Please fix the monorail!

[Lilofan]

Agreed, it's all about Money.

It is too bad TWDC does not realize it's worth it to invest in the WDW Monorails.

How much money did She Hulk return on its $225 Million investment?

I pray there is not another Monorail tragedy, this time due to a system failure.

That would shut down the Monorail for good.

For every incident that results in injury or worse then comes improvement.

 

[Disstevefan1]

For every incident that results in injury or worse then comes improvement.

In the case of the WDW monorail I fear they would simply shut it down.

Now that I think about it -

Another tragedy happens with Monorail.

WDW shuts down the Monorail indefinitely.

After a year or so, WDW announces the NEW Monorails are coming!

They take two more years to get the new Monorail system online.

When they reopen the WDW Monorail, its NO LONGER FREE to ride!

Folks, who were starved from their beloved Monorail, MOB the Monorail, gladly paying to ride.

 

[TQQQ]

Disney cannot get rid of the monorail. It’s impossible. They need to buy new cars and repair the tracks.

 

[Disstevefan1]

Disney cannot get rid of the monorail. It’s impossible. They need to buy new cars and repair the tracks.

I sure hope they never get rid of the monorail, but if they buy new cars and repair the tracks I would not be surprised if they start to charge to ride.

 

[esskay]

Whenever the monorail comes up lots of costs get plucked out of the air based on historial posts people have read. The truth is none of us have any idea how much it would cost to replace the trains, or the track. They were both built decades ago. The figures of $100 million a mile for example come up all the time for the track costs - we dont know its that much, it may have been when it was built but thats 50 years ago now. With modern construction methods and new ways of building things I'd expect that it would likely be a fraction of that, but still too much to justify something like an expansion ever happening.

All we do know is:

1. The WDW monorail beam is not the same size or shape as the most common monorail beams. This means you can't just plonk down any old monorail car on the track and have it work, they'd need to be custom made for Disney.
2. Most of the issues with the monorail stem from years of poor maintenance. They've done a lot of work recently on refitting the trains to make them at least 'feel' a tiny bit nicer, but with a lot of custom components it's obviously not cheap to perform extensive works on the current fleet.
3. It's genuinely cheaper to deploy hundreds of new busses than to replace a monorail train. Busses are cheap, trains are not. This is why its never been expanded. You'd have to pay for new track and likely double, if not tripple the fleet size if you expanded it to HS and AK.
4. The track itself is in surprisingly good shape relatively speaking for its age. In recent memory theres not been any kind of need for major track work. The surface on top of the track has occasionally needed redoing and thats something they likely could and should do for the whole system to smooth things out a bit.
5. A lot of the guest-visible issues are a result of the flawed automation system that Thales added a few years back. The weird jerky motion into stations, out of sync audio, random stop start behavior etc only started when they rolled out that change. This makes the whole system 'feel' worse than it actually is.
6. The current fleet could realistically go on another 10 years if they keep up maintenance. Whilst they'll no doubt look and feel pretty dated and clunky, it works (most of the time).

I want new Monorails, but it's not a simple or cheap process and would go into the billions to get the whole system back up to scratch. It will happen, its just a case of when. I dont think it'll be any time soon.

At the end of the day all the monorail needs is better maintenance. New trains are nice, but well maintained trains can last a lot, lot longer. Realistically if they get the maintenance sorted the current fleet can go on for another 20+ years without issue.

 

[Goofyernmost]

You can't see that on a spreadsheet.

What they see is:
- Monorail costs money

What they don't see is:
- Monorail making money (directly - through sales of tickets for the monorail)

I think that they will do the minimum, for now, to keep the monorails running to keep Disney fans (folks here) at bay. Eventually they'll reach the point where it isn't worth the time/money to repair them and that's when I think they'll be retired. When that is, I don't know. I just think that's the path they're on.

