Monorails to no longer operate during Evening Extra Magic Hours

[autigger]

Is this all part of Meg's "charge more and deliver less" campaign?

 

[sshindel]

I still dont understand those that are griping over this.

The system wasn't designed to handle this load....Peachy has made it rather clear that it's not just the trains, but the rails that are suffering....

As a manager, I'm not sure I would have arrived to another decision. It boggles my mind how so many are going:

"They have the money, they can buy new trains"..."Disney has tons of cash, they can afford it".....If the current conditions, and I mean, 21-24 hours a day or operation, has brought the current system to its knees, how the hell do you expect additional trains to help?

First, it's going to require an additional capital investment to expand the sheds, in addition to the cost of these trains....which are custom made and will not be sitting on the shelf at the local orlando walmart. Why would any sane company make the decision to invest in a system that is being impacted in a way that extra trains wont help, but actually worsen.

Peachy said it himself. The track is part of the problem here. They need extra hours to make qualitative patches to the concrete rails or else the patches fall off in hours. How on earth does adding another 4 trains to an already taxed rail network help the rail network.

Throwing good money at a problem, just because there's a problem, doesn't make the problem go away.

Reducing EEMH service seems like a more than reasonable solution. The company likely reviewed which end of the day they can afford to reduce service, looked at rider-statistics and quickly deduced that the rider-load in the late evenings is the place to make the cut...and it would impact the overall park guests far less than the morning EMH, which are only an extra hour each day and also carry early bird regular park-guests.


Seriously....I scratch my head. Even when this company does something that seeks to *improve* the quality at the parks, some of you scream that you're not getting your money's worth and the parks are nickel and diming you. Really? :shrug:

While I completly agree with you in this, most folks are not asking them to add trains, but replace the trains that are falling into disrepair. Keep the total number of trains the same, but get replace them with new ones.

I still think that WDW probably has a plan at some point to get new trains and that this measure is probably to ensure that the current system makes it to the point in time when they can replace the trains and repair the track correctly. I dont know how long a fleet of monorails might take to build, so even if they made the order today, how long would it take until new monorail 1 was delivered?

 

[Kamikaze]

While I completly agree with you in this, most folks are not asking them to add trains, but replace the trains that are falling into disrepair. Keep the total number of trains the same, but get replace them with new ones.

I still think that WDW probably has a plan at some point to get new trains and that this measure is probably to ensure that the current system makes it to the point in time when they can replace the trains and repair the track correctly. I dont know how long a fleet of monorails might take to build, so even if they made the order today, how long would it take until new monorail 1 was delivered?

Last time, it took basically 3 years from the delivery of the first new train to the last. No idea on how long it took from when they placed the order to the first delivery, but I'm sure its not fast. Four months for each train would mean probably 5-6 for the first one.

 

[devoy1701]

I still dont understand those that are griping over this.

The system wasn't designed to handle this load....Peachy has made it rather clear that it's not just the trains, but the rails that are suffering....

As a manager, I'm not sure I would have arrived to another decision. It boggles my mind how so many are going:

"They have the money, they can buy new trains"..."Disney has tons of cash, they can afford it".....If the current conditions, and I mean, 21-24 hours a day or operation, has brought the current system to its knees, how the hell do you expect additional trains to help?

First, it's going to require an additional capital investment to expand the sheds, in addition to the cost of these trains....which are custom made and will not be sitting on the shelf at the local orlando walmart. Why would any sane company make the decision to invest in a system that is being impacted in a way that extra trains wont help, but actually worsen.

Peachy said it himself. The track is part of the problem here. They need extra hours to make qualitative patches to the concrete rails or else the patches fall off in hours. How on earth does adding another 4 trains to an already taxed rail network help the rail network.

Throwing good money at a problem, just because there's a problem, doesn't make the problem go away.

Reducing EEMH service seems like a more than reasonable solution. The company likely reviewed which end of the day they can afford to reduce service, looked at rider-statistics and quickly deduced that the rider-load in the late evenings is the place to make the cut...and it would impact the overall park guests far less than the morning EMH, which are only an extra hour each day and also carry early bird regular park-guests.


Seriously....I scratch my head. Even when this company does something that seeks to *improve* the quality at the parks, some of you scream that you're not getting your money's worth and the parks are nickel and diming you. Really? :shrug:

I hear what you're saying, but you're being too forgiving and only looking at a short term solution. We hope that this decision to cut monorail service is a short time solution too, but from what Steve says it is not.

