News Round Up 2019

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Monorail stuck tonight, heading to EP, with about 100 people onboard. Passengers being evacuated through the roof.


Don't worry. These guys have it under control!

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I really wonder how much in downtime - comp/customer complaint gift cards- and cost of Man hours for rescue ops like this cost Disney. Disney has been putting off replacing for way to long and would rather carry the cost of these type of rescue operations over multiple years and quarters instead of starting the replacement project right after the end of the last recession. Honestly they should have probably replaced the monorail before they invested so heavily into Shanghai, knowing how long Bombardier takes then we would be at least close to having 1 new system. Thats just my Humble opinion
 


I really wonder how much in downtime - comp/customer complaint gift cards- and cost of Man hours for rescue ops like this cost Disney. Disney has been putting off replacing for way to long and would rather carry the cost of these type of rescue operations over multiple years and quarters instead of starting the replacement project right after the end of the last recession. Honestly they should have probably replaced the monorail before they invested so heavily into Shanghai, knowing how long Bombardier takes then we would be at least close to having 1 new system. Thats just my Humble opinion

might be one of those things that if they know what would happen, yeah, it would have made more sense to just replace them 10 years ago ... but after you put money in to keep them going it's easier to put a bit more into them to keep them going a bit longer vs saying well, that money we put in to refurb them that was a waste and just replace them

definitely a bit "throwing good money after bad" but sometimes hard to view something as a sunk cost
 
might be one of those things that if they know what would happen, yeah, it would have made more sense to just replace them 10 years ago ... but after you put money in to keep them going it's easier to put a bit more into them to keep them going a bit longer vs saying well, that money we put in to refurb them that was a waste and just replace them

definitely a bit "throwing good money after bad" but sometimes hard to view something as a sunk cost

One of the other problems is they used the current monorails to do all the testing for the automation. They wanted to lock that in and incorporate it into the new version. 10 years ago it wasn't ready. Even 5 years ago it wasn't ready. Part of the reason the monorails are so ridiculously overdue is because the automation was done on Disney time. And then they tried to squeeze the investment a little longer, and now the 50th is coming up and they can't afford to have the monorails down, and only crappy Bombardier is really willing to work with their ancient beams and tech, and it's a bloody mess. So they decided to try and refurb one more time, sinking money into that, and pushing off a revamp that gets messier all the time because the beams and infrastructure are incompatible with modern standards.

Frankly the monorail is a disaster. A disaster Disney created, exacerbated by outside factors for sure, but created by Disney. And there is no good way out. It will be fascinating to see how WDW eventually undoes this Gordian Knot. Given how iconic the monorail is, and the way it ties together the 7 Seas Resorts, it's hard to see them scrapping it even if it does make economic sense. But, there is almost no good way of keeping it without dropping several monorail loads of gold bars.
 
I think they should drop several loads of Monorail gold Bars. I know this would facilitate work at all the resorts around the lagoon as well with the worst of the work needing to be at the contemporary. Replace the beams, modernize the system. With all the work they are doing at epcot, if they needed to widen the beams for that run, this would be the perfect time to do it. Either that or just replace the Epcot line with something different and keep the Monrail around the lagoon. If we are going into a recession right before the 50th. Then honestly right after is the perfect time to work on all of this. With less crowd numbers, more work can be done to replace the ageing infrastructure without having to deal with larger crowd numbers. If I had the ability to actually facilitate some of these Ideas for WDW, I suspect I would prob end up cuting the profits of WDW by at least 10 percent for about 5 years due to reinvesting in in maintenance and rehab projects. That need to be taken care of without cutting costs at other parts of the park business.
 
Frankly the monorail is a disaster. A disaster Disney created, exacerbated by outside factors for sure, but created by Disney. And there is no good way out. It will be fascinating to see how WDW eventually undoes this Gordian Knot. Given how iconic the monorail is, and the way it ties together the 7 Seas Resorts, it's hard to see them scrapping it even if it does make economic sense. But, there is almost no good way of keeping it without dropping several monorail loads of gold bars.
In Disney's defense, these transports are old and heavily utilized -- probably a TON more utilized than most light rail/monorail systems across the country. To me, even though they were a vision of the future, just sorta shows how expensive and impractical rail or monorail lines are for public transport.

How quick did they get the gondolas up and running? I wonder if they can just build a skyliner around the same path as the monorail. I guess the big issue would be the stations at the hotels, but heck you could probably include Wilderness Lodge and the new resort into a Gondola line and make them even more "Deluxe".
 
In Disney's defense, these transports are old and heavily utilized -- probably a TON more utilized than most light rail/monorail systems across the country. To me, even though they were a vision of the future, just sorta shows how expensive and impractical rail or monorail lines are for public transport.