It'll likely be something like:
"The monorail will be shut down for the Summer 202x for refurbishment"
...and everyone here will go nuts because... "FINALLY! THEY'RE ADDRESSING THE MONORAIL!!"
then time will pass and people will wonder... " is going on with the monorail. We're not seeing any progress on this..." Others will argue back, "They're ordering parts... They're working on it behind the scenes - they're not going to park the monorail over the MK entrance and work on it there... Don't be dumb!"
... and more time will pass and people will start wondering, "Are they really working on the monorail?"

After a year or so it'll be announced the monorail isn't coming back.

The beams will stay for another 20 years... no maintenance on them.. Just slowly being overgrown and turning more black due to mold.

I believe that's where we are headed.

"But! but!!! What about the Deluxe hotels???"
... they'll remain Deluxe hotels and their prices will continue to increase. You'll get bus service and you'll like it. The excuses we'll see here will be along the lines of, "Honestly... The buses take me straight to the park I want, any park, and it's kind of a no-brainer... I don't even miss the monorail and, in some ways, it makes it less complicated to get around the resort."

"But!! But!!! The Monorail is iconic!"
I'm not arguing that it's not. I'm arguing that it won't be once you're used to not seeing them.

Bottom line:
If they wanted the Monorail to remain viable, long term, then they would have replaced the trains, done proper maintenance, etc. They wouldn't have had doors swinging open and parts falling off a few years back. They'd run, and brag about running, at 99.9% up-time and they'd be clean / pleasant to be on. You wouldn't have to use the excuse of, "People are crappier today," to cover for Disney.

This is about money. The Monorail costs a lot of money (compared to buses) and doesn't return anything, directly.

It wouldn't surprise me to see them build parking garages on either side of the park to fix the problem of having to get people across the lake. You could have one garage just North of the Contemporary and another on the other side of the canal West of the park. You could run two trams back and forth to ferry people to the front gate OR just let them walk and save on trams (they've shown they'll do this).

Also, ticket prices will increase... and you'll pay it.

There guest safety record is really really good. One time an electric door opened while moving after 40+ years of operation, but now it is spoken as if it were a daily occurance. The same with the one part falling off, much ado about nothing. You may not like to hear that "people are crappier today" but that doesn't stop it from being true and a major reason why the trains sometimes seem dirty.

 

[Goofyernmost]

I pray there is not another Monorail tragedy, this time due to a system failure.

That would shut down the Monorail for good.

The irony is that brand new Monorails can and do have system failures. So the only way to prevent that from happening completely is to just get rid of the Monorails. Do we really want that? Do you know what would happen if they spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying new trains? People would complain that they spent money on something that took money away from adding a new attraction. People are generally awful and love to complain about everything they can. That doesn't mean there aren't things to be concerned about, but the monorails are still in good working order and as a train are not in bad shape. Even this last event was not a "train" problem, but after 50 years they are bound to get the occasional track problem, probably more often.

 

[Andrew25]

Getting the money for the monorails isn't too difficult if they can manage to increase per capita spending for just an extra few dollars.

For example, if they estimate the entire project to cost $500mil, they would theoretically only need to gain $5 in per capita spending for each guest (assuming 20mil guests a year visit MK) during the 5-year project timeline. Simplifying this a lot, but it's not as difficult as it sounds. Pair that with increasing hotel rates or increased prices in the F&B locations in the hotels, you can get that cash quite easily.

 

[Disstevefan1]

The irony is that brand new Monorails can and do have system failures. So the only way to prevent that from happening completely is to just get rid of the Monorails. Do we really want that? Do you know what would happen if they spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying new trains? People would complain that they spent money on something that took money away from adding a new attraction. People are generally awful and love to complain about everything they can. That doesn't mean there aren't things to be concerned about, but the monorails are still in good working order and as a train are not in bad shape. Even this last event was not a "train" problem, but after 50 years they are bound to get the occasional track problem, probably more often.

I for one would not complain. The Monorails to me was always both an attraction and transportation and I enjoy riding them over and over. These current monorails have been in service longer than they should have been.

I do complain about TWDC spending $225 Million on 9 episodes of She Hulk. I watched the series once. Thats enough for me, it was a funny series that I thought was OK and I watched it for "free" since I was already a D+ subscriber.

