DisneylandForward

[TP2000]

The one thing that is consistent through all three of those proposed plans I so kindly created, is the need for a brand new Maintenance Facility. I plopped it next to the Eastern Gateway station as that seems "backstage" enough and there's lots of room there to build a required maintenance facility and train shed.

The existing Disneyland Monorail maintenance facility was built in 1961 and will not be useable for new, larger trains. The existing Monorail train shed is only 85 feet wide and 185 feet long. It has four spur tracks on the upper level to service/park four monorails, while downstairs sits the roundhouse facility for the Disneyland Railroad trains.

It is hemmed in on three sides by immovable objects like the 5 freeway, or likely immovable objects like TDA and the Small World warehouse building.

Consider the length of 185 feet of that building as its death knell. Current Disneyland Monorail trains are 137 feet long. Current WDW Monorail trains are 203 feet long. Current Tokyo Disneyland Monorails are 275 feet long.

Just a casual observation seems to point to the Eastern Gateway land, which is very large, being the site of a maintenance facility for the much larger trains required by this new system. I would imagine it would be on the northern end of the property, and the old Carousel Inn property torn down for a simple pedestrian bridge would be the alignment for a transit system above it heading east to the Eastern Gateway station and maintenance barn, before the tracks curve south to head to the Toy Story Expansion station.

Just off the top of my head, but this would seem to be the only space available for a maintenance facility large enough to hold at least a half dozen trains of large size.

 

[TP2000]

Here's some fun photos of the current Disneyland Roundhouse facility. Monorails on the second story, steam engines on the ground floor. This was a brilliant plan for 1961, but it's already cramped as it is and far too small for any sort of modern mass transit system for 50,000 people per day.

 

[Disney Irish]

The one thing that is consistent through all three of those proposed plans I so kindly created, is the need for a brand new Maintenance Facility. I plopped it next to the Eastern Gateway station as that seems "backstage" enough and there's lots of room there to build a required maintenance facility and train shed.

The existing Disneyland Monorail maintenance facility was built in 1961 and will not be useable for new, larger trains. The existing Monorail train shed is only 85 feet wide and 185 feet long. It has four spur tracks on the upper level to service/park four monorails, while downstairs sits the roundhouse facility for the Disneyland Railroad trains.

It is hemmed in on three sides by immovable objects like the 5 freeway, or likely immovable objects like TDA and the Small World warehouse building.

View attachment 745856

Consider the length of 185 feet of that building as its death knell. Current Disneyland Monorail trains are 137 feet long. Current WDW Monorail trains are 203 feet long. Current Tokyo Disneyland Monorails are 275 feet long.

Just a casual observation seems to point to the Eastern Gateway land, which is very large, being the site of a maintenance facility for the much larger trains required by this new system. I would imagine it would be on the northern end of the property, and the old Carousel Inn property torn down for a simple pedestrian bridge would be the alignment for a transit system above it heading east to the Eastern Gateway station and maintenance barn, before the tracks curve south to head to the Toy Story Expansion station.

Just off the top of my head, but this would seem to be the only space available for a maintenance facility large enough to hold at least a half dozen trains of large size.

View attachment 745858

I wouldn't call the TDA building immovable. I would imagine that if needed they can move TDA to some place else, for example the old USCIS building that sits on Manchester. It wasn't even part of the original plans for the Eastern Gateway anyways, I think being listed as potential "expansion". So it could be reused for TDA, or as you say maybe even a site for a new maintenance facility for a potential new Monorail system.

 

[TP2000]

I wouldn't call the TDA building immovable.

Neither would I, which is why I qualified it as being "likely" immovable.

It is hemmed in on three sides by immovable objects like the 5 freeway, or likely immovable objects like TDA and the Small World warehouse building.

Is it possible that they would bulldoze TDA to open up 5 more acres for theme park expansion? Yes, that's possible.