The monorail service is part of the service and has been there since day one. These current offerings are expected to and should be able to handle increased attendence/service/wear and tear that they receive...though if I'm not mistaken the beams probably saw more use during 3-4 years ago at attendance peaks and even in the 90s when MK regularly stayed open until 11pm-1am each and every night.

If TDO needs time to structurely reinforce the beams, then that is understandable as they are 40 years old now, most roadways or other modes of transportation get reconditioned in half that time. But the trains are a huge issue and seem to be regularly breaking down lately...not to mention as people have said they have been down 1 train for 2 years now which puts additional and unnecessary wear and tear on the other 11 trains.

New trains are made of new materials too which are usually lighter...which can infact cut down on the wear and tear that the track has been undergoing. This and an expanded shed and beam switches will of course be a huge capital investment...but the the fact that they've gotten 20 years out of the existing fleet and 40 years out of the beams so far....its a long term investment that seems to be well worth it for their future.

 

[PirateFrank]

While I completly agree with you in this, most folks are not asking them to add trains, but replace the trains that are falling into disrepair. Keep the total number of trains the same, but get replace them with new ones.

I still think that WDW probably has a plan at some point to get new trains and that this measure is probably to ensure that the current system makes it to the point in time when they can replace the trains and repair the track correctly. I dont know how long a fleet of monorails might take to build, so even if they made the order today, how long would it take until new monorail 1 was delivered?

Well, first I'll say that I've seen a handful of "they have so much money they can afford it" comments within this thread...some in response to repair requests some in response to requests to add trains...

However, you raise a good point and one that falls in line with the point I'm trying to support....even if Disney was planning on injecting money into the monorail system, either through replacement of the trains or repair of them....it still begs the question of whether the system, in full repair, is designed to handle 21-24 hour operation?!?!

While I don't have the authoritative answer here, it seems far more plausible, at least to me...that the system a) can not handle 24/7 operation and was never designed to and b) adding more trains or increasing the repair budget won't solve the issues presented by a).

I do not know when EMH was introduced to the parks, but it certainly seems to me that EMH has taken it's toll on the monorail....

I refuse to spend money, in business or personally, to repair something unless I have some assurance that the repair will either address the cause of breakage....or that the cause of breakage was addressed before and not after the repair. Why spend money fixing something that's going to keep breaking....i suppose if I were one of the Disney execs and I had made this same decision, the armchair executives here would be cursing my firstborn and blaming me for contributing to the "death by degrees"

Hell....How many people actually use EEMH? Our entire family, during our numerous WDW visits, has only taken advantage of EEMH once....and when we rode back to the poly that night, we were one of 2-3 couples on the whole darn monorail....the loads experienced an hour after park closing seems, at least to me, a very small fraction, of the daily monorail ride load.

Go on and complain about the death by a thousand cuts....people here have got plenty of legit issues to gripe about....disco yeti, capacity issues in TSMM, the rock in BTM, paradise island, etc.....but arguing this issue, really waters down any position of strength that we may have as a group, because any reasonable manager in guest relations would see such arguments and write off the complaints due to the issues I highlighted above...

 

[Rlevy33663]

Disappointed

While I understand the reasons, I am very disappointed. When I was young my family and I used to stay at the Contemporary, but I haven't done that in about 20 years. I'm leaving for my next trip next week, and I'll be staying at the Polynesian, and I was so looking forward to the ease of the monorail during extra magic hours. It's not anger, it's just disappointment. Oh well...

 

[PirateFrank]

Regardless, the fact of the matter is that even if Disney is planning to increase the transportation budget by increasing repair expenditures or train purchases, they may STILL have to cut back service to keep the overall system healthy...

Or....god forbid....they may feel that this cut is more than sufficient to make the system healthy with current repair budgets.....

The sky isn't falling....in fact, from where I'm standing, thanks to this reduced schedule, perhaps the sky will stay put.....and not crack off one chunk after another...

 

[Mr_Incredible]

While I understand the reasons, I am very disappointed. When I was young my family and I used to stay at the Contemporary, but I haven't done that in about 20 years. I'm leaving for my next trip next week, and I'll be staying at the Polynesian, and I was so looking forward to the ease of the monorail during extra magic hours. It's not anger, it's just disappointment. Oh well...

I wish you typed in bigger font, I can't make out what you are trying to say..............................




Back to the topic at hand.....I'd rather them stop monorails, but keep extra magic hours.....it will be a hassle, but we still get to be in the parks later. It's like being a kid, and your mom saying "hey you can stay up late.....but no video games."

