The problem with the monorail system

PeterAlt

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Peter if you are still wondering why you get no respect, which I don't really think is a problem for you anyway, it's because you make statements like it's not a transportation system because it doesn't go directly to your destination. If you go by that criteria the only transportation systems that exist are walking, taxi's and private automobiles. Also covered under that are express trains, (monorails or other) buses. They deliver people to their personal destination and return home.

Buses run in circles, Commuter trains and subways return to the home station. Trucks run one way and then turn around and come back home. Even long distance carriers, in all likelihood, will take you from one hub to another were you switch to another vehicle going where you are going. That would include Buses, Trains and Airplanes. There is no such thing as a trip to "nowhere", they all have to return to where they started. In that process they deliver passengers to specific locations even if it's back to where they started.

So any discussion about the system not being transportation, is total nonsense. In the meantime, sorry that you and your sister had to trudge all the way across the Monorail Platform, it must have been awful for you. Maybe Disney will pay for counseling.
I'm standing by my statement. To me, it is painfully clear. Others may have a hard time seeing it, and that's okay. I totally respect whatever way you want to see it. If you're trying to understand why I see it as a train to nowhere, see my second message in this thread about the NYC subway. I think I made my point of view much clearer in the example I used.

The TTC isn't entirely "nowhere", as there is a refreshment stand there, restrooms, a small gift shop, and you can walk to the Polynessian from there. If the Poly wasn't witnin walking distance, it would be a total destination of nowhere!

"But where would MK guests park?"

The would park at the new structures built at the EC parking lot. By the way, the EC monorail station would be directly connected to the new parking structure. From there, guests would take the monorail directly to the MK, bypassing the TTC, but they could still park at the TTC, if they want to. They might want to because that area would become somewhere, a new development of hotels circled around what used to be the MK parking lot. These hotels would have their own parking structure connected to what used to be the TTC. The additional at EC also comes in handy because, we're pulling all the parking out from DHS, as well. From Central Parking (the former EC parking lot), you can walk to EC, take a monorail directly to the MK, or take an expansion spur to DHS. The former DHS parking lot would give that park new room to grow. AK connections would require a bit more planning, so everything stays as is for now.
 

thomas998

Well-Known Member
I'm standing by my statement. To me, it is painfully clear. Others may have a hard time seeing it, and that's okay. I totally respect whatever way you want to see it. If you're trying to understand why I see it as a train to nowhere, see my second message in this thread about the NYC subway. I think I made my point of view much clearer in the example I used.

The TTC isn't entirely "nowhere", as there is a refreshment stand there, restrooms, a small gift shop, and you can walk to the Polynessian from there. If the Poly wasn't witnin walking distance, it would be a total destination of nowhere!

"But where would MK guests park?"

The would park at the new structures built at the EC parking lot. By the way, the EC monorail station would be directly connected to the new parking structure. From there, guests would take the monorail directly to the MK, bypassing the TTC, but they could still park at the TTC, if they want to. They might want to because that area would become somewhere, a new development of hotels circled around what used to be the MK parking lot. These hotels would have their own parking structure connected to what used to be the TTC. The additional at EC also comes in handy because, we're pulling all the parking out from DHS, as well. From Central Parking (the former EC parking lot), you can walk to EC, take a monorail directly to the MK, or take an expansion spur to DHS. The former DHS parking lot would give that park new room to grow. AK connections would require a bit more planning, so everything stays as is for now.

The percentage of people that need to be above nearly any subway station on any system is tiny compared to the places they serve as a whole. Look at any main subway/train exchange point be it Grand Central in New York or Union Station in DC and you have a very small percentage of the people arriving on a train to that point that aren't going to be getting onto a subway to continue their trip. Your own admission that they do have a gift shop and restrooms is simply reinforcing the fact that the monorail is a transportation system... now clearly you don't like it and that is fine. But simply because I don't like Pepsi I'm not going to claim it isn't a soft-drink.
 

PeterAlt

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
There would be multiple ways to get to the Central Parking structures (which would be located within the EC parking lot) from DHS:

- monorail ext. spur via FW
- walkway via Boardwalk
- ferry boat via Int. Gateway
- people mover via WS
 

PeterAlt

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
By the way, I have a first hand account to certify that the TTC and MK parking lot are "nowhere"...

