News New Gondola Transportation - Disney Skyliner -

MisterPenguin

President of Animal Kingdom
Premium Member
If this video clip is being shown at actual speed, then the gondolas are spaced 8 seconds. Lot faster than 11 seconds.

@marni1971 told us it would be slightly more than 11 mph, which is almost exactly 5 meters per second.

Using that video and clocking the time to go between towers, I measured 11.2 mph, which is 5 meters/sec.

Spacing between gondolas affects throughput capacity, not speed.
 
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tractor tipper

Well-Known Member
@marni1971 told us it would be slightly more than 11 mph, which is almost exactly 5 meters per second.

Using that video and clocking the time to go between towers, I measured 11.2 mph, which is 5 meters/sec.

Spacing between gondolas affects throughput capacity, not speed.
Somewhere in these previous pages I thought I saw an 11 second spacing reported. An 8 second spacing increases capacity by 37.5%. And if my math is right gives a possible 4500 / hour
 
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Bender123

Well-Known Member
Somewhere in these previous pages I thought I saw an 11 second spacing reported. An 8 second spacing increases capacity by 37.5%

There is a delicate balance on these systems between station speed and line speed. If you accelerate the line speed, you need to have an increased load/unload speed. If you do not balance these two, you end up with a backup that would necessitate a stop or slowdown on the haul rope to prevent a pileup in the station.

You need to remember that this whole system relies on a very delicate dance between two different propulsion systems and the math of how long it takes for each to travel a set distance.
 

MisterPenguin

President of Animal Kingdom
Premium Member
Somewhere in these previous pages I thought I saw an 11 second spacing reported. An 8 second spacing increases capacity by 37.5%. And if my math is right gives a possible 4500 / hour

You may be confusing the 11 mph figure with an 11 second spacing. An 8 second spacing is exactly what one would expect from an 11 mph rope speed.

To understand this, please check out and follow step-by-step the following quoted posts from our resident amateur mathematician. It was in response to an argument of whether rope speed or spacing affected throughput, and the answer is both, along with the number of gondolas in queue in the station.


Don't forget that all the loading stations with the exception of Riviera have the extra wheel for standing still loading, or, to double the loading ability, making keeping up with a faster line possible.

Anyway, to understand the correlation of line speed with loading speed it helps to use an extreme example:

Let's say that a gondola arrives every second. Now, if there were not the detachment to slow it down, and no extra gondolas in the station, then people in the gondolas would have less than half a second to jump out and those getting on would have less than half a second to jump in as the gondola whips around the wheel.

Now, let's fill the station with 60 gondolas (30 on one side unloading and 30 on the other side loading). Every second a gondola comes in, another gondola has to leave. If you follow that one gondola coming into the station, it has to wait for the 60 gondolas ahead of it to leave before it gets sent off. This gives it 30 seconds on the unload side and 30 seconds on the load side. (And if that's still too fast to load, it gets sent off empty).

Now, let's slow down the rope by a factor of 10 but keep the same distance (physical spacing) between gondolas. This means a gondola is entering the station once every 10 seconds instead of every second, and now, one has to leave once every 10 seconds. With 60 gondolas in the station, a gondola that arrives has to wait 10 minutes before it leaves. That gives unloading 5 minutes to unload and loading 5 minutes to load.

But sitting in the station 5 minutes waiting to leave is a long time. So, let's reduce the number of gondolas in the station by 10 to have just 6 of them. Arriving once every 10 seconds, a gondola will have to wait 60 seconds for the other 6 gondolas ahead of it to dispatch. This gives a gondola 30 seconds on the unload side and 30 seconds on the load side.

So, now we have the gondolas arriving every 10 seconds. Let's add more gondolas! We put another gondola in between every current gondola decreasing the physical spacing. So, now, every 10 seconds we have 2 gondolas arriving, which is one every 5 seconds. Which means a gondola has to leave every 5 seconds. So, when a gondola comes in and has 6 gondolas ahead of it that will dispatch once every 5 seconds, then that gondola will only be in the station for 30 seconds. This gives folks 15 seconds to unload and 15 seconds to load.

Now, the real math!

d = distance between gondolas
v = velocity of the rope
a = rate of arrival of the gondolas expressed in time between gondolas
g = number of gondolas in the station
l = time that a gondola spends in the station for unloading and reloading

a = d/v

So, if the distance between gondolas is 40m, and the velocity is close to 11 mph (5m/s), then the gondolas would be arriving once every 8 seconds. [40m / 5m/s = 8s]

l = a*g

So, if the gondolas are arriving every 8 seconds and there are 12 gondolas in the station, then an arriving gondola has to wait 8s * 12 = 96s to leave. This gives 48 seconds to unload and 48 seconds to load (maybe closer to 40 seconds each side since loading and unloading doesn't happen on the turn).

The full formula for amount of loading time is: l = dg/v

So, loading time is correlated to distance between gondolas, AND velocity of the rope, AND number of gondolas in the station.

