News New Gondola Transportation - Disney Skyliner

[Chef idea Mickey`=]

Just imagine needing to get out of your gondola at Riviera, whether arriving from Epcot or arriving from the hub station.

so Riviera is a hub station. Thanks!

 

[Chef idea Mickey`=]

I’m pretty sure they are faster than the skyliner.

Straight line from Coronado to The swan / dolphin is about the same distance as swan / dolphin to studios - that’s a pretty quick boat ride.

How will the waterway connect from Coronado Spring's to Swan and Dolphin. They just built Swan Reserve and unless you rip out the Golf. If the Skyliner Turn station was a station even like Riviera you could easily have another skyliner run straight and it would cross the highway straight on to Coronado Spring's a solution much easier than a waterway where how will it cross World Drive.

 

[mmascari]

I’m not sure the transfer station is really all that more complex except operationally. It’s the same equipment decoupling the gondolas, moving them and controlling the doors. A separate line also means more space for another storage area. It also means you need to move maintenance persons between the two locations.

I'm thinking of the line path and turn wheels. The turn stations are already essentially two end stations plus extra turn pullies to guide the cable around the turn. There's a diagram somewhere in this thread. Having two actual end stations would eliminate the extra pullies with it's additional cable routing and complexity plus two shorter instead of one longer cable. Adding an extra drive motor instead. Everything else would be the same. That extra motor may cost more to drive 4 motors instead of 3, or not since 1 of those motors is moving less stuff now. Definitely some trade offs.

They could transfer cars between two end stations. Just like the 3 end stations share a yard now. In this scenario, cars would be unloaded from a Riviera/CBR line first, then cars on an Epcot/Riviera line unloaded at Riviera and be transferred to the Riviera/CBR line destined for the same storage yard. Probably a manual push instead of driven rollers for the entire switch at Riviera.

Knowing the operations impacts now, after they've been running, I wonder if they would have decided differently than they did. Maybe that extra motor costs so much, or the guest experience of making a transfer would be so much worse than the current impacts that the same decision would still be right. We'll never know.

 

[Goofyernmost]

Disney probably doesn't like busses running empty, but they do.

If you had to compare the two, the gondola's will win the race for low cost operation when empty. Imagine a couple engines as opposed to a hundred running all day long.