I highly doubt folks signed up for D+ to watch She Hulk, and I doubt folks re watch the series.

 

[Goofyernmost]

I for one would not complain. The Monorails to me was always both an attraction and transportation and I enjoy riding them over and over. These current monorails have been in service longer than they should have been.

I do complain about TWDC spending $225 Million on 9 episodes of She Hulk. I watched the series once. Thats enough for me, it was a funny series that I thought was OK and I watched it for "free" since I was already a D+ subscriber.

I highly doubt folks signed up for D+ to watch She Hulk, and I doubt folks re watch the series.

Completely different budget than the parks, so what they spend only indirectly affects the parks.

The other issue I have is who determined what the service life of the trains should be? There are trains running around the Disney tracks that are over 100 years old. Rebuilt but still the same trains. The only life a train for someplace like a theme park is how long they last and are still less expensive then new ones. They still operate everyday and do the job needed. One breaks down now and then but for the most part are quite dependable. New trains breakdown now and then as well, mostly when they are brand new and the bugs are being worked out of them. They still look new physically and based on their reliability are well maintained. The judgment that they aren't come mostly from people that don't have a clue what real maintenance is and therefore think that everytime something goes wrong it's because they aren't being taken care of.

I think their plans are that they don't intend to buy any completely new trains and only replace what is necessary and when they can no longer do that for less then buying a whole new fleet, the monorails will just be a pleasant memory.

 

[Disstevefan1]

Completely different budget than the parks, so what they spend only indirectly affects the parks.

The other issue I have is who determined what the service life of the trains should be? There are trains running around the Disney tracks that are over 100 years old. Rebuilt but still the same trains. The only life a train for someplace like a theme park is how long they last and are still less expensive then new ones. They still operate everyday and do the job needed. One breaks down now and then but for the most part are quite dependable. New trains breakdown now and then as well, mostly when they are brand new and the bugs are being worked out of them. They still look new physically and based on their reliability are well maintained. The judgment that they aren't come mostly from people that don't have a clue what real maintenance is and therefore think that everytime something goes wrong it's because they aren't being taken care of.

I think their plans are that they don't intend to buy any completely new trains and only replace what is necessary and when they can no longer do that for less then buying a whole new fleet, the monorails will just be a pleasant memory.

I am not buying the different budget thing. I am just not. They can find/move the money if they really wanted to.

Since TWDC chooses not to spend money on replacing the WDW monorails, let’s hope they can keep them running safely.

 

[TQQQ]

Completely different budget than the parks, so what they spend only indirectly affects the parks.

The other issue I have is who determined what the service life of the trains should be? There are trains running around the Disney tracks that are over 100 years old. Rebuilt but still the same trains. The only life a train for someplace like a theme park is how long they last and are still less expensive then new ones. They still operate everyday and do the job needed. One breaks down now and then but for the most part are quite dependable. New trains breakdown now and then as well, mostly when they are brand new and the bugs are being worked out of them. They still look new physically and based on their reliability are well maintained. The judgment that they aren't come mostly from people that don't have a clue what real maintenance is and therefore think that everytime something goes wrong it's because they aren't being taken care of.

I think their plans are that they don't intend to buy any completely new trains and only replace what is necessary and when they can no longer do that for less then buying a whole new fleet, the monorails will just be a pleasant memory.

Well new monorails have less problems than old monorails, a lot less.....Not sure what your point is there? (from your previous post)

Everything has a shelf life, including the monorails....The manufacturer determined their life to be in that 20 year range and they approaching 35, just read the article linked in the prior post........

Are their old cars on the road? sure........But lets not pretend that the monorails dont need to be replaced.....this isn't a 1967 vette we are talking about here........Its a 1991 Yugo and they desperately need to be replaced, along with the tracks

 

[Brad Bishop]

Disney cannot get rid of the monorail. It’s impossible. They need to buy new cars and repair the tracks.

Just to clarify: I don't want them to get rid of the Monorail. I want them to make it how it once was (99.9% uptime).

That being said: What do you think happens now when the Monorail goes down? They run more ferries and bus people up. They can absolutely get rid of it.

