Grand Floridian Expansion

[Polynesian Princess]

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/the-dail ... 5514.story

Apparently Disney is planning an expansion of the Grand Floridian. According to the article, it will be a 6 or 7 story t-shaped building. There's a lot of speculation that this will be a new DVC property.

[Jacca5660]

That's quite a move. I thought Disney said that it wasn't going to expand or build any new hotel rooms until they had an 80% room usage? I no that was a few years ago, but I think know anything had changed.

[Polynesian Princess]

I'm guessing they're looking at the big picture and anticipating demand in 5 years or so (when presumably the recession will be over/much improved). It will take them quite a while to complete this, especially given the changes to Bay Lake.

[mindflipper]

It shocks me because I had thought DVC sales were going down due to the current slow economy....

[Polynesian Princess]

There's still a chance it will be just regular GF rooms, but it doesn't really seem like that's the case. In fact, speculation I've read on other sites seems to be saying that some of the current rooms at the GF will transformed into DVC as well, which I hope is untrue.

Whether regular rooms or DVC, this expansion will mean they'll need more transportation available to those MK resorts.

[Wizzard419]

How busy do the stations get at opening/closing time? I wonder if they will ever do an "express" system for the busy times, where monorails will only do round trips from a hotel to the MK and transport center. Making it non-stop other than when waiting on trains.

[mindflipper]

How busy do the stations get at opening/closing time? I wonder if they will ever do an "express" system for the busy times, where monorails will only do round trips from a hotel to the MK and transport center. Making it non-stop other than when waiting on trains.

They also have boats that go from GF to the MK as well, so there's more than one transport to that park. I've not seen them do any "express" monorails before.

[Polynesian Princess]

How busy do the stations get at opening/closing time? I wonder if they will ever do an "express" system for the busy times, where monorails will only do round trips from a hotel to the MK and transport center. Making it non-stop other than when waiting on trains.

I wonder if they'd be able to unload before the next one would pull in. It seems like that would make them get backed up and be pretty inefficient, plus then you'd be waiting a long time for that one monorail to get back around to the resort - probably 20 minutes or so, if I had to guess? Not to mention the confusion of people trying to board at TTC or MK to get to a hotel (for things such as breakfasts or coming back from Epcot, which means they'd have to separate the lines and clearly mark which monorails were going where. I think it'd end up being confusing to many guests.

I think they'd be better off running it more like a subway - when the train pulls in you have a certain amount of time to get off and the new people to get on board before the doors are shutting and the monorail is gone. They waste a lot of time sitting there waiting for people to take their time getting on or one more family to run up and get on board. They would have to have a separate line for wheelchairs and board one or two wheelchair families (depending on need and availability of cm's to assist with the loading and unloading) each time the train comes. With the trains constantly moving in and out of the stations, people would get shuttled around more efficiently and you'd never have to wait long for the next train - if you just miss one, you know the next one is coming in 5 minutes.

Expanding the boat service with bigger and/or more frequent boats between the resorts and the parks and advertising that method of transportation with a higher emphasis than they currently do is a feasible option to help with the additional guests. They'll also have to consider the impact on the buses, since the three monorail resorts typically share rides with each other from the other parks (and even if they didn't, people will board which ever one comes first, knowing the resort they really want is only a quick walk/monorail hop away).

[theBIGyowski]

I am hearing they will be DVC...because of how well Bay Lake Towers is selling. People are preferring to be closer to MK if they are going to fork over the money for DVC. Sounds like a great business move to me.

[Mr.ToadWildRider]

It's also a good time to build it seems as the recession has apparently driven down prices due to demand being so low. There's so much construction going on right now around me on residential homes as well as large buildings/public spaces/etc. I would imagine Disney's betting on seeing a huge return on investment when (I suppose that could be an "if" but I'm an optimist and the economy always seems to ebb and flow ) the economy rebounds. It's sort of like stocks- buy low sell high, If you can build even at 10% less now than it would cost with no recession, for a job that big that''s possibly millions in savings potentially. And if history has taught us anything, people do not learn from their economic mistakes (part of the reason for the ebb and flow of the economy...). When times get good again (again optimism) people will be spending money they don't have or at the very least have but shouldn't be spending on non-essentials like fancy DVC memberships.

[Wizzard419]

Yeah, if it would try a 1-2 stop model it probably wouldn't work very well. I know monorail track is expensive to build, so there is little hope in them being able to add more tracks (that and space would be pretty finite as well), and there is no truly elegant solution, so I am guessing the guests will just have to just wait. It's probably one of those problems that only exist for a brief period each morning and night too.

[Polynesian Princess]

I am guessing the guests will just have to just wait. It's probably one of those problems that only exist for a brief period each morning and night too.

The monorails are already really crowded at those times. They've added just under 300 rooms with BLT and now this will probably bring about the same or just under that. That's an extra 1000 guests or so needing transportation and as far as I can tell, they haven't really changed the transportation to deal with this (possibly added more buses, but not enough). The buses for those resorts are already really full as well - even at non peak times. People are paying too much money to stay there to just have to deal with it and wait, in my opinion.

[theBIGyowski]

I wonder if they could build some kind of transportation that is ground-based that runs from GF to MK. It would not be a bus...but maybe some kind of shuttle-train or something. You could come at it from that side of the Seven Seas Lagoon...which I assume would not mess up the flow of traffic.

Adding all of those BLT rooms probably didn't make the kind of impact that adding rooms to GF would...simply because you can walk to MK from BLT and the Contemporary. But to other parks...definitely a big increase in load.

[mindflipper]

I wonder if they could build some kind of transportation that is ground-based that runs from GF to MK. It would not be a bus...but maybe some kind of shuttle-train or something. You could come at it from that side of the Seven Seas Lagoon...which I assume would not mess up the flow of traffic.

Adding all of those BLT rooms probably didn't make the kind of impact that adding rooms to GF would...simply because you can walk to MK from BLT and the Contemporary. But to other parks...definitely a big increase in load.

Oddly enough, last time I stayed at the Contemporary, they were very active in discouraging us from walking back and forth to the MK.

[Polynesian Princess]

I wonder if they could build some kind of transportation that is ground-based that runs from GF to MK. It would not be a bus...but maybe some kind of shuttle-train or something. You could come at it from that side of the Seven Seas Lagoon...which I assume would not mess up the flow of traffic.

Adding all of those BLT rooms probably didn't make the kind of impact that adding rooms to GF would...simply because you can walk to MK from BLT and the Contemporary. But to other parks...definitely a big increase in load.

Oddly enough, last time I stayed at the Contemporary, they were very active in discouraging us from walking back and forth to the MK.

Very interesting. How so? What was said?