Disney, Reedy Creek examining slow monorail evacuation

Walt Disney World and fire-rescue authorities are reviewing the response to an early morning power outage on the resort’s monorail last Sunday that left passengers stuck aboard a train for several hours.

The internal review follows questions about why it took so long to get passengers off a train that was brought to a standstill on a track, or “beam,” between the Magic Kingdom and Disney’s Contemporary Resort after a computer hard-drive failure shut off power throughout the 15-mile-long monorail system. The outage happened at about 1 a.m., but the last of the approximately 300 passengers affected weren’t unloaded until close to 4 a.m.

Several factors may have contributed to the delay. Disney, for instance, did not call for assistance evacuating passengers until 35 to 40 minutes after the system lost power, according to the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the semi-autonomous government that handles fire-rescue at Disney World.

Further, a $250,000 scissor-lift vehicle that Reedy Creek purchased earlier this year to help with large-scale monorail evacuations was too short to reach the point along the monorail beam where the train was stuck.

“We’re already discussing with the company [Disney] about how to improve the process,” Ray Maxwell, Reedy Creek’s district administrator, said Wednesday.

Disney spokesman Bryan Malenius added, “We’ve had preliminary conversations with Reedy Creek to discuss evacuation procedures and the scissor lift.”

Although no one was hurt Sunday, the episode was an embarrassment for Disney World, as refugee-like images of families stranded on the train were posted online and aired on television stations.

The incident also occurred in the highly charged atmosphere that has surrounded the monorail since July, when an after-hours collision between two trains killed a 21-year-old train driver. Since that crash, the first fatal accident in the Disney system’s 38 years of operation, even minor mishaps involving the monorail have drawn outsized attention.

Seven of Disney’s 11 monorail trains were still in service when the system lost power early Sunday, as the Magic Kingdom was open until 1 a.m. Three of those trains were carrying passengers and were not at a station when the system froze.

When workers were unable to restore power, Disney dispatched monorail “tractors” to tow the stranded trains into stations so passengers could disembark. But while the tractors worked on the first two trains, the third remained stuck.

Maxwell said Reedy Creek emergency crews were called between 35 minutes and 40 minutes after the loss of power. Disney said the delay occurred while it was troubleshooting in an attempt to restart the system.

“When it became clear that this was not going to be possible in a timely fashion, Reedy Creek was called in for assistance,” Malenius said.

When Reedy Creek did respond, it was unable to use what could have been its most effective tool: the new scissor-lift vehicle specially designed to handle monorail evacuations. The vehicle is capable of unloading 45 people at a time.

The scissor-lift, which can extend to a height of 22 feet, was unable to reach the point along the beam where the train was stuck. So crews had to use fire-truck ladders to reach passengers and guide them down.

“It was just a very timely process,” Maxwell said.

Reedy Creek said it ultimately unloaded about 100 people from the train before one of the Disney tractors arrived to tow it and its remaining passengers to a station.

Maxwell said the district intends to retrofit the scissor-lift with an extension that will add another 10 feet to its reach. With that addition, he said, the vehicle will be able to access about 75 percent of the monorail system’s beam, instead of the 50 percent or so it can reach now. (Some areas are inaccessible because they pass over water.)

Rescue workers can retrieve passengers from a train at any point on the system if they must, Maxwell said. But those evacuation plans are typically only for emergencies such as a fire, while the unloading of passengers Sunday was viewed as a customer-service issue rather than an emergency, he said.

It has been a turbulent year for the Disney World monorail. In addition to July’s crash, which killed Austin Wuennenberg of Kissimmee, the system suffered an electrical short in September that left it only partially operational for most of a day. And Sunday’s power outage was a followed by a much briefer disruption Tuesday evening, when a computer detected a possible mechanical malfunction and shut down one train, which was towed to the next stop and the passengers unloaded in a process that took only about 30 minutes.

The string of incidents has fueled questions about the reliability of the system. Disney’s current monorail trains are 20 years old, and the fleet has been operating shorthanded — with 11 trains, down from 12 — since last summer’s accident.

Reedy Creek’s board of supervisors on Wednesday instructed the district’s staff to prepare a detailed briefing on monorail emergency-response procedures.

Supporters of Disney’s monorail system say many of the incidents have been blown out of proportion in the aftermath of the fatal accident. For example, several former employees said this week that occasional power outages such as the ones that are suddenly drawing attention have been happening for years and are no cause for alarm.

Disney said the amount of down time for its trains this year is roughly comparable to last year’s. “Our monorail system is designed to run indefinitely when properly maintained, which it is,” Malenius said.

Jason Garcia can be reached at jrgarcia@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5414.