It's also possible that Disney sells off the Parks division next year after an investor led coup and Disney's crashing stock price boots Iger and the current board, and then 3 years later the company that bought the Parks division sells it off to Chinese developers to bulldoze Disneyland and turn the entire area into condos and a WalMart supercenter. That is possible, but not likely.

About the only thing in that photo above that is truly immovable is the Interstate 5 Freeway. That freeway is not going anywhere until we invent the Mass Transit version of Star Trek transporters. Check back in the year 2423 on that one...

 

[Disney Irish]

Neither would I, which is why I qualified it as being "likely" immovable.



Is it possible that they would bulldoze TDA to open up 5 more acres for theme park expansion? Yes, that's possible.

It's also possible that Disney sells off the Parks division next year after an investor led coup and Disney's crashing stock price boots Iger and the current board, and then 3 years later the company that bought the Parks division sells it off to Chinese developers to bulldoze Disneyland and turn the entire area into condos and a WalMart supercenter. That is possible, but not likely.

About the only thing in that photo above that is truly immovable is the Interstate 5 Freeway. That freeway is not going anywhere until we invent the Mass Transit version of Star Trek transporters. Check back in the year 2423 on that one...

Sarcasm aside, I remember similar discussions of "likely immovable" backstage buildings being discussed prior to GE being built here and other forums, and yet Disney removed them.

The point is that the backstage buildings in that area including TDA and its parking structure with few exceptions can be moved and relocated elsewhere. Disney will continue to chip away and move those operations offsite as needed.

As I mentioned I wouldn't be surprised if Disney reuses the old USCIS building for something like TDA in order to move things around in the future.

 

[build_it]

I guess I don’t understand why they wouldn’t just keep all of the existing monorail as it is and add an entirely new track similar to:

 

[TP2000]

I guess I don’t understand why they wouldn’t just keep all of the existing monorail as it is and add an entirely new track similar to: View attachment 745881

They certainly could. That would keep the Disneyland Monorail as a theme park ride that also connects to the middle of the Disneyland Forward expansion property.

But then you would need a second and much higher capacity modern system to connect the resort district throughout.

That's certainly doable, and would at least keep the charm of the 1959 Monorail intact. Although its spaghetti bowl of beamway over the submarines and Autopia and around the Matterhorn could limit what they can do with that space as Tommorowland Discoveryland expansion area.

 

[TP2000]

Sarcasm aside, I remember similar discussions of "likely immovable" backstage buildings being discussed prior to GE being built here and other forums, and yet Disney removed them.

I still remember the dear, sweet kid here who confidently claimed they couldn't expand Tomorrowland for Star Wars Land because there was a major Cast Member breakroom behind Innoventions.

As I mentioned I wouldn't be surprised if Disney reuses the old USCIS building for something like TDA in order to move things around in the future.

They could use the space there, but not the building itself. It's too small, about 25% of the square footage as TDA.

In my opinion, they'd be stupid to waste any of the Eastern Gateway property for stuff like cubicle farms. If TDA gets bulldozed, and I'm of the opinion it won't be in even the most fanciful versions of Disneyland Forward, they need to just move it a mile or so east of the property over to the industrial warehouse district north of the failed "Platinum Triangle".

If they can all work from home in their sweats (If it's good enough for the US Senate...) with Merlot in their coffee cups during their Zoom calls, there's no reason why you should waste prime Resort District property for them and their "executive leaders". Boot them over across the freeway and just get them out of the way entirely. Buh-bye.

But again, I really doubt they'll bulldoze TDA in even the most ambitious of Disneyland Forward scenarios. It's technically a possibility, but a possibility with a very, very, very slim chance of actually happening.

 

[TP2000]

Here's a fun thing I just Googled... The Tokyo Disney Resort Monorail maintenance facility. I've ridden the Tokyo Disney monorail many times in the past 20 years, but until now I had no idea where the "roundhouse" was for the huge system. I found it on Google Earth just north of the Hotel MiraCosta and the main entrance plaza to DisneySea. Who knew?! I've even stayed a few times at the Miracosta, and never noticed it there.

