to use electricity if you make your electricity by burning natural gas. Depends on the efficiency of the system.

Personally I would just rather ride something other than a diesel bus - maybe if they were double-decker, or something!

 

[raidermatt]

I agree with Lord Fantasius that whatever kind of transporation is used in WDW, its value goes beyone just simply how cheaply/efficiently it gets people from A to B. How it does that is important, of course, its just not the end of the equation.

We've heard numerous stories of those in purple pants (and various other costumes) spreading rumors about monorail expansion, 5th gates, and many other interesting topics. Not to say that this one isn't true, marymrg, it's just that I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

[2Xited4Disney]

I realize this means nothing, but when we were in WDW in august I asked our monorail driver about the possible monorail expansion. He said "NO WAY"... .and he was open about disney.... He was telling us how angry he was because his bossess apparently took one of the trains out of service before "the rush" I am sure he was excited to talk normally to 4 adults rather than little kids and magic... he seemed like a normal guy which was pretty cool

 

[mitros]

Well, after all of the discussion we just had, I guess if the person in the "purple pants" was not speaking with forked tongue, we will know in the next few days, since October is almost over.

 

[JodyTG]

Why doesn't DISNEY just use BioDiesel (or even just straight vegetable oil) in their diesel busses? The man that invented the diesel engine intended for it to be ran by peanut oil. It was the oil companies that put a stop to that after he died.

The town I grew up in, just down the highway where I live now, built a BioDiesel plant that runs from the methane gas at the city dump. NO FOSSIL FUELS USED AT ALL TO RUN THE PLANT! Basically, they take used vegetable oil from restaurants and turns it into BioDiesel. Right now they're using a mix of a little BioDiesel and mostly regular diesel to run the city trucks. Eventually they will use more and more BioDiesel until that is all that they're using.

#1 - It helps the environment (Walt's dream) by burning cleaner.
#2 - It helps the farmers by using a renewable fuel source.
#3 - Why not grow our own fuel?!?!?!

 

[RCBlackburn]

Manning, it almost sounds like you might work for BP!!!! You know an awful lot about Thunderhorse....