Appalling state of the monorail cabins

[ford91exploder]

I think Lime is the FrankenTrain which was built out of the less damaged halves of the monorails involved in the fatal accident - please correct if wrong

The one thing that surprised me when I was in Disney World in October was not the state of the inside, but the outside. Especially monorail lime which looked like it was involved in an accident. The whole body is just covered in dents, dings, splintering of the shell, and scratches. When you look at the surface you can see some areas where they did obvious patch jobs that barely cover the damage up. The weirdest thing though is black scraping along the lower part of the train like it ran into the platform, something that in theory is an impossibility making it hard to explain.

Unlike the interiors of the trains which are overloaded and hit with strollers and other objects their is really no reason for the outside to be in such poor condition. People are behind a barricade and then load into the train. Wheelchairs and scooters are normally segregated and loaded directly preventing them from being able to make contact.

 

[asianway]

I think Lime is the FrankenTrain which was built out of the less damaged halves of the monorails involved in the fatal accident - please correct if wrong

No lime is lime-peach & teal are the frankentrains

 

[Animaniac93-98]

People should post these to the wdw facebook page on a regular basis. Even if they're only there for an hour before taken down, the message would get out.

 

[Soarin' Over Pgh]

Not altogether, but the standards of cleanliness Disney once imposed on their Florida parks proved unnecessarily high to retain their customer base.

Those who think they could "shame" the company into spending several hundred thousand dollars to refurbish the interiors of trains which are otherwise working fail to grasp the permanence of this change in standards.

There's two malls closest to my home. One is a twenty minute drive and the other is a forty five minute drive.

The twenty minute drive mall is filthy. It's walls used to be a creamy, soft elegant white, now they're literally yellow with age and grossness. It's carpeting is horrific and even duct taped in certain areas.

This mall has a 40% occupancy rate and I'm honestly not sure how it's even that high. (Checked websites for that number, it's probably outdated) It's parking lots are dingy and could use a good cleaning, resurfacing, and repainting.


The mall that's farther away is pristine white, well maintained, with clean polished floors and well designed carpeting too. The windows are washed daily, the mall is dusted daily. This mall has a 97%occupancy rate and it shows! as it's very busy and parking can be a nightmare due to the crowds. (This mall also has a disney store, whereas mall #1 used to. It it closed ten years ago,if not longer) I go here almost every weekend.

Point being, if the mall is well kept and maintained, people go. And spend money. Lots of it. The mall that isn't, will soon be turned into either corporate headquarters for our local monopoly health insurance company or it will be leveled entirely and replaced with who cares, because no one will miss it.

Same scenario can be applied to disney. Maintain your parks, keep them fresh and clean, add something new once in a while to entertain them, and people will come and blow all kinds of money on your stuff. And you'll be happy. If you're going to charge $650 a night for a monorail resort, keep that monorail looking it's damn best to impress those people into coming back and spending that money again, instead of "downgrading" to a moderate resort or even staying off site entirely.

Don't maintain your parks, and people will travel just a little bit up the road to the cleaner, newer, fresher offerings.

With a brand new, shiny monorail.... From what folks on this board have said. Looking at you, @WDW1974 .

 

[Tiggerish]

Absolutely.

But trash has become a 'chicken or egg - which came first' question. Disney is positioning itself ever lower on the cultural ladder, so low that it by now attracts the trash from three continents while normal people flee the place. Trash begets trash. Disney and its clientèle are stuck in a morbid embrace, a race to the bottom. WDW by now is about getting drunk and eating 4000 calorie desserts and tarting up your little honeybooboo princess for her picture with Belle. So it attracts people who enjoy that. Who in turn reply to the guest polling how insulted they are that their little Ricardo at Epcot was subjected to material that could be considered educational. So Disney removes that, further alienating more sophisticated audiences. Etc.

A second chicken-or-egg mechanism is the well-studied phenomenon that clean spaces tend to be treated with respect, and dirty plaes with contempt. That is, commuters wouldn't even put their feet up on the seats in a pristine monorail or underground wagon, but will trash a dirty one.

Wow. That lengthy paragraph is probably the most brutally honest thing I've ever read. Bravo.

What's the whole world coming to?

 

[ford91exploder]

No lime is lime-peach & teal are the frankentrains

Thanks - Now we know which ones to avoid...

 

[StageFrenzy]

After a very nice dinner at V&A and stroll around the GF a couple weeks ago I thought it might be nice to take a nice relaxing ride on the highway in the sky around the lagoon. But I remembered that the monorails a)smell b) are in crappy condition c) grumpy/tired people would be on the monorail. I was also fearful that the monorail stench would travel home with me.

 

[Bairstow]

There's two malls closest to my home. One is a twenty minute drive and the other is a forty five minute drive.

The twenty minute drive mall is filthy. It's walls used to be a creamy, soft elegant white, now they're literally yellow with age and grossness. It's carpeting is horrific and even duct taped in certain areas.

This mall has a 40% occupancy rate and I'm honestly not sure how it's even that high. (Checked websites for that number, it's probably outdated) It's parking lots are dingy and could use a good cleaning, resurfacing, and repainting.


The mall that's farther away is pristine white, well maintained, with clean polished floors and well designed carpeting too. The windows are washed daily, the mall is dusted daily. This mall has a 97%occupancy rate and it shows! as it's very busy and parking can be a nightmare due to the crowds. (This mall also has a disney store, whereas mall #1 used to. It it closed ten years ago,if not longer) I go here almost every weekend.