The Tokyo maintenance facility is 100 feet wide and 800 feet long from the entry trackswitches to the end of the spur lines. It has room to park 8 trains simultaneously on 4 spur tracks. Three spur tracks are outside, and one spur track is inside a building for indoor maintenance and repair. There is also a train washing machine (the Tokyo trains are always pristine inside and out).

Here's the satellite image of that Tokyo maintenance facility;

And here is what a maintenance facility of that size (100 feet by 800 feet) would look like if you plopped it onto the Eastern Gateway property. The actual passenger station for the Eastern Gateway would be immediately to the west of the maintenance facility, noted by the gold box. But I found this helpful to imagine the scale and size of this required facility.

Obviously, the Eastern Gateway needs to be a truly large and impressive facility. It would be even larger, more involved than its original proposal that was shot down by Anaheim (largely because it looked cheap and ugly, thanks to Colglazier and Chapek both being cheapskate weirdos). Truly it would be a multi-modal facility for rideshares, buses, shuttles, thousands of parking spaces, security screening, monorail station, monorail maintenance, at least two Starbucks, etc.

But the above shows how a train maintenance facility for a mass transit system capable of carrying tens of thousands of passengers per day would need to, and easily could, be slotted in to that large and important piece of property.

As a final point of reference, here is that Tokyo Monorail maintenance facility placed over the current Disneyland Monorail/Disneyland Railroad roundhouse "backstage" just south of TDA. Even if you push it further south towards the actual park boundary, it would still extend over all 14 lanes of the Santa Ana Freeway.

 

[TP2000]

Ah... Tokyo. Their monorails are a full-scale system that could be used by a city (there are quite a few monorail systems in Japanese cities, built from the 1960's to 2010's).

From the outside, the Tokyo monorails are not nearly as stylized and themed as Anaheim's. Sort of the difference between a 1959 Cadillac and a 2010 Camry; one is highly styled at the expense of utility (Anaheim), the other is high quality yet rather bland transportation (Tokyo). The sole piece of design "whimsy" in Tokyo is the Mickey shaped windows.

But the inside of the Tokyo trains are truly fabulous. They are huge cars, you can walk from one end of the train to the other, and they are whimsically outfitted with Mickey upholstery and fittings. And kept immaculately clean and fresh. The little display nook in between each car (seen at right) has different small exhibits and Disney artifacts on display. Just something to look at if you are standing, or walking through the train as you glide along.

Also, many people use the monorail to get from the Maihama train station to their hotel station. Rolling aboard suitcases and luggage is very easy on these huge trains, and I have done that luggage routine easily to get from Maihama to the DisneySea Miracosta or Disneyland hotels.

These are very high capacity trains, as at park closing or on busy days they can be very full of people being taken to the parking structures and various hotel stations.

If Anaheim really does decide to link its entire Resort with a monorail system with 4 or 5 stations, this is likely the scale and scope of what they would need to get that job done for tens of thousands of people per day.

 

[TP2000]

Okay, one more thing about Tokyo's monorails and then I swear I'll stop....

In Tokyo, the monorail goes around the perimeter of the entire Resort; both parks, all hotels, alongside "backstage" zones, etc. This is similar to some of the Blue Sky Idea routes we talked about earlier in this thread that would link together the Disneyland Forward areas with the current resort areas.

But in Tokyo, the Cast Members are trained to all wave at the monorail trains when they pass by overhead backstage. These are CM's going to/from their shift, walking to a meeting, or to the CM cafeteria, etc. But they ALWAYS look up and smile and wave at the passing monorail train.

Tokyo has a training culture and management focus that is far superior to the American parks. Hourly CM's trained to smile and wave at a passing monorail on their way to the break room is just one of many examples of that. I just want to go shake each of these CM's hands and thank them for their commitment to excellence and their pride in their work.

And can you just imagine how proud Walt is of them as he looks down on them doing this?

