News New Gondola Transportation - Disney Skyliner -

[joelkfla]

Assuming a packed bus holds 112 passengers and the gondolas are inefficiently filled with 6 people, then that is the equivalent of one bus every 4 and a half minutes.

Bad assumption -- a packed bus is nowhere near 112 passengers. It's somewhere between 60 & 80, depending on how packed.

Unless you're talking about the 60' artics, of which Disney has only 12 and last I heard no plans to acquire any more.

 

[flynnibus]

I understand why they're closer in the station than they are on the rope. My point is they're spaced farther apart than they could be in the station so unless they change the speed ratio between the station and rope, they will likely be closer together both in the station and on the rope in normal operation. Thus, higher capacity than estimated by this video.

And of course they can be different than what we are seeing in the video - and I stated as such. The point was simply you can see what a 13-15 dispatch interval looks like.. and speculate from there what more or less cabins would look like from that.

Edit: After seeing the station video now.. I'd be surprised if the cabins were spaced much closer than that. In the blog mickey video, the first cabin is spaced more than the 2-3 one.. but 2-3 looks pretty close. They would leave space for the cabins to sway, etc.

 

[truecoat]

The opening looks a little narrow to get an ECV of wheelchair in.

Theres a good 4 inches on both sides for a standard ECV.

 

[MisterPenguin]

If you go to street view some poles are visible, then pin that point on the map.

But you can go to street view, and see multiple support locations. Then pin the location and measure distance
28.363994,-81.550939
28.364298,-81.549673
are a couple

I can't drop a pin in Street View for accuracy, and out of Street View, I can't really pinpoint where the tower is.

 

[MisterPenguin]

Bad assumption -- a packed bus is nowhere near 112 passengers. It's somewhere between 60 & 80, depending on how packed.

Unless you're talking about the 60' artics, of which Disney has only 12 and last I heard no plans to acquire any more.

OK then, from what we're seeing, that's a packed bus every 3.3 minutes.

EDIT: Using the 80 people in a bus number.

 

[Patcheslee]

I can't drop a pin in Street View for accuracy, and out of Street View, I can't really pinpoint where the tower is.

Yeah, it took me a being bored to walk around in street view and noticed them. I had to go back an forth for accuracy and closest I could get was between 385-420 ft spans, depending on which location. Probably too much of a difference to get a travel speed.

 

[Kamikaze]

I think 112 is a little high

Its a lot high.
But even with that number it shows how insane the Skyliner capacity is. At open/close you might get two buses back to back, so it would be able to match the Skyliner for 9 minutes using that inflated number. How often would you get buses 3 in 13 minutes, or 4 in 18? Almost never. And the Skyliner just does that all the time.

 

[danlb_2000]

I can't drop a pin in Street View for accuracy, and out of Street View, I can't really pinpoint where the tower is.

In Google Earth you can see the foundations for the towers. There is about 380 feet between each of those.

 

[GlacierGlacier]

Inside the skyliner we got a glimpse at a nice chrome-plated version of the logo - I've only got a really tiny version of it as a screencap. I could trace it in illustrator for a nice vector version if anyone would be interested.

Seems to be a simplified version of the skyliner branding we've seen on everything so far, just with the text and border only, specifically, the red area from this logo

(taken from the DisneyParks youtube channel)

 

[joelkfla]

And of course they can be different than what we are seeing in the video - and I stated as such. The point was simply you can see what a 13-15 dispatch interval looks like.. and speculate from there what more or less cabins would look like from that.

Edit: After seeing the station video now.. I'd be surprised if the cabins were spaced much closer than that. In the blog mickey video, the first cabin is spaced more than the 2-3 one.. but 2-3 looks pretty close. They would leave space for the cabins to sway, etc.

Yes, but the timing between the 2nd & 3rd passing the same point in the station is 12 seconds. That's 5 cabins per min. = 300 per hr. = 2400 riders at 8 per cabin, or 3000 at nominal capacity of 10 per cabin. I think the cabins could still be a foot or 2 closer; they've recovered from the swing before reaching the point where they're closest together. They accelerate entering the curve, which increases spacing thru it.

 

[MisterPenguin]

In Google Earth you can see the foundations for the towers. There is about 380 feet between each of those.

View attachment 351310

OK, then.

Unfortunately BlogMickey infuriatingly keeps refraining from showing a gondola's transverse all the way from one tower to another, but one time he cuts away right before a gondola gets to a tower, so, I filled in the gap with my internal guess, which may be off by a second.

The gondolas in that video are traveling 5.2 mps / 11.6 mph.

@marni1971 wins!

 

[MisterPenguin]

Yes, but the timing between the 2nd & 3rd passing the same point in the station is 12 seconds. That's 5 cabins per min. = 300 per hr. = 2400 riders at 8 per cabin, or 3000 at nominal capacity of 10 per cabin. I think the cabins could still be a foot or 2 closer; they've recovered from the swing before reaching the point where they're closest together. They accelerate entering the curve, which increases spacing thru it.

2,400 pph?

Where did I see that before?

8 per gondola. Launch every ~12 seconds.

