DBDiz
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Mar 24, 2014
I'm kind of wondering how they're gonna get 3,000 people an hour thru.
Looking at YouTubes of the Medellin and Mexicable gondolas, the cabins run about 15-20 seconds apart. At 8 passengers per cabin, that's only 1,920 per hour. There's maybe 5 feet between the cabins when they go thru the stations, but I think they need to keep most of that for safety. Running them faster thru the stations would increase thruput, but also be less safe.
Even 1,920/hr is a full bus every 3 minutes, so I think the capacity will be fine, but the 3,000/hr estimate seems high, let alone 5,000/hr. Maybe those numbers were based on Doppelmayr's 15-passenger cabins.
Let's look at this from a transportation perspective. Each resort sees a bus to either park come every 15-20 minutes, correct? So 3-4 buses an hour for one resort to each park. There are three established resorts and a fourth coming online, so we're talking about replacing 12-16 buses an hour. At your estimate of a full busload every 3 minutes, this would meet current bus capacity after 48 minutes and still have 3 additional buses worth before the hour is up. Any capacity improvement would be in excess of current standards (and the only two logical reasons I can see them pushing for significantly higher is if they decide that Skyliner will be the primary mode of transport for park hopping DHS <-> Epcot and/or reducing boat service for the IG resorts).