WDW transportation discussion

It's interesting that you mention that because every time I ride the Wedway I wonder if you could make a viable transport system in a city using a similar elevated conveyer. I mean it would have to be prohibitively expensive, but it sure would be nice.

It's such a shame though that the monorail is so expensive. Even if it's not the most efficient, I think it's the most Disney way to get around.

What are the major obstacles to building the monorail throughout property?

I really like the idea of a multi-stop system jutting off to all the different resorts. Too bad Disney can't make use of an underground system because of the water-table.

Money is the only obstacle. I was told once by a relatively high ranking CM that Disney has absolutely NO plans to expand the monorail system because it is just too expensive. And this was before the current economic times, when Disney wasn't talking about layoffs and cutbacks.

Do you know if the operating costs are particularly high or just the construction costs? I'm guessing the latter.

From the Backstage tour we learned that the monorail costs about 1 Million a section. (From column to column) So next time you ride it every time you pass a column go 1 million, 2 million, Ect. So sorry, we won't see any new monorail any time soon.

The problem with light rail is for it to be cost effective it has to be run at ground level, riddling WDW with railroad crossings and crippling the road systems. If it was elevated it would be cheaper to do the monorail.

Now if all the cars were kept at a parking facility at the edge of WDW (per the original plans) then light rail would be a great way to do it. Should have listened to Walt on this one.

I had no idea he wanted to do that. Question: wouldn't light rail still be too expensive and/or riddling WDW with railroad crossings, etc?

If we're dreaming, I want sky-tubes. Everyone (or each family) is assigned their very own sky-pod upon check-in. Each resort and theme park has a sky-tube station and sky-pod. When you arrive at your destination, you type your PIN code into your sky-pod, and it takes itself directly to an available sky-pod berth. When you're ready to leave, you type your PIN into your portable sky-pod keypad, and go to the sky-pod departure deck. Your sky-pod brings itself to the departure deck, your family gets in, and you verbally tell the sky-pod where to go next via the sky-tubes. (Sky-pods are electric and sit on charging stations in the sky-pod berths.)

I think that you could do some kind of light rail-ish conveyance around. It probably would cost considerably more than the buses, but I bet it would be so much nicer.

Another thing we learned from the backstage tour is if WDW did install a new transportation system a key design element would be to make it SLOWER than the current system. A lot of planning goes into making you comute time both in resort and in park as song as possable. As a hint wee were told if we ever left anything somewhere by accident ask a Employee to get it, they can cover the resots in a fraction of the time a guest can.

And since we are dreaming, Teleporters...Walk threw a door and here we are.

I can understand why they'd want the cast to be able ot get around quickly, but did they mention why they want transit to be slow? Just to soak up potential crowd-members?

not just Transit, almost everything on property is designed to slow you down without you feeling slowed down. Sprawling resorts with winding pathways, the location of your bus stops. Even the winding layout of the parks and all the devirsons in them. All meant to slow you down, and keep you on property longer.

I guess I feel like that's good and bad. If Disney deliberately slows me down, maybe I'll relax more. But because people run around like chickens with their heads cut off in those parks trying to get EVERYTHING done, it seems counterproductive.

Is their primary motivation to distribute crowds or to just keep you wandering around enough that you buy merchandise and refreshments?

I don't buy it in any isolated circumstance, but I can see the logic if they're goal is to keep you on property longer--in a park while you're waiting for bus lines to dwindle, for instance.

Well a lot of things that "Eat up" people are good. Splash Mountain is a good ride I think because it moves quickly and has quite a few people inside for quite a while. If you had lots of rides like that where they swallow up a good portion of your crowd I think the place operates better. I could see them wanting buses to provide the same function, but I also see MT's point that they're not buying anything on the bus and I suspect that too much bus = frustrated visitors.

"Scotty, 2 to beam to the MK"

That would seem so weird-- people popping in and out of the parks all day. You're pushing your stroller toward the castle, and all of a sudden there's a whole family smack in your way who just teleported in from Coronado Springs

A few years ago Disney was trying out a new "hybrid' bus. They were being tested in Ft. Wilderness and were black. They weren't handicap accessible and so Jan and I had long waits at the bus stops, waiting for a regular bus. Never saw them again after that trip.
Joe.

Trebuchet

Whaaat? It would be a fun ride...until you got to your destination.

subvetss -- I think they're using SOME hybrid busses, but these ones are white and handicap accessible. I guess the black ones lost the bidding war!!

LIFL -- Perhaps they'll have a few of those in the new medieval forest-y fantasyland! A new ride, methinks!

Could thin out those crowds

It's be great if they could toss me to the other parks. Just need a soft landing space.