Project Z

RSoxNo1 said:

But... but... but... weren't we told that the spending at DCA wouldn't effect WDW?

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It was easy to say that since either way, WDW wasn't spending any money

tirian said:

To be fair, they are spending loads of cash on DCA. :shrug:

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Yep. And, to be fair, if they had built the place right from Day 1 it would have cost them far less then this extreme makeover will when all is said and done.

tirian said:

This is more the result of grouping all the American parks together as Disney Parks. Does Epcot need a new country at the same time DCA needs an attraction? Snip, snip, cut, cut.

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OneDisney is evil. But yeah, at some point that's what it comes down to.
When you look at Anaheim, Hong Kong, Hawaii, the two new mega cruise ships and even the wittle MK Fantasyland freshening project, they are spending billions of dollars ... and that doesn't even count Shanghai yet ... or the new E-Ticket for DSP soon either.

When you look at it from a company-wide portfolio, well it is very easy for them to say 'we're overspending' ... the thing is, no one visiting DCA cares about what's coming to Lantau ... no one on Lantau cares whether anything ever comes to EPCOT ... no one taking a Disney Dream cruise is thinking 'yeah, they should have made this cheaper and added a new E-Ticket to DAK' etc ... etc ...

The problem is that people don't visit Disney Parks: Where Dreams Come True and MAGIC Lives and You Can Have Your Magaical Gathering While Celebrating The MAGIC, the Memories and YOU!:hurl: ***

If I only have a three day vacation and I am spending two days at EPCOT and one at MK, then I expect those parks to be in top shape with fresh offerings that wow me. I don't care about capital spending across a multi-billion dollar business unit that stretches from one side of the world to another.

EVERY park/resort/ship should be the best it can be. If Disney can't do it, then either their business model is wrong, they've hired the wrong people to manage the company, they grew their business faster than was sustainable to keep it as a premium brand or all of the above.

***PS -- Don't Forget to Ask About Disney's Best-Kept Secret Before You Leave Or We'll Send Stacey Aswad's Cousin Freddy Two-Fingers Aswad to Your Home and There Will Be Lots of Blood ...

WDW1974 said:

The problem is that people don't visit Disney Parks: Where Dreams Come True and MAGIC Lives and You Can Have Your Magaical Gathering While Celebrating The MAGIC, the Memories and YOU!:hurl: ***

If I only have a three day vacation and I am spending two days at EPCOT and one at MK, then I expect those parks to be in top shape with fresh offerings that wow me. I don't care about capital spending across a multi-billion dollar business unit that stretches from one side of the world to another.

EVERY park/resort/ship should be the best it can be. If Disney can't do it, then either their business model is wrong, they've hired the wrong people to manage the company, they grew their business faster than was sustainable to keep it as a premium brand or all of the above.

***PS -- Don't Forget to Ask About Disney's Best-Kept Secret Before You Leave Or We'll Send Stacey Aswad's Cousin Freddy Two-Fingers Aswad to Your Home and There Will Be Lots of Blood ...

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:ROFLOL:
I think I've developed a bromance crush on you. I'll have to break it to my girlfriend.

EDIT: I think the business model is: overcharge on resorts and regular food, overdiscount packages and dining plans, and hope the attendance numbers still look good. Ignore low merch sales and poor maintenance.

tirian said:

:ROFLOL:
I think I've developed a bromance crush on you. I'll have to break it to my girlfriend.

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Aw, man...
I live all the way across the county from 74 and I can actualy hear his ego expanding at this distance.
Talk like that will likely get you a membership in the Doom & Gloom Society, though.

Lee said:

Aw, man...
I live all the way across the county from 74 and I can actualy hear his ego expanding at this distance.
Talk like that will likely get you a membership in the Doom & Gloom Society, though.

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I am much too optimistic to be part of a Doom & Gloom Society. That doesn't mean I can't acknowledge the truth and enjoy the sense of humor.

Quote:
Originally Posted by tirian
:ROFLOL:
I think I've developed a bromance crush on you. I'll have to break it to my girlfriend.

Lee said:

Aw, man...
I live all the way across the county from 74 and I can actualy hear his ego expanding at this distance.
Talk like that will likely get you a membership in the Doom & Gloom Society, though.

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Bois ... now calm down. There's enough of me to go around ... especially since I have discovered (at WDW no less) that peanut butter and bananas make a tasty and hugely fattening snack. Although maybe I shouldn't be talking about those fruits in such a context.:drevil:

But it's nice to feel the love on Valentine's Night ... oh wait that ended a few hours ago.

And what's this Doom and Gloom Society I keep hearing about? I am a Pixie Dusted Mr. Sunshine (and you can see me in my new ABC comedy Wednesday night's after the Emmy-award winning Modern Family!)

Lee said:

Sir, Tony was clearly not in a restroom when he was run into. He was very politely greeted on a public walkway. And not by me, either. 'Twas Martin who accosted the poor fellow and used his disarming British charm to elicit such wonderful comments about Imagination.:lol:

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I would have liked to have seen that. Poor Tony, always being cornered by those of us who want to elicit specific comments about Imagination. I am guilty of similar activities, and thankfully elicited the comments that I had hoped to hear.

lazyboy97o said:

A problem that will only be made worse by having multiple hotels on a single line. With speed limited travel times will decrease for some destinations, but increase for many others (either just getting there or being stuck at your resort waiting for a monorail with available capacity). There will still be crowding. People will still be stuck standing. How much cool factor will be left when the end experience ends up not much different from the existing busses?