 

[build_it]

That's certainly doable, and would at least keep the charm of the 1959 Monorail intact. Although its spaghetti bowl of beamway over the submarines and Autopia and around the Matterhorn could limit what they can do with that space as Tommorowland Discoveryland expansion area.

It could also offer a unique opportunity to do some tweaks to that part of the beam as part of a tomorrow land overhaul. I imagine it could be really cool to go through a ride building as part of your descent into the theme park. Kind of how WDW people mover goes through/around attractions. Would be very cool to treat the monorail entry in a similar fashion.

 

[TP2000]

If the current Monorail wasn't safe to run, even by modern standards, it wouldn't be in operation today. This includes for ADA standards which they have ramps that allow access to/from the trains as needed.

The current Disneyland Monorail is not unsafe, it's just wildly inefficient and out of date.

Even with the "new" Mark VII trains, because of the tiny boutique beamway, they couldn't get the new car floors to line up with the station platforms. There's a two inch step up into the train, which does not meet current ADA laws for accesibility.

But the Disneyland Monorail is grandfathered in, so they can get away with operating it with big metal ramps a CM has to deploy and set down before a person in a (narrow) wheelchair can roll aboard up the ramp, then be chocked into place in a corner of the tiny cabin. Here's a video queued to that process, and while it's great they make this accommodation, it's not up to current ADA code or standards.



Again, it's kind of the CM's to do this for the person in the wheelchair. But this process does not meet modern ADA standards for accessibility for mass transit. And it shows just how aged and toy-like the current Disneyland Monorail really is.

All this chatter and typing has convinced me that the current Disneyland Monorail really is past its prime. It has no real place in the 21st century as a real transportation system. It's an amusement park ride, nothing more. It's probably time to bid it goodbye sooner than later, as sad as that would be.

 

[TP2000]

TDA Fun Facts from Google and Facebook:

The Team Disney Anaheim (TDA) building is four stories tall and has 342,000 square feet of office space.

The former USCIS building on Manchester is one story tall and has only 68,000 square feet of office space.

Thus, TDA is five times larger than the USCIS building. Or, the USCIS building is only 20% of the size of TDA.

TDA was designed by famous architect Frank Gehry and it opened in 1996. It sits on the site of the former Global Van Lines headquarters building. Cast Members in the 1990's derisively nicknamed TDA the "Hot Dog Building" because it was based on a design Mr. Gehry had initially drawn up for a corporate headquarters for Oscar Meyer. More recently, park Cast Members now refer to it as "The Morgue" because when you visit the building it's deathly quiet and has all the charm of... a morgue.

Directly next to TDA is a seven level parking structure with a capacity of 1,350 cars, for use by TDA employees. There is also a 400 seat employee cafeteria with a 150 seat outdoor dining patio, called "The Eat Ticket" (get it?).

As seen from the Santa Ana Freeway, TDA is a long slab sided building clad in green metal panels.

But on the opposite side, mostly unseen by the public, TDA is painted different shades of light blue and turquoise and has wacky curves, as was typical of Frank Gehry's 1990's design philosophy. It's design has aged rather well, in my opinion.

TDA has a 225 seat auditorium in its northwest corner with a full multimedia system, used for presentations and large meetings.

 

[NobodyElse]

The current Disneyland Monorail is not unsafe, it's just wildly inefficient and out of date.

Thank you.
I had considered addressing that, but lost interest.

Just because the Casey Jr. Circus Train is old and safe doesn't make it a suitable mode of efficient park to park transportation.

 

[NobodyElse]

Cast Members in the 1990's derisively nicknamed TDA the "Hot Dog Building" because it was based on a design Mr. Gehry had initially drawn up for a corporate headquarters for Oscar Meyer.

The explanation given to me for the nickname was that it was slathered in condiment-reminiscent color - Yellow (mustard) on one side, and iridescent green (relish) on the other. Who knows?