If they were completely redo it as everyone hopes (new trains, that is).. I think it's very likely that they'd charge for it, at this point. In addition, I think once that they started doing that that charging for busses, ferries, and the skyliner would likely happen at the same time or would soon follow.

I fully believe it's only a matter of time until they charge for transportation. Maybe you'll get an extra charge on your hotel bill for each day you use it or maybe they'll charge you per use via the magic band. I don't see it staying free for much longer.

Granted, Bob is out and old Bob is now in but a lot of what we were complaining about under Chapek was put in place by Iger.

Someone mentioned that they have a Suburban with 400K mi on it. That's great. You kept up with the maintenance. It can be done. It's what I do with my cars. When I trade my car in 10+ years later, they doesn't look a whole lot different than it did when it was new and they typically run nearly as well as new.

That being said, you probably haven't driven down the road and had part of your Suburban fall off or a door opening/falling off at 80MPH... because maintenance is first and foremost in your mind and you understand that if you're lax on maintenance that, eventually, the Suburban won't be worth the cost of the repair (it'd be cheaper to buy a new one rather than to fix all the things you've ignored on the old one). It's two different mindsets. I don't think Disney is in the "keep it well maintained to extend its life"-mindset. They're in the "what do I have to do to keep it running today"-mindset.

 

[Goofyernmost]

I am not buying the different budget thing. I am just not. They can find/move the money if they really wanted to.

Since TWDC chooses not to spend money on replacing the WDW monorails, let’s hope they can keep them running safely.

You're right, but right now TWDC isn't pulling money from other places to support the strongest arm of the business. If anything TWDC is moving money from WDW. It is something we don't like to think about but it is common and why no matter how much we might want it to be invested back toward WDW, it isn't going to happen until WDW starts to be a losing entity. That doesn't look like that is going to happen anytime soon and I believe that even if they completely eliminated the monorail, people would complain but that isn't the sole reason that they visit WDW so the income would not be affected. I have been a big fan and I always stay offsite so if I'm going to visit MK I have the option to use the monorail, but I enjoy the ferry more so most of the time that I use the monorail it is to come and go to EPCOT only.

 

[Disstevefan1]

You're right, but right now TWDC isn't pulling money from other places to support the strongest arm of the business. If anything TWDC is moving money from WDW. It is something we don't like to think about but it is common and why no matter how much we might want it to be invested back toward WDW, it isn't going to happen until WDW starts to be a losing entity. That doesn't look like that is going to happen anytime soon and I believe that even if they completely eliminated the monorail, people would complain but that isn't the sole reason that they visit WDW so the income would not be affected. I have been a big fan and I always stay offsite so if I'm going to visit MK I have the option to use the monorail, but I enjoy the ferry more so most of the time that I use the monorail it is to come and go to EPCOT only.

Yup, the theme parks, especially WDW, has always been the cash cow for TWDC.

Let’s hope the cow keeps giving milk.

 

[Goofyernmost]

Well new monorails have less problems than old monorails, a lot less.....Not sure what your point is there? (from your previous post)

Everything has a shelf life, including the monorails....The manufacturer determined their life to be in that 20 year range and they approaching 35, just read the article linked in the prior post........

Are their old cars on the road? sure........But lets not pretend that the monorails dont need to be replaced.....this isn't a 1967 vette we are talking about here........Its a 1991 Yugo and they desperately need to be replaced, along with the tracks

Your correct it isn't a 1991 Yogo it is a large framed machine that is made to last a lot longer than the numbers I have heard here. The original trains were replaced because they didn't have the power to put enough cars on to let them pull the upgrades easily or bring enough people. I have been going to WDW since 1983 and since that time people that don't understand how machinery works have always figured if they witnessed a single time when the trains were down, then they went immediately to either they need new trains or they don't maintain them. Both are BS. Those machines will continue to operate at the place as long as broken parts can be replaced and the the cabins aren't falling off the chassis. I believe in luck to some degree but I have gone there 48 times and not once were the trains down due to mechanical problems, and that is also why they have extra trains. They don't run all of them at the same time. And if one is to break down it is replaced with another probably while you were riding PotC for the second time.