It stinks, but you still get to stay up late, play board games, watch movies, hang out.....so it's not ALL BAD

/Half Full

 

[Spike-in-Berlin]

You do realize, of course, that if the monorail was actually an efficient system for transportation with the WDW traffic flow, it would have been expanded long ago? The peak periods of the day - huge crowds at about 4 times a day - do not work well with a system that cannot easily add more capacity and then take that capacity back off when the demand goes down. Buses can do that. Boats can do that. Basically anything thats not tied to a track can do that. And thats why the monorail - although iconic and 'futuristic' - is neither magnificient or progressive when considering the guests that it serves.

They could change that problem by altering the monorail design from the present one-unit trains to trains that can be split up into several sub-units. Modern monorails in a lot of cities work that way. Larger traffic, longer trains, lower traffic, shorter trains. That change however would have had to be done already decades ago.

 

[Kamikaze]

They could change that problem by altering the monorail design from the present one-unit trains to trains that can be split up into several sub-units. Modern monorails in a lot of cities work that way. Larger traffic, longer trains, lower traffic, shorter trains. That change however would have had to be done already decades ago.

Trains can't be any longer without rebuilding the existing stations.

Rlevy33663:
Please use the default font.

 

[mickeysaver]

They will still be running the resort boats (the ones that drop off at GF and Poly) and at that time of night I can guarantee you will probably get on the first boat at the dock.

The reactions of some of these people is absolutely absurd. EMH Evening at MK is ONE NIGHT out of the week people. Unless you're planning on staying 3 weeks and hitting every MK Evening EMH this change is going to affect you VERY little. Get over yourselves.

Um, what if you are in a wheelchair or need an ECV to get around, then it's way more of a factor and the folks that have these needs stay at Monorail resorts for more than the need of being a wee bit spoiled at WDW, they do so for access to the monorail to reduce their need for use of the busses and boats. Trust me, I would rather wait an hour for a monorail than have instant access to a bus or boat when I am trying to get around property on my scooter.

There are legitimate gripes about these changes!

 

[bunnyman]

They will still be running the resort boats (the ones that drop off at GF and Poly) and at that time of night I can guarantee you will probably get on the first boat at the dock.

The reactions of some of these people is absolutely absurd. EMH Evening at MK is ONE NIGHT out of the week people. Unless you're planning on staying 3 weeks and hitting every MK Evening EMH this change is going to affect you VERY little. Get over yourselves.

You miss the point. You pay a very large premium to stay at a "Monorail" resort. If I wanted to takes buses and boats, I would stay at the Wildnerness Lodge and not splurge for the Polynesian. And in fact it is not just the MK, but also Epcot. I've stayed at the Poly for the sole purpose of taking of advantage of EMH and being able to take a Monorail back to the Poly (from Epcot and the MK). I'm willing to pay the premium to stay there for that. Are they going to now lower the room rates...I highly doubt it. So stop the "get over yourselves" comments. By the way, they currently don't have buses running from the Poly to the MK, and I've waited for several boats to catch a ride back to the Wilderness Lodge after EMH, and they have the much larger boats. The Poly boats are quite small if you haven't noticed.

 

[bunnyman]

Is this all part of Meg's "charge more and deliver less" campaign?

You hit it right on the head. It's like the movies. Actual numbers of people attending is down, so they come up with 3D to charge 2x or 3x the price to drive up prices. Squeeze more $$ out of less people. Same with the parks. They've driven about all they can through the gates and into their hotel beds, so they cut services, perks, and other things to drive up the per guest return. It is quite common in this economy with company's seeing flat or down revenues, so they cut expenses (i.e. staff, benefits, salaries, fringe benefits, etc.) to keep profits flat or growing.

 

[PirateFrank]

Um, what if you are in a wheelchair or need an ECV to get around, then it's way more of a factor and the folks that have these needs stay at Monorail resorts for more than the need of being a wee bit spoiled at WDW, they do so for access to the monorail to reduce their need for use of the busses and boats. Trust me, I would rather wait an hour for a monorail than have instant access to a bus or boat when I am trying to get around property on my scooter.

There are legitimate gripes about these changes!

Big Thunder is right....assuming you're there for a week, you are mildly inconvenienced ONE night out of 6.....so you put your scooter into drive and get to skip the bus line ahead of tired dads carrying sleeping children on both arms, while you sit on a padded scooter chair and get royal preferential treatment.....and just for one night out of six....:brick:

I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but assuming this change to the monorail schedule is going to result in measurable increases in monorail service quality, do you realize how utterly selfish you sound?