Try going to a 24-hour Disney event and leave the MK when the park closes at 6am. At this point, you take the monorail to literaly nowhere. The morning sun, the morning due, a feeling of being "ate up" and no drugs to show for it, blistering feet, a ghostly calm, not a soul in sight, and a nagging conscious scalding me about what a damn idiot I was to not take note of where I had parked. For the next couple of hours, I walked in countless circles around this vast space if concrete nothingness. I felt like I was on a moonscape - isolated from all a Earthly life forms. You don't know what nothingness feels like until you've experienced it. I hope none of you ever experience it!
 

thomas998

Well-Known Member
By the way, I have a first hand account to certify that the TTC and MK parking lot are "nowhere"...

Try going to a 24-hour Disney event and leave the MK when the park closes at 6am. At this point, you take the monorail to literaly nowhere. The morning sun, the morning due, a feeling of being "ate up" and no drugs to show for it, blistering feet, a ghostly calm, not a soul in sight, and a nagging conscious scalding me about what a damn idiot I was to not take note of where I had parked. For the next couple of hours, I walked in countless circles around this vast space if concrete nothingness. I felt like I was on a moonscape - isolated from all a Earthly life forms. You don't know what nothingness feels like until you've experienced it. I hope none of you ever experience it!

Go ride the Metro in DC on a Sunday and get off on nearly any of the points between the main mall and the outlying residential areas and you will find it can be just as bleak... but simply taking a train/subway/monorail to a point when the business near the stop are closed doesn't mean it was a stop at nowhere. You seem to be grasping at straws to convince yourself that your not wrong... reality is everywhere is somewhere... nowhere doesn't exist by definition... of course every rule has an exception and I think there is a town called Nowhere in Texas or Oklahoma, but I don't think the monorail goes that far west.
 

The Empress Lilly

Well-Known Member
The problem with the monorail system at WDW is that is was never designed to be a transportation system.

The Magic Kingdom loop was designed to keep the MK parking lot, the MK itself, and the MK hotels connected in a loop but at a safe distance apart so that guests magically leave the troubles and stress of the real world behind and enter the magic which is WDW, kinda like the Twilight Zone, but a good dimension.

The EPCOT loop basically gives people who park at the MK parking lot a choice of new dimensions to choose from: magical goodness or futurist internationalism.

None really provide transportation as its function. You don't need to ride the monorail to go to EC, if you park at EC, for example. And you can't take the monorail from the MK loop to go directly to EC. You can go from MK to EC via monorail, but you have to switch trains and go on two lines in order to do so, proving that the system was never designed as a convenient transportation alternative to buses in this function.

When I was there at WDW a few weeks ago, while at the TTC, I was thinking about this, looking up at the sign, pointing the way to the train going to the MK and another pointing to entrance for the train to EC. This is the only loading area in all of WDW where you can choose the monorail spur location to ride on. But the TTC is neither here or there. It is a transportation hub at the edge of nowhere with a big parking lot with a speedway in the middle. Yet, this "place" out in the middle of nowhere has two monorail loops going to it. Several ideas ran through my head as to what could be done to make sense of this enigma. I'll get into that later.

Leaving EC, my sister and I ran to catch the monorail as it entered the station. Entering the train, my sister asked the CM if this train was going to the MK. The CM said, "No, it's going to..."

I interrupted, "Yes, I know... The Transportation and Ticket Center."

The CM confirmed and my sister insisted that we were on the wrong train until I explained the whole TTC thing to her.

The reason I bring this up is so that if you can understand the concept of the EC monorail loop never servicing the MK, then the MK Parking Lot must be misnamed because it serves the TTC (not the MK). In other words, the MK has no parking and you must park at a nearby transportation hub and take a train, bus, or ferry in order to get there.

Now, with this concept of transportation hub and the purpose of the TTC explained, I have a riddle for you. Why is there a transportation hub for a monorail system that wasn't even designed as a functional transportation system to begin with?

That adds to the riddle of why is there a transportation out in the middle of nowhere and why do monorail loops reach out to this middle of nowhere from theme parks that are obviously somewhere? You get where I'm coming from. Add all the questions I asked or implied so far.

If the TTC were to truly function in the capacity I described, it would have loops connecting it to the other two parks. The fact that it doesn't even do that makes it even less functional as a transportation hub. If it did have four loops, connecting it to all four parks, it would effectively have four loops connecting nowhere to four somewheres - or four loops going nowhere (or your car, if that's where you parked). So, this makes worse sense.

One way to make sense of it is to build a fifth gate at the TTC parking lot and parking structures there. Now, both monorail loops would actually go somewhere. But this raises more questions than it answers, concerning why some parks have their own parking and why the monorail has a prejudice over the parks it goes to or leaves from.

