Timon
Well-Known Member
my 2 cents
I'm a planner by profession and I have a passing involvement in the new Washington DC metro line being built now (Dulles Rail/Silver Line). For reference, it's 23 miles long- almost all of it above ground- and has 11 stations- total project cost is going to be 6 to 7 Billion dollars. That's Billion with a B.
Now, what Disney would do probably wouldn't be as expensive as a major, full up, heavy rail mass transit line, but it wouldn't be cheep either. $100,000,000 a mile might be a little high, but not by much by the time you add in all the costs. For the DC project, it's interesting that the cost of the physical rail line isn't that bad. It's the cost of the substations to power it, the road and utility relocation's, the rail cars themselves (4 million per car times 128 cars), the stations, the new maintenance facility and yard, etc. It all adds up fast.
That said, I don't think Disney is going to have a choice. If they add any more major parks and if they keep adding new hotels, they are going to have to do something. Even just expanding the size of the existing parks (Fantasy Land Expansion at MK, Avatar at AK) creates problems because it allows them to increase the maximum guest capacity of the park which in turn means they have to deal with larger crowds coming and going. It may sound dumb, but just having enough bus bays at the entrances is getting problematic. If they expand them much more, they are going to need shuttle buses to get you to the shuttle buses.
So here's what I think. I think they probably have some smart engineers working on the details of some kind of transit expansion right now- monorail or light rail. I think they will work the details out over time and build it in conjunction with whatever their next major project is (5th park?). I think it will be much more of a transit system- meaning higher capacity- then the current monorail system.
In my opinion, they could build a 5 to 6 mile east/west line that would stop at all of the other major parks- and probably several hotels- and connect at Epcot for transfer to the existing mono rail system.
It would start at Downtown Disney in the east (stops at both ends?), go west to Typhoon Lagoon, continue west to connect at an expanded Epcot mono rail station which would now be a major transfer station, go west around the outside of Epcot and around or through all the hotels with a stop or two (beach club, yacht Club, Boardwalk, Swan, Dolphin), make it's way down to a stop at the DHS entrance, then east and south around the outside of DHS and over World Drive and west to Blizzard Beach. Then west to Animal Kingdom. They could easily extend it another half mile west to pick up Animal Kingdom Lodge if they want, but that's a question of cost. This general alignment would also allow them to stop at several of the other hotels if they wanted. A big question would be do you have some express (only the major parks/water parks) and some local trains or all local trains or do you have a 3rd/4th track for local trains. But that's just a detail to be worked out. The other big benefit of this type of mainline is that it passes large amounts of open land that could hold future parks, facilities, hotels, or even remote parking with no further cost other than a new station (and maybe additional trains). The three existing monorail lines could be left alone or renovated or replaced over time. Really, the existing local and express lines around the Seven Seas Lagoon could remain as is as more of an historic attraction and the long line between Epcot and the TTC could be renovated for higher speed and capacity and maybe even rerouted to drop you at the entrance to MK.
Anyway, that's my educated guess. I'll check back in 10 or 15 years and see if they built it.
You've described my dream plan. Lately I'm thinking Bombardier's INNOVIA 300 is the way to go because it has too many advantages and restores the Futuristic magic. A catwalk between tracks seems obvious after seeing the one in Las Vegas.