As long as they are structurally sound they can run forever and not have anymore mechanical problems than they had when they were first put on the rails. I'd be willing to bet that every single monorail train in the WDW fleet has been completely rebuilt at least 3 times in their lifetime. Perhaps one piece at a time or a complete drivetrain rebuild.

Personally I'd rather see them replace the rails. Those concrete spans have been in that Florida sun and handling tons of weight countless times a day. I'm more concerned about the stresses they have to deal with than the trains themselves. But, when they decide or and inspector decides they are no longer safe, that is the absolute day that monorails will be eliminated and gondolas will be the primary thing. Cables are easily replaced not so much those concrete rails.

 

[Smiley/OCD]

Just to clarify: I don't want them to get rid of the Monorail. I want them to make it how it once was (99.9% uptime).

That being said: What do you think happens now when the Monorail goes down? They run more ferries and bus people up. They can absolutely get rid of it.

If they were completely redo it as everyone hopes (new trains, that is).. I think it's very likely that they'd charge for it, at this point. In addition, I think once that they started doing that that charging for busses, ferries, and the skyliner would likely happen at the same time or would soon follow.

I fully believe it's only a matter of time until they charge for transportation. Maybe you'll get an extra charge on your hotel bill for each day you use it or maybe they'll charge you per use via the magic band. I don't see it staying free for much longer.

Granted, Bob is out and old Bob is now in but a lot of what we were complaining about under Chapek was put in place by Iger.

Someone mentioned that they have a Suburban with 400K mi on it. That's great. You kept up with the maintenance. It can be done. It's what I do with my cars. When I trade my car in 10+ years later, they doesn't look a whole lot different than it did when it was new and they typically run nearly as well as new.

That being said, you probably haven't driven down the road and had part of your Suburban fall off or a door opening/falling off at 80MPH... because maintenance is first and foremost in your mind and you understand that if you're lax on maintenance that, eventually, the Suburban won't be worth the cost of the repair (it'd be cheaper to buy a new one rather than to fix all the things you've ignored on the old one). It's two different mindsets. I don't think Disney is in the "keep it well maintained to extend its life"-mindset. They're in the "what do I have to do to keep it running today"-mindset.

That’s me with the Suburban…there’s NO way I will spend 80k for a new one…I just won’t. You, and others, keep talking about the door that fell off…ONCE IN 2018.
Please, stop about how dangerous it is. It can happen to cars, hoods fly up too, it could happen to a bus, that’s why they tell you NOT to stand in the well.

The way you’re talking, it’s gonna happen again a week from next Tuesday. Could it happen? ABSOLUTELY! And the battery in your brand new Tesla with 2500 miles could go up in flames on the way home today.
When I start hearing evacuations on a regular basis, accidents occurring on a regular basis, I’ll jump on your bandwagon, until then, they’re just fine, and YES, I ride them every time I’m there and I think they’re more reliable and safer than the skyliner.
We can agree to disagree.

 

[esskay]

Everything has a shelf life, including the monorails....The manufacturer determined their life to be in that 20 year range and they approaching 35, just read the article linked in the prior post........

The original 20 year quote was an estimate said off the cuff. In addition they've had several major refurbishments in that time to extend it. It's no different to a train that gets refurbished and carries on operating for another 30 years.

Not saying I like it, but the 20 year figure is pointless as its wrong.

 

[lazyboy97o]

The original 20 year quote was an estimate said off the cuff. In addition they've had several major refurbishments in that time to extend it. It's no different to a train that gets refurbished and carries on operating for another 30 years.

Not saying I like it, but the 20 year figure is pointless as its wrong.

Nobody ever seems to notice that 100 year old locomotives operate within 100 yards of the monorails that they say have to go because they're over 20 years old.

 

[TQQQ]

Nobody ever seems to notice that 100 year old locomotives operate within 100 yards of the monorails that they say have to go because they're over 20 years old.

Thats like comparing Apples to Ball bearings......