Heck, on my last trip, I had to hoof it back to the CR one night because the monorail was down....it didn't ruin my vacation, I didn't ask for a refund because I stayed in a monorail resort and couldn't use it one night out of 6....and I certainly would have stay in a monorail resort again, despite the outtage....planned or not.



Wow!

 

[TestTrack]

You miss the point. You pay a very large premium to stay at a "Monorail" resort. If I wanted to takes buses and boats, I would stay at the Wildnerness Lodge and not splurge for the Polynesian. And in fact it is not just the MK, but also Epcot. I've stayed at the Poly for the sole purpose of taking of advantage of EMH and being able to take a Monorail back to the Poly (from Epcot and the MK). I'm willing to pay the premium to stay there for that. Are they going to now lower the room rates...I highly doubt it. So stop the "get over yourselves" comments. By the way, they currently don't have buses running from the Poly to the MK, and I've waited for several boats to catch a ride back to the Wilderness Lodge after EMH, and they have the much larger boats. The Poly boats are quite small if you haven't noticed.

Agreed with all of the above and I'd like to know why the Disney apologists keep mentioning MK EMH being one night a week...What about Epcot?

I pay significantly more for the perk of the monorail and to leave the rental car at the resort. If I wanted to drive or ride the bus everywhere I'd just stay at POP.

 

[Pioneer Hall]

While I understand the reasons, I am very disappointed. When I was young my family and I used to stay at the Contemporary, but I haven't done that in about 20 years. I'm leaving for my next trip next week, and I'll be staying at the Polynesian, and I was so looking forward to the ease of the monorail during extra magic hours. It's not anger, it's just disappointment. Oh well...

No need to shout...

 

[TestTrack]

Big Thunder is right....assuming you're there for a week, you are mildly inconvenienced ONE night out of 6.....so you put your scooter into drive and get to skip the bus line ahead of tired dads carrying sleeping children on both arms, while you sit on a padded scooter chair and get royal preferential treatment.....and just for one night out of six....:brick:

I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but assuming this change to the monorail schedule is going to result in measurable increases in monorail service quality, do you realize how utterly selfish you sound?

Heck, on my last trip, I had to hoof it back to the CR one night because the monorail was down....it didn't ruin my vacation, I didn't ask for a refund because I stayed in a monorail resort and couldn't use it one night out of 6....and I certainly would have stay in a monorail resort again, despite the outtage....planned or not.



Wow!

You are "not trying to sound like a jerk" but make it sound like everyone in a ECV/wheelchair unfairly get preferential treatment over a dad with tired kids because they need assistance getting on a bus? Doesn't sound you attempted to not sound like a jerk at all.

No one is saying that this will ruin their vacation. And there is a difference between normal unavoidable downtime that happens with anything and Disney purposely cutting back on service hours. The monorail went down on our last trip as well, but that's understandable and it will happen from time to time. However, cutting back on hours is a different story. You can say it will give us more reliable monorails but just like you state that this will only effect the monorails once (actually twice) a week...you think that is enough to fix the system?

Sounds like Disney has let its best known transportation system to go into disrepair. They are now inconveniencing their guests because of it. Shame on them for that.

 

[BrittanyRose428]

I wouldn't have too much of a problem with this (with regards to the wheelchair/EVC issue) if I actually went to WDW for a week. If it were one night out of the 7 or 8 that we're there I'm sure the EVC members of my family could deal. But we only go for 2 or 3 days. If we're there for only 2 days the one night of inconvenience is really half of our trip.

 

[Scuttle]

You do realize, of course, that if the monorail was actually an efficient system for transportation with the WDW traffic flow, it would have been expanded long ago? The peak periods of the day - huge crowds at about 4 times a day - do not work well with a system that cannot easily add more capacity and then take that capacity back off when the demand goes down. Buses can do that. Boats can do that. Basically anything thats not tied to a track can do that. And thats why the monorail - although iconic and 'futuristic' - is neither magnificient or progressive when considering the guests that it serves.

I agree, but the monorail can transport roughly 350 people about every 5 minutes. That's pretty efficient in my book, but your right about them not being able to take trains off the track whenever they want and so on.

 

[Pioneer Hall]

I agree, but the monorail can transport roughly 350 people about every 5 minutes. That's pretty efficient in my book, but your right about them not being able to take trains off the track whenever they want and so on.

That doesn't happen during EMH hours. A train will often times sit at the MK for a bit in order to get a good number of guests to send. I've sat and waited at the MK for well over 5 minutes before waiting for the train to be dispatched.