I believe the end of May has been mentioned by someone quite some time ago.
He made it up.
I don't think "gondola tourists" that aren't staying at one of the Skyliner resorts will really be an issue. This thing will be chugging along at a pretty high capacity all day long. Park opening crowds are somewhat spread out. Park hoppers will be in the middle of the day, when demand will be lower. There won't be much park hopping at park close, since DHS and Epcot should both be staying open late with their additions. Since crowds after fireworks can hit real hard, there might be lines for the gondolas then; I doubt many will be there just for the ride at that time of day, though. It's not worth it to invest the manpower to check whether riders are staying at the hotels.
As for EC, the Rat plaza is nowhere near finished. I'm not sure Disney will be running guests over a construction zone. Besides, they have go over another construction zone that is the Riviera to even get there. And I mentioned the DHS route. Those are all finished enough to open first (a guess).Ummm, DHS and Epcot are still there, according to Google maps .....
So are POP, AoA and CBR.
It's possible, but I guesstimated some numbers... 7,500 rooms x 3.2 people per room (I just guessed that) comes up with a nice, round 24,000 people at those hotels. Split between four parks (there's also Disney Springs, empty rooms, turned in early, etc.), that's about 6,000 people at each of the two parks that will be using the gondola to get back to their hotel rooms. I don't think that sounds crazy. If every single person that needed a gondola at Epcot got in line at the exact same moment, the average wait would be around 35 minutes? Worst case is 72 minutes? Doesn't sound terrible. The gondola will chew through lines as they're trying to build, so I'm very optimistic it will work out.
If you run the math you can see that lines are not really likely to be a big issue other than during super peak times. Even if you assume 3 guests per room on average (remember couples, single business travelers and empty rooms factor in with families of 4 or more in suites) that’s 22,500 guests served by the lines. Those people are split between the 4 parks, Disney Springs, hanging at the pool or going off property to visit the boy wizard or other attractions. Let’s just say they are split into 5 groups based on destination between the 4 parks and we’ll lump the rest as “other”. That’s 4,500 guests per park or other. With the suggested capacity of the gondola lines being over 5,000 people that means even if all 4,500 people from the gondola resorts that are going to DHS or EPCOT on a given day try to board at the exact same time the longest wait would be less than an hour to completely clear the line. It’s highly unlikely that all people at the resort would arrive at the same time. The busiest would be around rope drop, but even then some go to breakfast, some sleep in, some park hop, etc... At park close it’s even less likely since people travel with infants and elderly guests who won’t stay until last call and others just leave earlier to swim, eat at a restaurant somewhere else, etc. The point of all this math is to show that the capacity is plenty large enough for the most likely users.
