News New Gondola Transportation - Disney Skyliner -

Lensman

Lensman

Well-Known Member
joelkfla said:
Buses need drivers. Disney doesn't keep a bunch of drivers sitting around just in case they're needed. Bus substitution will bring long waits in the rain, and not just to the Skyliner resorts.
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I wonder how this works now during times when the monorail is down? Does Disney call in bus drivers from an "on-call" pool?

Also, for I don't think they can anticipate breakdowns but I wonder if the weather forecasting is good enough for Disney to anticipate shutdowns and call in a few extra bus drivers.

Finally, how long are these thunderstorm-related stoppages anticipated to be? If it's only going to be a half-hour or so I wonder if Disney would go through the expense of calling in buses or if they'd just have you wait for the Skyliner to start up again?

And obviously the scope of the problem is different depending on whether the thunderstorm is one of the regular afternoon ones or an early morning thundershower or a more rare late night thundershower at closing.

I guess we will see what happens after the Skyliner opens.
 
marni1971

marni1971

Park History nut
Premium Member
Lensman said:
I wonder how this works now during times when the monorail is down? Does Disney call in bus drivers from an "on-call" pool?

Also, for I don't think they can anticipate breakdowns but I wonder if the weather forecasting is good enough for Disney to anticipate shutdowns and call in a few extra bus drivers.

Finally, how long are these thunderstorm-related stoppages anticipated to be? If it's only going to be a half-hour or so I wonder if Disney would go through the expense of calling in buses or if they'd just have you wait for the Skyliner to start up again?

And obviously the scope of the problem is different depending on whether the thunderstorm is one of the regular afternoon ones or an early morning thundershower or a more rare late night thundershower at closing.

I guess we will see what happens after the Skyliner opens.
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As it stands at the moment, the system will cycle to empty when lightning reaches a certain distance away. Busses won’t be called for unplanned downtime unless the time is predicted to reach a certain threshold.
 
Kamikaze

Kamikaze

Well-Known Member
marni1971 said:
As it stands at the moment, the system will cycle to empty when lightning reaches a certain distance away. Busses won’t be called for unplanned downtime unless the time is predicted to reach a certain threshold.
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So here's my only question on this: What if you're staying at POP and the storm comes up when you've boarded from Epcot? Is the plan to make everyone wait at the CBR station until the storm passes? Or will they let everyone get where they are going?
 
marni1971

marni1971

Park History nut
Premium Member
Kamikaze said:
So here's my only question on this: What if you're staying at POP and the storm comes up when you've boarded from Epcot? Is the plan to make everyone wait at the CBR station until the storm passes? Or will they let everyone get where they are going?
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I assume they won’t allow boarding if it means you'll be riding when the threshold is crossed. Much like an outdoor ride is cycled through as opposed to evacuation.
 
M

mwf5555

Active Member

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mmascari

Well-Known Member
marni1971 said:
I assume they won’t allow boarding if it means you'll be riding when the threshold is crossed. Much like an outdoor ride is cycled through as opposed to evacuation.
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Makes sense.

Is there anything at the CBR station to amuse people if they're stuck half way between EPCOT or HS and POP/AOA or Riviera stations? Perhaps a restaurant and gift shop....
 
Lensman

Lensman

Well-Known Member
mmascari said:
Makes sense.

Is there anything at the CBR station to amuse people if they're stuck half way between EPCOT or HS and POP/AOA or Riviera stations? Perhaps a restaurant and gift shop....
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I'd bet that as @marni1971 said, they would time the closings so that the inbound connecting passengers are all allowed to make their outbound connections before shutting down. Since the longest ride time is the 5 minutes of the CBR/Epcot leg, it means they can fully cycle everyone through on an O&D basis in about 10 minutes.
 
J

joelkfla

Well-Known Member
Lensman said:
I wonder how this works now during times when the monorail is down? Does Disney call in bus drivers from an "on-call" pool?

Also, for I don't think they can anticipate breakdowns but I wonder if the weather forecasting is good enough for Disney to anticipate shutdowns and call in a few extra bus drivers.

Finally, how long are these thunderstorm-related stoppages anticipated to be? If it's only going to be a half-hour or so I wonder if Disney would go through the expense of calling in buses or if they'd just have you wait for the Skyliner to start up again?

And obviously the scope of the problem is different depending on whether the thunderstorm is one of the regular afternoon ones or an early morning thundershower or a more rare late night thundershower at closing.

I guess we will see what happens after the Skyliner opens.
Click to expand...
No, there are no drivers on call. Sometimes they will try to call in drivers when too many drivers call sick, but they usually don't arrive until a couple of hours after the start of the shift. If Disney tried to call drivers for a weather-related issue, the drivers probably wouldn't arrive until after the issue resolved itself.

When the monorail goes down unexpectedly, they pull drivers mostly from MK & Epcot to man the buses. Obviously, this affects driver availability and service levels on other MK & Epcot bus routes. It can take a half hour or so before the replacement buses are running at the target capacity.

When the Friendship Boats shut down due to weather, drivers are pulled from Epcot & DHS. If they were to shut down the Skyliner for weather, the boats would likely be shut down at the same time, and I think the Skyliner will be serving more rooms than the boats do, so it would require more than twice as many buses and drivers.

If both the Skyliner and the Friendship Boats had to shut down at park closing (nighttime storms are less common but do happen), it would be a transportation mess, since the buses would already be running at capacity without having to service the Skyliner & Epcot resorts from both parks.
 
Missing20K

Missing20K

Well-Known Member
joelkfla said:
If both the Skyliner and the Friendship Boats had to shut down at park closing (nighttime storms are less common but do happen), it would be a transportation mess, since the buses would already be running at capacity without having to service the Skyliner & Epcot resorts from both parks.
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So if you add a non-operational Monorail??
 
J

joelkfla

Well-Known Member
marni1971 said:
Nothing like that.
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It's a 6 minute walk from the station to Centertown, across the island in the middle of the lake (maybe not a good idea during a thunderstorm.) There's an internal shuttle bus which currently runs every 20 minutes; maybe they'll increase the frequency when the Skyliner's running.

If they do dump passengers at CBR, it would be nice to offer buses to complete the trip, but again the problem is stealing buses and drivers from other routes.
 

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