Rumor New Monorails Coming Soon?

[Rich Brownn]

Look pretty black to me. When do they change?

The windows look tinted from inside the train (you can clearly see the outside when you're walking down the corridor). One motion begins, the windows turn black on the projectors on the hallway turn on.

 

[Rk2k5]

Has there been any updates of when the new monorails will come to Disney World?

 

[Disone]

Has there been any updates of when the new monorails will come to Disney World?

None.

 

[msg7]

Something relatively minor but, "the dark side" has reported that lime was towed out of the MK station tonight....

 

[Squishy]

Something relatively minor but, "the dark side" has reported that lime was towed out of the MK station tonight....

Soon they will be getting towed everyday

 

[Rteetz]

Has there been any updates of when the new monorails will come to Disney World?

Last I heard was some in time for the 50th but things are quiet...

 

[scottriehm]

I saw a clip that was posted by Mickey Views of Imagineer Bob Gurr saying that they were, in fact, working on contracts with Bombardier, who did make the Mark VI, to replace them by 2021 for the 50th anniversary of WDW. The link is for the clip that they tweeted out, and they also reported on it in a YouTube video on their channel.

 

[Goofyernmost]

Something relatively minor but, "the dark side" has reported that lime was towed out of the MK station tonight....

I cannot begin to explain just how minor that bit of information is. I guess nothing important was happening today.

 

[DznyRktekt]

You just did begin to explain..

 

[Pixieish]

20 years is a guideline or minimal expectation. With the right budget you can make them last indefinitely. Hello DL and WDW steam engines. Is it cheap? No. Does it require complete rebuilds occasionally? Sure does. I will second or piggyback off of someones earlier suggestion about the new trains.....

14 really is a great starting number of trains for the new fleet. At the beginning of the life span of the new trains, it may seem excessive. 15 years down the road its going to allow for heavy downtime and maintenance to the individual trains with out downtime or operational sacrifices to the system whole.

With fourteen trains though they should also invest and do it right, and would need to add to the Epcot line a second monorail "round house" to store the trains. Bare minimum of four bays and also a monorail washing facility. These bays should be built with maintenance in mind. Perhaps two of them for heavy maintenance and two of them designed more so around the custodial needs of the system. designed so that a 3rd shift custodial crew could detail clean the insides and all the windows of the trains. Only two a night may not be enough but its far more then what they are doing now.

With the right amount of inventment, they really could make these the last trains that WDW will need to purchase. Not say that the can litterall last forever but honestly, if you can get 100 year old steam engines still working effectively, there is no reason you can't double or triple the life expectancy to 40 or 60 years for monorail.

One side note... saw the wrap on monorail orange. Man that looks good! They have have stumble on a new paint scheme for the trains and I have wondered, as dirty as some of those trains are..... why could they not wrap them in just their original paint design periodically to keep them fresh looking on the outside? Is wrapping them more expensive than repainting them? They seem to wrap them much faster then repainting them. Trains seem to be down a LONG TIME for repaint, but orange got wrapped really quick.

Wrapping in and of itself is relatively fast depending on how many people you have doing it. RE-wrapping, on the other hand, is a project. You have to strip all the vinyl and adhesive completely in order to have a clean surface for the new vinyl to adhere to. Granted, there are different grades of vinyl and adhesive (5, 7, and 10-year, for example), but the work would still have to be done. You can't wrap vinyl-over-vinyl because as it ages, the vinyl cracks and basically breaks down as it loses it's flexibility.

 

[s8film40]

Got a question for you regarding if disney brought in new monorails. Since you worked as a pilot and what not, do you think they would change/switch to sliding doors and trying to keep the loading areas in line with the height of the monorail entrance to speed loading/unloading up? or keep it the way it is now?

I would hope they would move to a single wider sliding door like the Vegas trains. Knowing Disney's inability to think outside the box, it wouldn't surprise me though if they designed the doors around the existing station gates which were designed around the Mark VI trains.

The windows look tinted from inside the train (you can clearly see the outside when you're walking down the corridor). One motion begins, the windows turn black on the projectors on the hallway turn on.