Point being, if the mall is well kept and maintained, people go. And spend money. Lots of it. The mall that isn't, will soon be turned into either corporate headquarters for our local monopoly health insurance company or it will be leveled entirely and replaced with who cares, because no one will miss it.

Same scenario can be applied to disney. Maintain your parks, keep them fresh and clean, add something new once in a while to entertain them, and people will come and blow all kinds of money on your stuff. And you'll be happy. If you're going to charge $650 a night for a monorail resort, keep that monorail looking it's damn best to impress those people into coming back and spending that money again, instead of "downgrading" to a moderate resort or even staying off site entirely.

Don't maintain your parks, and people will travel just a little bit up the road to the cleaner, newer, fresher offerings.

With a brand new, shiny monorail.... From what folks on this board have said. Looking at you, @WDW1974 .

This is all well and good in theory but,
1. There are lots of malls. There is only one Disney World.
2. If Disney World's reduced maintenance and cleaning was going to drive guests away it would have started happening in the mid '90s. It didn't and it won't.

 

[71jason]

I'm not defending Disney (America) because clearly those pictures show things that are their fault for not maintaining 100%. It's also very sad to see that as well. However, in my anecdotal experiences at WDW, I find people trash the place like it's their own personal garbage can, and it only seems to be getting worse. Maybe Disney needs more personnel to handle maintenance and grounds cleaning, but some of the blame for nasty facilities falls squarely on some people that visit the place and leave it in shambles because they think it's their right to trash it because they paid to be there.

It's broken window theory--you allow a broken window in your neighborhood, crimes goes up, because it shows potential criminals no one in the area cares.

You keep monorails (or parks) spotless--guests are more likely to find a bin to toss their trash away. Walt got it back in the 50s--I'd argue he was promoting a proto-broken window theory decades before sociologists found it.

And for what WDW charges for tickets and monorail hotel rooms, they can afford more minimum wage personnel to clean up.

It's telling that everyone defending TDO on this thread (not just SoupBone) feels the need to begin with "I'm not defending Disney...".

 

[Nubs70]

This is all well and good in theory but,
1. There are lots of malls. There is only one Disney World.
2. If Disney World's reduced maintenance and cleaning was going to drive guests away it would have started happening in the mid '90s. It didn't and it won't.

As per point 2,

If memory serves, the average guest visits every 7 years. To notice decline, the average guest will need 1 to 2 return visits, which brings us pretty close to today.

 

[lazyboy97o]

And for what WDW charges for tickets and monorail hotel rooms, they can afford more minimum wage personnel to clean up.

Or treat existing employees better and maybe they will in return take greater pride in their work.

 

[raymusiccity]

Tokyo Disneyland's trains are also 12 years newer than WDW's Mk.6s.

You won't see stains or any where near the wear and tear in Tokyo. The riders actually respect property over there. I don't see half the damage if you're saying they are half as old.

 

[sweetpee_1993]

Not to hop on the bash-wagon but the monorails have been in desperate need of some good, deep TLC for a while now. In January 2010 while standing on a monorail for a good bit if time while it "cycled" 4 times between the Poly & MK I watched some kids leaning on the doors & it freaked me out. The doors weren't sealed firmly. I could see the ground far below thru the cracks. As rough a shape as they're in, I simply don't trust those doors to stay latched.

I don't go to the parks so much anymore. When I was on the monorails before & after the girls cruise in Sept I just tried not to touch anything. So yucky. I don't want to stand and hold onto anything but then I don't want to sit and touch anything.

 

[71jason]

Or treat existing employees better and maybe they will in return take greater pride in their work.

Amen.

 

[cslafferty]

Well, I remember that "monorail smell" since we started going to WDW back in '99, although it's gotten way worse since. I never understood why, with Florida's heat and humidity, they would carpet them. The doors only open briefly, and without open windows, they don't ever get a chance to air out - like my teenage son's stinky, moldy cross trainers. I know they would be a lot noisier, but without carpeting it would be much easier for a cast member to step in with a mop and wipe down the floor with disinfectant periodically. I have developed adult-onset asthma and my biggest trigger is mold, so my trip in 15 days should be interesting. We're staying at the Contempo, so we'll be riding the monorails quite a bit. Of course, if I happen to have a major asthma attack while riding in a moldy monorail car, which may require an ambulance, which might draw attention to the media, which would possibly draw negative attention to TDO and the state of things . . . just sayin.

 

[Bairstow]

Well, I remember that "monorail smell" since we started going to WDW back in '99, although it's gotten way worse since. I never understood why, with Florida's heat and humidity, they would carpet them.

I've been wondering that too.
Sound deadening, I presume.

The Japanese monorails have no carpet at all, though some of the seats are upholstered.

 

[Magenta Panther]

Iger: "Well, too bad, I had to use the money earmarked for upkeep to buy Marvel. Let the monorails and the Yeti rot. I don't give a crap about customers unless they're stockholders."

 

[BubbaQuest]

I find it amusing that today's picture of "what's new at WDW" is of mold and the picture of "what's new at Uni" is a brand new fully connected train.

http://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/hogwarts-express-backstage-photos.871039/page-6#post-5808603

 

[Admiral01]

Age isn't an issue. Something 30 years old can look pristine if maintained properly.

Exactly. I'm 32, and look fantastic!

 

[Sam Magic]

Why is it that Disneyland has FANTASTIC management while Disney World is falling to pieces?!