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Well capacity issues will need to be addressed. Part of this is having double tracks for each line, which would involve the epcot line being remodeled so that each pylon is carrying two lines. Along with that, the epcot station and the ttc would need to be remodeled to make the flow more efficient.

ChrisFL said:

Oh wow, you want to speak about the original topic...my mistake

Well since this topic has veered into monorail discussion...what about the dreaded "fee to ride" idea.

I'm just going to throw out some math and see what this does.

Let's say that all 4 parks combined get 30 million visitors a year, I think it's more than that, but just as an example. Let's say half of them will use a monorail from their hotel, or from the TTC, again, completely hypothetical.

That's 15 million per year. If there was a $1 fee for every use, and the monorail takes 2 trips for each guest, that's $30 million a year that could be used to sustain a major monorail project.

I don't know about anyone else, but I wouldn't mind paying $2 a day to have monorail service all over the resort.

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I'm with you there. Fold it into your ticket price and people wouldn't even notice the difference. Of course, they'd notice the perk of having to avoid buses as much as possible though.

flavious27 said:

That is true. I mentioned about having the pink line being double tracked on a single beam, they could use that extra capacity when the amount of guests checking in and out is low while park guests using the monorail is high.

I doubt though that even if disney did build this pie in the sky expansion that they would get rid of the buses entirely. They would still need buses for transporting guests to special events and moving employees.

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They would need them less than they do now, though.

Its at least worthy of consideration. I bet they talk about it every year when they're budgeting.

lazyboy97o said:

What about those who do not want to pay? Force people to rent a car and let them leave property? Or continue to offer the buses, thus hurting your projected ridership?


A problem that will only be made worse by having multiple hotels on a single line. With speed limited travel times will decrease for some destinations, but increase for many others (either just getting there or being stuck at your resort waiting for a monorail with available capacity). There will still be crowding. People will still be stuck standing. How much cool factor will be left when the end experience ends up not much different from the existing busses?

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You're assuming they simply add one line and leave everything as is.

Lets give Disney credit. If they actually extended the monorail, they would do logistics studies to ensure they have traffic/singling contingencies. They'd study whether or not the monorail cars themselves would need upgrades. You aren't giving them enough credit. Smart people work there and would presumably be tasked with solving those questions and the myriad others that you're yet to pose.

juniorthomas said:

Smart people work there and would presumably be tasked with solving those questions and the myriad others that you're yet to pose.

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Right, just look at how seamlessly and trouble-free the new monorails were at Disneyland.....oh wait...

ChrisFL said:

Right, just look at how seamlessly and trouble-free the new monorails were at Disneyland.....oh wait...

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Haha oh yes...I got stuck on one of those right outside of Disneyland for an hour in the summer...and it was HOT. I started getting claustraphobic, and the leaning position the monorail was in was really aggrivating, since you had to sit at an angle...i kept feeling like i was sliding off my seat!

Of course, I must have bad luck with monorails, because I was stuck on one at the Magic Kingdom the last time I visited there too!

ChrisFL said:

Right, just look at how seamlessly and trouble-free the new monorails were at Disneyland.....oh wait...

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You mean when they first opened? in 1959?

juniorthomas said:

You mean when they first opened? in 1959?

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I would gather that this is reference to the mark vii monorails introduced in '08.

TimeTrip said:

I would gather that this is reference to the mark vii monorails introduced in '08.

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Correct, there were many issues with the new mark vii monorails.

juniorthomas said:

You're assuming they simply add one line and leave everything as is.

Lets give Disney credit. If they actually extended the monorail, they would do logistics studies to ensure they have traffic/singling contingencies. They'd study whether or not the monorail cars themselves would need upgrades. You aren't giving them enough credit. Smart people work there and would presumably be tasked with solving those questions and the myriad others that you're yet to pose.

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No, I was going off of that map. You either do direct lines, loops or a combination of the two. Either way it just exaggerates the problems of the existing system.

The "smart people would figure it out" argument is just a copt out.

ChrisFL said:

Correct, there were many issues with the new mark vii monorails.

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Think they've fixed them yet?

Any new technology wont work right away. They've got people on it, is what I was getting at. They wouldn't release a monorail upgrade and leave it as is permanently.

lazyboy97o said:

No, I was going off of that map. You either do direct lines, loops or a combination of the two. Either way it just exaggerates the problems of the existing system.

The "smart people would figure it out" argument is just a copt out.

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You are allowed to think that the same way I'm allowed to think buses aren't a longterm solution to WDW transportation. I posed monorail expansion as another option.

juniorthomas said:

Think they've fixed them yet?

Any new technology wont work right away. They've got people on it, is what I was getting at. They wouldn't release a monorail upgrade and leave it as is permanently.

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The Mark VIIs were not all that much in terms of new technology. The issues stemmed from poorly designed windows and improperly placing equipment onto chassis that have been running on the beams since the late-1960s.

juniorthomas said:

You are allowed to think that the same way I'm allowed to think buses aren't a longterm solution to WDW transportation. I posed monorail expansion as another option.

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Opinions are not self validating and "there is a good argument out there" is a weak defense. Even when Disney was committed to making monorails work, they had to be supplemented with other means of transportation. It might not be as cool, but the sad reality is that the most convenient option for guests are the buses. Disney may not be using the muses to their fullest advantage, but they offer the best solution to moving guests.