 

[TP2000]

The explanation given to me for the nickname was that it was slathered in condiment-reminiscent color - Yellow (mustard) on one side, and iridescent green (relish) on the other. Who knows?

I went down an Internet search rabbit hole for almost an hour on that topic yesterday (the joys of bachelor retirement), but I should have done better documenting some of the stuff I found/read.

There was a post that claimed Frank Gehry had originally drawn up plans for a headquarters building for Oscar Meyer, but they passed on it. When Eisner hit up Frank (they were apparently friends) for a new Disneyland administration building, Frank re-used the plans he'd drawn up for Oscar Meyer and pitched it to Eisner as TDA.

The original plans also proposed a basement level that would have had an employee gym and amenities, with an underground tunnel network connecting the building to the parking structure and the cafeteria. Which was likely a holdover from the original Oscar Meyer plans for the building in Madison, Wisconsin where it gets a tad chillier than Anaheim. The basement level, employee gym, and connecting tunnels were cut from the budget. (Surprise!)

But honestly, when it comes to Cast Member rumors and chatter, who knows?!?

I like the story that it was called the Hot Dog Building by CM's because the building is green on one side and yellow on the other. But maybe that was also a witty gimmick Frank Gehry came up with for the Oscar Meyer proposal?

The original bright yellow paint seems to have been replaced with a multi-hue blue treatment around 2018.

TDA's west-facing side, in its original 1996 bright yellow paint scheme.

 

[DLR92]

I went down an Internet search rabbit hole for almost an hour on that topic yesterday (the joys of bachelor retirement), but I should have done better documenting some of the stuff I found/read.

There was a post that claimed Frank Gehry had originally drawn up plans for a headquarters building for Oscar Meyer, but they passed on it. When Eisner hit up Frank (they were apparently friends) for a new Disneyland administration building, Frank re-used the plans he'd drawn up for Oscar Meyer and pitched it to Eisner as TDA.

The original plans also proposed a basement level that would have had an employee gym and amenities, with an underground tunnel network connecting the building to the parking structure and the cafeteria. Which was likely a holdover from the original Oscar Meyer plans for the building in Madison, Wisconsin where it gets a tad chillier than Anaheim. The basement level, employee gym, and connecting tunnels were cut from the budget. (Surprise!)

But honestly, when it comes to Cast Member rumors and chatter, who knows?!?

I like the story that it was called the Hot Dog Building by CM's because the building is green on one side and yellow on the other. But maybe that was also a witty gimmick Frank Gehry came up with for the Oscar Meyer proposal?

The original bright yellow paint seems to have been replaced with a multi-hue blue treatment around 2018.

TDA's west-facing side, in its original 1996 bright yellow paint scheme.

I personally hate this building…lol

 

[TP2000]

I personally hate this building…lol

Really, why? Are you Vegan? Not a fan of relish on your dog? Do Mr. Gehry's wavy panels give you vertigo?

 

[TP2000]

It could also offer a unique opportunity to do some tweaks to that part of the beam as part of a tomorrow land overhaul. I imagine it could be really cool to go through a ride building as part of your descent into the theme park. Kind of how WDW people mover goes through/around attractions. Would be very cool to treat the monorail entry in a similar fashion.

Agreed.

Tony Baxter (paging @Figments Friend at her convenience to correct any inaccuracies here) originally designed Indiana Jones Adventure to do just such a thing. The warehouse ride building would have been pushed even further into the park over the berm, and the Disneyland Railroad and the Jungle Cruise boats would have been inside the ride building with the jeeps around the rope bridge scene. With a separate runaway ore cart roller coaster thrown in for good measure.

Mr. Baxter is a genius at his craft, and I fear we'll never see another like him.

The possibilities to do something similar with a new monorail system in a new Tomorrowland Discoveryland expansion are endless and could really be fantastic.

Spot These Four Rides: 1. Disneyland Railroad 2. Jungle Cruise 3. Indiana Jones Adventure 4. Runaway Ore Cart Coaster