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.
 

tractor tipper

Well-Known Member
You may be confusing the 11 mph figure with an 11 second spacing. An 8 second spacing is exactly what one would expect from an 11 mph rope speed.

To understand this, please check out and follow step-by-step the following quoted posts from our resident amateur mathematician. It was in response to an argument of whether rope speed or spacing affected throughput, and the answer is both, along with the number of gondolas in queue in the station.
Got my 11 seconds, I thought from someone saying six gondolas in the station unloading and loading and that they were in station for 66 seconds from entry to exit. Rope speed is how fast you can get from station to station. To fast, things break, people get tossed around starting and stopping. Capacity comes from how often a gondola leaves the station and of course how many are on board. If the gondola is in the station for 66 seconds you have about 30 seconds to unload and 30 to reload. This basically works out to a bus load every minute.
 

MisterPenguin

President of Animal Kingdom
Premium Member
Rope speed is how fast you can get from station to station.

And you're not getting the post I quoted for you. Rope speed affects more than travel speed. It affects how quickly it drops gondolas off into the stations forcing the station to respond in kind. They are indeed separate travel systems, but they feed into each other forcing each other to compensate.


To fast, things break, people get tossed around starting and stopping.

The top speed of these gondola systems is 17 mph (though WDW's Skyliner will be 11.2 mph). The station can easily slow the gondolas down or speed them up on the way out -- as is done in all the other gondola systems throughout the world -- without any wild swinging. It's not like 30 mph is an option.



Capacity comes from how often a gondola leaves the station and of course how many are on board. If the gondola is in the station for 66 seconds you have about 30 seconds to unload and 30 to reload. This basically works out to a bus load every minute.

According to the video above (in which the gondolas are traveling the expected 11.2 mph), the gondolas are passing the same point once every 10 seconds. If we get about 10 people in each gondola, that's 80 people per minute (a bus load) as you said. However, it's expected that the gondolas will only be filled to 8 people at a time, on average.

And we don't know if the spacing currently in testing will be the spacing once live.
 

TiggerDad

Well-Known Member
You may be confusing the 11 mph figure with an 11 second spacing. An 8 second spacing is exactly what one would expect from an 11 mph rope speed.
No. Spacing is not a direct function of rope speed. Let me quote the expert on this:
According to the video above (in which the gondolas are traveling the expected 11.2 mph), the gondolas are passing the same point once every 10 seconds.
Could be 8 seconds, could be 10 seconds, both with same rope speed.
 

joelkfla

Well-Known Member
According to the video above (in which the gondolas are traveling the expected 11.2 mph), the gondolas are passing the same point once every 10 seconds. If we get about 10 people in each gondola, that's 80 people per minute (a bus load) as you said.
One gondola every 10 seconds is 6 per minute, so that's a maximum of 60 riders per minute, not 80.

But in the following video it's actually closer to 11 seconds, which would be 55 riders per minute.
 

Nubs70

Well-Known Member
One gondola every 10 seconds is 6 per minute, so that's a maximum of 60 riders per minute, not 80.

But in the following video it's actually closer to 11 seconds, which would be 55 riders per minute.

The takt time is dictated by the load rope not the main travel rope.
 

joelkfla

Well-Known Member
The takt time is dictated by the load rope not the main travel rope.
Don't know what "takt' is, but the time between any 2 particular cabins remains constant at every point on the line, as long as they decelerate and accelerate at the same rate and at the same locations.

In this video of the station taken within a few minutes of the other one, it looks like there is room to add more cabins. (The minimum time between cabins is limited by the speed thru the station and the minimum space required between cabins.)
 
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MisterPenguin

President of Animal Kingdom
Premium Member
No. Spacing is not a direct function of rope speed. Let me quote the expert on this:

Could be 8 seconds, could be 10 seconds, both with same rope speed.

;)

I meant, in general, from the parameters we know and have been narrowing down on, 8 seconds is likely, but not yet determined.
 

mm121

Well-Known Member
One gondola every 10 seconds is 6 per minute, so that's a maximum of 60 riders per minute, not 80.

But in the following video it's actually closer to 11 seconds, which would be 55 riders per minute.


While that is the maximum capacity, average usual capacity is probably half that as I don't see them stuffing these full like a Japanese train.

 

bUU

Well-Known Member
While that is the maximum capacity, average usual capacity is probably half that as I don't see them stuffing these full like a Japanese train.
But we can be confident that when they put two parties on the same gondola, some will complain about it characterizing it as, "stuffing these full like a Japanese train". After all, there is nothing like a good bit of hyperbole to make a concern sound more significant than it really is.
 

NormC

Well-Known Member
According to Doppelmayr and as has been posted several times the top speed of the D-line is 7 m/s which is 15.65 mph not 17. And as we know now the Skyliner system is currently running at 5 m/s.

 
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