A centralized parking hub serving on-site hotels and retail for all the parks is the most logical thing I could think of that would make sense of this whole mess. You would also need a separate transit system that would also create a big four point loop connecting the parks for direct park to park transport. Now, that's what I call true park hopping!
Awesome. Nobody has challenged preconceived perceptions of reality in such a bold manner since Margritte! :D

Fifty thousand posts about monorail transportation. Only to now argue that this is not transportation. And that the TTC is not a destination.

ceci-n-est-pas-une-pipe.jpg



~ This is not a forum post ~
 

Goofyernmost

Well-Known Member
I can't speak for anyone else, but, I give up. Enjoy your inability to understand reality and live within your own land where logic isn't ever going to enter. Truly the Land of Make-believe!
 

Konor

Active Member
From Disneyworld.com..."How to Use Disney Monorail Transportation" or "Getting around Walt Disney World Resort is a breeze on the world-famous monorail, the “public transport of the future.”"

If it wasn't built to transport people why was a rail line set up, trains with multiple cars capable of carrying multiple people put on said rail, and people allowed to board the cars to carry them from where they parked to Magic Kingdom or Epcot, or from their resort to Magic Kingdom?

If is looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck...its a transportation system.
 

GrammieBee

Well-Known Member
I have to add that the worst nowhere transfer point that is actually somewhere is the flight arrival gate when your flight arrives after midnight.
 

networkpro

Well-Known Member
In the Parks
Yes
The passenger cabins were not designed for Wall-E people sized transporters, Wall-E sized people, or strollers, they were designed at a point in time where the ambulatory were the ones to be transported. No one ever argues that point.
 

PeterAlt

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
I can't speak for anyone else, but, I give up. Enjoy your inability to understand reality and live within your own land where logic isn't ever going to enter. Truly the Land of Make-believe!
How do you not see it?! It's the other way around, my friend! If you remove the TTC and require parking somewhere that's a somewhere, you literally see by removing it that it's nothing... or make the TTC a somewhere by putting things there that are worthy of being called somethings... I don't know... A hotel, a golf golf, a minor park, then it serves a purpose and it actually becomes something. You need something for it to qualify as a somewhere (for such noteworthy qualification), for heaven's sake! (Not literally)... It's like New York Street at DHS... Or better - better yet - it's like the tail bone all humans have but it serves no function. It is a relic of some strange past from when the Brady Bunch was in style...
 

Goofyernmost

Well-Known Member
How do you not see it?! It's the other way around, my friend! If you remove the TTC and require parking somewhere that's a somewhere, you literally see by removing it that it's nothing... or make the TTC a somewhere by putting things there that are worthy of being called somethings... I don't know... A hotel, a golf golf, a minor park, then it serves a purpose and it actually becomes something. You need something for it to qualify as a somewhere (for such noteworthy qualification), for heaven's sake! (Not literally)... It's like New York Street at DHS... Or better - better yet - it's like the tail bone all humans have but it serves no function. It is a relic of some strange past from when the Brady Bunch was in style...
Wouldn't that apply to anything, anyplace, anytime. Take out what is there and there is nothing. Just when I thought this conversation couldn't get anymore foolish.:banghead:
 

PeterAlt

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Wouldn't that apply to anything, anyplace, anytime. Take out what is there and there is nothing. Just when I thought this conversation couldn't get anymore foolish.:banghead:
It's a useless appendage that needs to be removed. I don't mean that it's not actually a place. The Sarhara Desert is also a place, but it's in the middle of nowhere, and it serves no purpose of practicality that drives people to want to experience it as a transit stop, let alone two!!
 

wm49rs

A naughty bit o' crumpet
Premium Member
It's a useless appendage that needs to be removed. I don't mean that it's not actually a place. The Sarhara Desert is also a place, but it's in the middle of nowhere, and it serves no purpose of practicality that drives people to want to experience it as a transit stop, let alone two!!
Not unlike this absurd thread....
 

PeterAlt

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Give me one good reason why it shouldn't be removed or turned into a something, besides serving as a transfer point for two lines that have no where else to go or parking that could go any where?
 

PeterAlt

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Any of you just joining us. You don't have to agree with anything I say, but I hope you are at least entertained by it...
 

NormC

Well-Known Member
This is what I meant when I said it was never designed to be a transportation system.
Yes it was. It TRANSPORTED you from the parking lot real world to the Magical World of Disney. It's main purpose was transportation but it was designed to do it with flair. It is part of the show. That does not mean it is not transportation.
 

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