Originally posted by plpeters70
Don't you think that's being a little naive - of course MONEY has something to do with it. I guarantee you that if it had been cheaper to run monorails everywhere on property than to have buses, then I'm sure that Managment would have built monorails - and damn guest flow patterns. It all comes down to money eventually. But I do see your point about the logistics of such a system.
Have you ever been to a restaurant and gotten such bad service or had such bad food that you thought to yourself "I'll never go there again!"? If people were paying to stay on Disney property and use Disney transportation and it took them an hour or more to get to their park of choice because of Disney's "advanced" transportation system, they might start looking into those hotels on 192 that cost about half as much and can get you there in about a half an hour on one of their busses? While cost can and usually does become one of the ultimate decisions in anything Disney does, if they decide that the system wouldn't work the way they need it to, cost isn't a factor because they never get that far. Nobody looks into costs for a plan that they have already decided wouldn't work, do they?
Originally posted by plpeters70
I see your point. But isn't it really sad how lazy and stupid people can be. No wonder mass transit has never really taken off in this country - people are to impatient to be bothered with transfering trains and such - they just want to go from point A to point B with no stops in between. Still, I would imagine that with a really well thought out system of monorails, boats and peoplemovers (and maybe even a few buses), Disney could find a way to keep transfers to a minimum from each hotel. I don't think it would be to much to ask to make people transfer trains twice to get somewhere -- more than that and your asking for trouble. But if people can learn to navigate around large cities with subways, then they can surely figure out how to get from the Carribean Beach to the Magic Kingdom on a well thought out WDW Transportation System.
At least that way buses would become the less pervasive on property. I don't mind a few to some places, but for WDW to be totally dependent on buses is just sad.
Stupid? Hmm... Well, I have seen some very good arguments from people that seem to know a lot more on this subject than you and you still continue to argue your side with full understanding that you know less about it than the ones you are arguing with. I don't think I'd go so far as to call that stupid but it might be something you want to think about. You seem to want to get rid of busses come hell or high watter just because you don't like them which is fine but you not liking them is not much of an argument in this discussion. Technology for the sake of technology is a waste of money. Sometimes that sacrifice alone is acceptable when you are going for the "wow" factor but once that technology starts to hinder operations and make things work less well, someone has to ask if it's really worth it? Is it worth extra delays, standing in hot sweaty crowds as the parks empty to wait for flashy transportation that doesn't work the way Disney needs it to?.. Keep in mind that Disney is dealing with people from all over the world who are speaking as many different languages as are spoken in the world today, English and Spanish are great if you are from the US but not everyone knows those two languages well enough to deal with complex instructions... On an even deeper level, while it's true that people manage to figure out mass transportation systems in big cities, in most cases, they also have months or years to do so and they use these systems out of necessity. I find it highly unlikely that most people on vacation want to put this much thought into transportation once they get to WDW and I can't blame them. If I wasn't relatively local and didn't already know my way around, I wouldn't want to waste my precious vacation time trying to figure it all out either..... The bus system - like the courtesy trams - can be expanded and contracted as needed. When a park closes, they can have three busses for each resort lined up and ready to go....
You also talk about the Disney magic and how it's broken with the extensive use of the busses. If they were to attach all the resorts to monorails or lightrails or any kind of a fixed system, they would have to lay track and/or lines all over property. The monorails as they are, look cool. They are fun to watch and don't take away from the property, even as they go through a resort like the Grand Floridian but if they had cement beams or track everywhere (like they would have to in order to link up all resorts) wouldn't that sort of remind you of the less than appealing look of an urban city? Isn't that part of what a lot of people are taking a vacation from? Do you think such a look would be an improvement over the bus system which you want to get rid of for the same reason?..
Also, speaking of cost. We are talking about technology. Solar power is expensive, it's currently about 35% more costly than conventional means and while that will change over time, as with all of the other alternative fuel systems suggested here, some of it's biggest costs come from the initial investment and Disney as well as any other company, is going to be hesitant to jump in first - especially at the pace that technology is expanding these days. Nobody likes to go out and spend hundreds of millions on version 1.0 only to have version 2.0 come out a year or so later at a cost of 25% less with greater efficiency and more benefits. - Disney was the big innovator with FastPass and if you take a look over in the Universal area of this forum, you'll see a bunch of people talking about how much better Universal's system (a couple of years behind Disney's) is... In comparison of the busses and the monorails (or any new technology) busses will be much cheaper in terms of maintenance because there is a competitive market for parts which keeps those costs much lower than they would be for a custom or uncommon system. It's also a lot easier and cheaper to find technicians and mechanics that can do maintenance and run diagnostics on busses.
As for the environment, how do you think the monorails are powered? Do you think that electricity comes from the sky? Most electricity in the US still comes from fossil fuel power plants so unless the monorail system uses extremely low amounts of power to operate, it's not that much (if at all) more environmentally friendly than the busses - you just aren't seeing the whole picture when you ride them.
One last word on the whole efficiency thing - When a monorail train (or any train on any track) breaks down the entire line goes down till that one weak link is removed. When a bus breaks down they can replace it with another one immediately and it doesn't stop any of the other busses in it's system from operating. The entire monorail system could be taken out by a problem with three trains while every single bus Disney has would have to go down for them to have a similar problem with their bus system... You say that for them to be totally dependant on busses is sad. Why? Because you don't like them? What would be sad would be for them to be totally dependent on a system that dosn't work which seems to be what you would like to see.