It's interesting you say that I was on the train about a month ago and the TM was really late getting to the cabin I was in to close the door. I was able to see out the window as the train was moving.

 

[msg7]

I cannot begin to explain just how minor that bit of information is. I guess nothing important was happening today.

Slow news day lol...

 

[EricsBiscuit]

You're comparing apples and oranges. The trains were and remain a ride. They aren't hauling the loads they did when they were actual working locomotives. Also, key word: locomotives. The locomotives are the only pieces of the railroad that are "hi-tech". with the speaker system and lights essentially being all that's "advanced" in the passenger cars.

The monorails, however, are a working transport system. Further, as rmwebs pointed out, the monorails involve a great deal of fiberglass, which isn't as strong as the steel that is in the locomotives. Sure, the monorails can be completely rebuilt via maintenance, but unlike the railroad, it's not just the locomotive, a locomotive using pretty simple, pre-electronic age technology as the core of what makes it move. But the older the monorails get, the more work needs to go into them, and the law of diminishing returns rears its head. There's a reason we don't still have busses from the 1950s in modern cities.

This post is so very wrong. The steam locomotives are "actual working locomotives." And they do carry tens of thousands of people every day. They are most definitely and indisputably a transportation system.

 

[V_L_Raptor]

This post is so very wrong. The steam locomotives are "actual working locomotives." And they do carry tens of thousands of people every day. They are most definitely and indisputably a transportation system.

A friend who works in WDW Transportation explained to me one day that the trains are formally considered a part of transportation, and that they're not a "ride" in the conventional sense. The reasoning was that someone could board a train at one point in the park and disembark at a completely different station, whereas for a ride, they'd be boarding and leaving from essentially the same place.

 

[donsullivan]

A friend who works in WDW Transportation explained to me one day that the trains are formally considered a part of transportation, and that they're not a "ride" in the conventional sense. The reasoning was that someone could board a train at one point in the park and disembark at a completely different station, whereas for a ride, they'd be boarding and leaving from essentially the same place.

As I understand it, that is the same reason that the Train at Tokyo Disneyland does not go around the whole park but only Adventureland and Frontierland and there is only one station. If it went around the park like we are used to in the other castle parks, the local regulations would require it be considered transportation and have to operate like the monorails with separate transportation admission and all the regulatory constraints that go along with that.

 

[s8film40]

A friend who works in WDW Transportation explained to me one day that the trains are formally considered a part of transportation, and that they're not a "ride" in the conventional sense. The reasoning was that someone could board a train at one point in the park and disembark at a completely different station, whereas for a ride, they'd be boarding and leaving from essentially the same place.

Well the trains have the WDW Transportation logo on them so that’s good enough for me.

 

[esskay]

As I understand it, that is the same reason that the Train at Tokyo Disneyland does not go around the whole park but only Adventureland and Frontierland and there is only one station. If it went around the park like we are used to in the other castle parks, the local regulations would require it be considered transportation and have to operate like the monorails with separate transportation admission and all the regulatory constraints that go along with that.

Technically that makes CoP a transportation ride

 

[Goofyernmost]

Technically that makes CoP a transportation ride

Now that I think about it, if they simply tip CoP on it's side they can roll it over to Epcot and squeeze it into the WoL pavilion. I wonder why they didn't think of that. All they need to do is slap a Transportation logo on it... easy peazy.

 

[V_L_Raptor]

Technically that makes CoP a transportation ride

No.

You board CoP, then you leave CoP. If you boarded CoP but then left through Pirates of the Caribbean by way of some kind of transportation between the two, it would be a transportation ride.

 

[lazyboy97o]

As I understand it, that is the same reason that the Train at Tokyo Disneyland does not go around the whole park but only Adventureland and Frontierland and there is only one station. If it went around the park like we are used to in the other castle parks, the local regulations would require it be considered transportation and have to operate like the monorails with separate transportation admission and all the regulatory constraints that go along with that.

This also included Japan’s strict regulations regarding railroad punctuality. A Tokyo Disneyland Railroad would have had to publish and adhere to a timetable of service.