Just saw there is another thread that got moved here from the theme park board-moderator can delete if nec
http://screamscape.com/html/walt_disney_world_resort.htm#EpcotResort
???? -
Epcot Entrance Resort / Epcot Monorail Removal - Rumor - (1/12/18) Crazy news from Walt Disney World this week, as an interesting incident apparently took place on Monorail Red as it was running on the Epcot beam. If you haven't seen it, the video speaks for itself... as one of the doors opened by itself and stayed open while the monorail ran down the line. (See below)
We've talked for years about just how OLD the current fleet of monorails are, living and running daily, long past their expected lifetimes. This adds into another rumor I've quietly been hearing... that the time of the Walt Disney World Monorail may be coming to an end.
How?! WHY?! According to one source, Disney has run the numbers forwards, backwards, upside-down and sideways and determined that in no uncertain terms that the ongoing operation of the existing monorail system has become nothing short of a nightmare. The system has aged to the point where reliability has become a major concern, the cost to update it is said to be beyond anything they are willing to pay. On top of this, the rising costs and downtime issues to try and maintain the current system as-it-is, has risen to the point of just being almost unfeasible to continue to due for the long term.
So what is the plan? Lots of options are being discussed... but the one item that I'm told has become 100% necessary is the eventual closure of the Epcot Monorail line. In light of this latest incident... this could happen much sooner than later. This would be the first phase, allowing Disney to take an entire beam-offline and give them time to do some proper refurbishments to those trains to allow the two Magic Kingdom lines to keep running for a time. Ironically, I'm told the plan to close the Epcot line is also one of the reasons the concept of building a new giant resort hotel project over the entrance to EPCOT has come up.
The buying of time for the MK beams also gives Disney time to decide if perhaps they could fund a refurbishment of a smaller system that could continue to see the Resort and Express beams continue to operate. If not, eventually the Express Beam will also close, and Disney will use what's left of the fleet to keep a single monorail beam running for the resort guest line only.
So for now the monorails will continue to run, but from what I'm hearing, the clock is ticking and someday the monorail may depart to Neverland. For now, we'll just keep an eye on the future of the Epcot line, as any future incidents like this latest one can only serve to shorten the lifespan of that route. Of course, the performance of the new Skyliner system that will run between Epcot and the Studios may also factor in heavily. If successful, the distance traveled by Gondola between Epcot and the Studios is about the same as the distance between the front of Epcot and the TTC, and they could even re-use the same travel pathway is they so desired.