How quick did they get the gondolas up and running? I wonder if they can just build a skyliner around the same path as the monorail. I guess the big issue would be the stations at the hotels, but heck you could probably include Wilderness Lodge and the new resort into a Gondola line and make them even more "Deluxe".

I was thinking about that - the Skyliner would probably be significantly cheaper than if they had to replace all the beams, but realistically it's likely a 2-year project. They could take the monorails out and use the same stations for the gondolas without too much trouble, though I question whether they could handle the AM and PM traffic out of MK going to the TTC. That's a hell of a lot more people than the folks going to the 4 resorts on the current line.

I do think Disney is in a bind with what to do with these things. It's such an iconic image of the main park I have a hard time believing they really want to get rid of them - but boy any solution sound like major $$$ and time.
 
One of the other problems is they used the current monorails to do all the testing for the automation. They wanted to lock that in and incorporate it into the new version. 10 years ago it wasn't ready. Even 5 years ago it wasn't ready. Part of the reason the monorails are so ridiculously overdue is because the automation was done on Disney time. And then they tried to squeeze the investment a little longer, and now the 50th is coming up and they can't afford to have the monorails down, and only crappy Bombardier is really willing to work with their ancient beams and tech, and it's a bloody mess. So they decided to try and refurb one more time, sinking money into that, and pushing off a revamp that gets messier all the time because the beams and infrastructure are incompatible with modern standards.

Frankly the monorail is a disaster. A disaster Disney created, exacerbated by outside factors for sure, but created by Disney. And there is no good way out. It will be fascinating to see how WDW eventually undoes this Gordian Knot. Given how iconic the monorail is, and the way it ties together the 7 Seas Resorts, it's hard to see them scrapping it even if it does make economic sense. But, there is almost no good way of keeping it without dropping several monorail loads of gold bars.

I know Disney sunk this money because they should get it back based on the IP they can use, but they spent $71.3 billion for Fox.

Any argument (and I'm not saying you're saying this, just speaking in generalizations) that they can't spend the money to update the monorail is ridiculous to me. Is it worth it, to your point, is a different conversation.

But Disney has the money, and if they wanted to they would have by now. If things were kept up as time passed the monorails wouldn't be in this mess. But as is the case, just like at many corporations, when you keep putting bandaids on a bullet wound, things just get worse.
 
In Disney's defense, these transports are old and heavily utilized -- probably a TON more utilized than most light rail/monorail systems across the country. To me, even though they were a vision of the future, just sorta shows how expensive and impractical rail or monorail lines are for public transport.

How quick did they get the gondolas up and running? I wonder if they can just build a skyliner around the same path as the monorail. I guess the big issue would be the stations at the hotels, but heck you could probably include Wilderness Lodge and the new resort into a Gondola line and make them even more "Deluxe".
I was thinking about that - the Skyliner would probably be significantly cheaper than if they had to replace all the beams, but realistically it's likely a 2-year project. They could take the monorails out and use the same stations for the gondolas without too much trouble, though I question whether they could handle the AM and PM traffic out of MK going to the TTC. That's a hell of a lot more people than the folks going to the 4 resorts on the current line.

I do think Disney is in a bind with what to do with these things. It's such an iconic image of the main park I have a hard time believing they really want to get rid of them - but boy any solution sound like major $$$ and time.

my understanding is the beam to EPCOT is in worse shape than the MK lagoon beam (just was built "cheaper") so I could see at some point they put some $ in to the MK monorail path to fix it up as best as possible and just keep fewer monorail cars running better, etc. and then take down the EPCOT beam and replace with Skyliner. Could still leverage TTC as station for that, perhaps have a line going to Wilderness Lodge and/or Reflections resort as well, and then down to EPCOT

This way can keep the "iconic' Monorail and you have the Contemporary built for a monorail to go through it, not for a gondola - but save costs overtime and put in newer/safer system for where it makes most sense

(but of course just a bunch of armchair imagineering on my part)
 
my understanding is the beam to EPCOT is in worse shape than the MK lagoon beam (just was built "cheaper") so I could see at some point they put some $ in to the MK monorail path to fix it up as best as possible and just keep fewer monorail cars running better, etc. and then take down the EPCOT beam and replace with Skyliner. Could still leverage TTC as station for that, perhaps have a line going to Wilderness Lodge and/or Reflections resort as well, and then down to EPCOT

This way can keep the "iconic' Monorail and you have the Contemporary built for a monorail to go through it, not for a gondola - but save costs overtime and put in newer/safer system for where it makes most sense

(but of course just a bunch of armchair imagineering on my part)

I didn;'t say it but I was thinking the same way. That's an awful long beam from MK to Epcot to maintain - so yeah could see them taking that one down. (Plus I don't think you have the same "crowd" problem with it at opening/closing.)
 
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