Disney World plans small monorail expansion
Featured, Jason Garcia, News — By Jason Garcia on July 27, 2010 at 4:07 pm
(Walt Disney World photo)
Walt Disney World is preparing to expand its iconic monorail system — at least a little bit.
Disney said Tuesday it will build a 62-foot maintenance spur off of the system’s Epcot line to serve as a permanent staging area for one of the work tractors used by the resort to tow broken-down trains and inspect and repair track.
The extension will be built next to an existing track switch that is used to transfer trains between the Epcot line and a separate spur leading to one of the system’s two Magic Kingdom loops. Disney currently keeps all of its work tractors in a maintenance bay behind the Magic Kingdom.
The expansion plans were first reported by The Monorail Society, an organization that promotes the use of monorails.
Disney said it wants to have a tractor permanently stationed near the Epcot line in order to allow workers to begin inspections of that track earlier in the evening. Right now, crews typically must wait until the Magic Kingdom closes before they can dispatch a tractor to the Epcot line.
The Magic Kingdom is usually open several hours later than Epcot each night.
“We can begin our routine inspections of the Epcot beam as soon as the Epcot line cycles down for the night, before the Magic Kingdom park closes and with no impact to guests,” Disney World spokesman Bryan Malenius said.
Another advantage: The new spur should allow for faster responses when a tractor is needed to tow a broken-down monorail train to a station.
Last December, several of Disney’s trains were brought to a standstill after a computer hard-drive failure shut off power across the 15-mile-long monorail system. About 300 passengers were left stranded by the power outage, which occurred at about 1 a.m.; the last of them weren’t evacuated until close to 4 a.m.
Malenius said the addition will make it easier to get tractors to monorail trains that are stuck anywhere along the Epcot line or on the outer Magic Kingdom loop near the Transportation and Ticket Center.
Construction crews will begin excavation work soon. Disney expects to complete the project by the end of the year.
Jason Garcia can be reached at jrgarcia@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5414.
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8 Comments
The Monorail is so cool. They need to expand it to go between all 4 parks. It is like an attraction in itself.
I agree, only problem is the monorail service is free so the money would be out of pocket and that is not good for the bottem line.
Imagine if by some miracle they could connect with the high speed trains that may be built between Deltona and Tampa? It would revolutionise travel in the Orlando area
We like to do Monorail tours of the resorts. We ride the monorail to each of the resorts and then spend time walking around the resorts and shopping in the gift shops. It’s really special at Christmas time.
Robert,
Not Really. Instead of the “Transportation Center” only in the MK parking lot they could build 1 central parking lot and Transportation Center and have lines to each park. Still charge for parking like they do in any Park parking lot.
This way guests could park their car and monorail to their park of choice, then easily use the lines to park hop to another place later that day.
Sure would be faster than busing, keeping guests in the parks more time, thus spending more money in the parks, while at the same time earning parking revenue and help boost revenue from Park Hopper tickets.
i have thought for years,that all the parks,should be connected.
how great it would be,to hop on the monorail,to jump,to the next
park.no more waiting for,the bus!well i can dream wright!!
We always stay at a Disneyworld resort that relies on buses to get around. We enjoy the monorail and the boats when we can, but it would be so nice to never ride a Disney bus again. I wonder if the monorail completely replaced the buses if the cost would even out considering the cost of gas and bus maintenance. It would be interesting to do a cost comparison.
The Monorail will never get expanded. Disney could build a brand new park for the price it would cost to extend the monorail to the other parks. We’re talking BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars it would take to extend the monorail system. It’s blind hope that will never occur.