PPH: 2,400 - 2,700

• https://www.doppelmayr.com/en/products/references/8-mgd-badaling-north-line/
• https://www.doppelmayr.com/en/products/references/8-mgd-gipfelbahn-koenigsleiten/
• https://www.doppelmayr.com/en/products/references/8-mgd-grasjoch-bahn/

See...

The math was worked out above in the thread. From memory: the slowest people per hour that these gondolas would do is 2,400 pph. So, imagine a line with 240 people in it. Six minutes later... it's gone. Some have speculated the pph would be 4-5 thousand... I'm skeptical of that, but if true, would make it twice as fast.

Each leg is about 4-5 minutes. The longest trip would be AoA/PoP to Epcot at 12 minutes (from memory).

Since the line to board and the gondolas would be constantly moving, any wait would seem like nothing compared to waiting for a bus and stop-and-go traffic.

5,000 is real world numbers for ski lifts that push the limits which @Lift Blog dropped on us. Doppelmayr themselves advertise around 3,400 - 4,200 for this type of build. But with WDW running the rope purposely slower (at 11 mph and not 17 mph), according to @marni1971, and not filling a European 10 passenger cabin with 10 Americans, but most likely just 8, the numbers drop to around 2,400 pph. A number that is perfectly adequate and more than what the current bus schedule can pull.

 

[Goofyernmost]

Assuming a packed bus holds 112 passengers and the gondolas are inefficiently filled with 6 people, then that is the equivalent of one bus every 4 and a half minutes.

Just for accuracy's sake a packed bus will not hold 120 people two might, but, not one. A little over 60 perhaps and if one is interested in lawsuits maybe up to 80. More then that would cause an orgy. I don't think that they have a large number of articulating double decker buses, so they really cannot be considered in comparison. Perhaps at the most generous it might carry 80 during a rush. On top of that it would take more then 4.5 minutes just to fill one that full if everyone was ambulatory. That would mean that they were bumper to bumper. So, that ain't gonna happen either.

 

[joelkfla]

Wikipedia says the Purple Line of My Teleferico in La Paz, which is a Doppelmayr urban gondola opened last year, has a capacity of 4000 pphpd. I just timed it on a YouTube video, and the cabins are 10 seconds apart. (Wikipedia says the line runs at 6 m/s, which is 13 mph.)

 

[joelkfla]

Just for accuracy's sake a packed bus will not hold 120 people two might, but, not one. A little over 60 perhaps and if one is interested in lawsuits maybe up to 80. More then that would cause an orgy. I don't think that they have a large number of articulating double decker buses, so they really cannot be considered in comparison. Perhaps at the most generous it might carry 80 during a rush. On top of that it would take more then 4.5 minutes just to fill one that full if everyone was ambulatory. That would mean that they were bumper to bumper. So, that ain't gonna happen either.

As you can see from my PP, I agree. I just want to remind that the Skyliner will be lumping together Guests traveling to 3 existing resorts plus Riviera, so 1/4 of the capacity should be allocated to each resort when comparing to bus capacity. I am not saying there won't be enough capacity, but that needs to be kept in mind when making comparisons.

ETA more math:
2400 per hour / 70 per bus = 34.2 buses per hour, or one bus every 1.75 minutes, x 4 resorts = one bus every 7 minutes for each resort. Hmm, might be a bit of a wait at DHS closing.

 

[SLUSHIE]

Interesting to note that the doors don't close before the turnaround, which means as we guessed you won't be able to stay on.

They will just have to have cast members making sure people get out in the same way they would on Haunted Mansion or any other ride with separate load and unload.

 

[George]

Interesting that a search for that prediction turns up nothing.

To be fair, he might have worded it weirdly or something. That is why I've linked directly to all my prescient predictions over the years.

 

[danlb_2000]

Interesting to note that the doors don't close before the turnaround, which means as we guessed you won't be able to stay on.

They will just have to have cast members making sure people get out in the same way they would on Haunted Mansion or any other ride with separate load and unload.

Unless that mechanism is just disabled at the moment.

 

[George]

OK, then.

Unfortunately BlogMickey infuriatingly keeps refraining from showing a gondola's transverse all the way from one tower to another, but one time he cuts away right before a gondola gets to a tower, so, I filled in the gap with my internal guess, which may be off by a second.

The gondolas in that video are traveling 5.2 mps / 11.6 mph.

@marni1971 wins!

To bad we don't have one of the Run Disney folks running under the line while the cabins are moving. A 10 minute mile (6 mph) is a very metronomic, easy pace for me. The cabins should be pretty close to twice as fast. Disappointing. I'd really have to sprint to beat those things. I've gotten used to crushing the Friendship boats.

 

[MisterPenguin]

To bad we don't have one of the Run Disney folks running under the line while the cabins are moving. A 10 minute mile (6 mph) is a very metronomic, easy pace for me. The cabins should be pretty close to twice as fast. Disappointing. I'd really have to sprint to beat those things. I've gotten used to crushing the Friendship boats.

I think you'll still win...

Maybe this will help...

View attachment 350895