No monorail service during EMH

[Soarin08]

But was that during normal park hours or the extended time?

Normal hours.

[Wizzard419]

Exactly

[Future Guy]

I've written about this at length on my blog (shameless plug!) but I'll summarize here:

I think it's a bad idea. Now I know it'll come as a shock, but I am not as rich and successful as you no doubt imagine. I've stayed a deluxe resort once in my life, sure, but I'll be lucky if I can even afford a moderate from here on out. Most likely any future stays on property will be at the All-Star resorts. So this really doesn't affect me. But I hate it anyway. Why?

First of all, because it's an openly customer-hostile policy. Disney is basically eliminating a convenience here, oddly enough a convenience that benefits their highest-paying customers, and this on the heels of ticket-price increases! Their well-heeled customers, the ones they're most trying to attract, are going to complain, and rightly so. Management knows this. They have to know this. They simply don't care. But why are they doing it at all? Is it just to save money? No, and that leads me to my second reason for hating this change:

I strongly suspect that it's part of an insidious plot to kill evening Extra Magic Hours. Don't believe me? Well, consider the fact that Disney has also recently stopped having character meet-and-greets during Extra Magic Hours. Now, they're also making it more inconvenient to get back to your resort once they're over. Taken individually, these might just be examples of the kind of obtuse, spreadsheet-based thought process that all corporate executives employ.

But consider this: having a couple fewer monorail trains out of service for a three or four extra hours, three nights a week, is not really going to save that much money OR make much of a difference with monorail maintenance. I want to stress that I'm not an expert in theme park operations. But I do know that gasoline is expensive. And having to run more boats and buses is going to lessen any savings you might see from taking the monorail offline. Also, I know that there are eleven monorails, and the monorail garage doesn't have room for all of them. So I really can't see a maintenance benefit to NOT running two or three trains during MK and EPCOT EMH three nights a week because it's physically impossible to service all the trains at once anyway. Make sense?

[Soarin08]

I think Future Guy has hit the nail right on the head.

[Wizzard419]

I think your tin-foil hat might be a little too tight. They probably noticed that there is a major gap in usage after hours and simply wanted to stop hemmoraging money.

Aren't the WDW busses CNG not gasoline? Here is something to take into consideration, you need a lot more manpower to run the monorails since every station has to be staffed, the work crews, etc.

[mindflipper]

Having been there at the end of EMH late at night, there wasn't much volume in park guests. It took a while for the buses to even reach 50% capacity before heading off to the resorts. IMHO this may not be a big deal to panic about just yet...

[Wizzard419]

Oh, the buses have to wait for capacity until they leave? Man how dead is it at night?

[mindflipper]

The night I was there the bulk of the crowd cleared out after the second run of MSEP. The park had very few people about, and we were walking on the rides with no waits (during the day, the crowds were horrific as it was the final day of taping the Christmas day parade). There wasn't that many people there for the EMH night hours...

[Satchel T]

We're a bus family anyways so this doesn't really affect us much... However I could see where it may back things up a bit for certain guests.

[Satchel T]

Oh, the buses have to wait for capacity until they leave? Man how dead is it at night?

Sometimes it is busy and sometimes it's not ... Kind of weird actually

[Satchel T]

I'm not sure we know exactly how much it costs to run the monorails ... My guess is it's a bit more than we think. They think these things over so maybe it'll work maybe it won't.

[Wizzard419]

You can make presumptions though since at least one skilled worker would be needed per train, a couple people per station (not sure if they are also drivers like at disneyland), garage crew, dispatch, etc. It adds up quick and all of them can be replaced by as few as 3 buses and drivers.

[disneylizzy]

We usually drive so it would be kind of a pain for us in a few situations...like let's say that we visited Magic Kingdom on a Merry Christmas Party night where we planned to drive home afterwards, adding an extra hour b/c we'd have to wait in bus lines to get back to the transportation center would be a deal killer.

Also, if we were staying onsite (which we do from time to time) and we drove to Magic Kingdom for Extra Magic Hours, we'd still have to take a bus back to the transportation center.

Why do we drive? We hate the busses and waiting in line for the busses. Since we don't fly to get to wdw, we use our own transportation and gasoline to get around so we can leave when we want, not when we can based on the bus frequency and lines.

Well, we will see if this ends up being a permanent thing. For me, I don't stay at the monorail resorts so that won't change my accommodations, but it will affect visits to restaurants and bars along the monorail during times that the Magic Kingdom closes early (like 7pm for parties and say I have a 9pm reservation at California Grill) and it affects my buying tickets for the parties b/c with the added stress and time of having to catch a bus to get to the transportation center, I'd rather pass on the special events.

[Len90]

But was that during normal park hours or the extended time?

The accident occurred very late at night on July 4th. The two trains were on the EPCOT line and the park had been closed for a while. I think even MK was closed. The monorail system was closed for about 2 days following the accident and bus service was supplied instead of the monrail. Disney ran all three ferry boats for MK/TTC and hired out additional bus companies to help with the peak crowds. However, they still had to have extra buses from third parties to help at night after the mass exodus, which was just cram as many people on a ferry and get the next boat in as fast as possible. Resort service suffered the most.

[Soarin08]

But was that during normal park hours or the extended time?

The accident occurred very late at night on July 4th. The two trains were on the EPCOT line and the park had been closed for a while. I think even MK was closed. The monorail system was closed for about 2 days following the accident and bus service was supplied instead of the monrail. Disney ran all three ferry boats for MK/TTC and hired out additional bus companies to help with the peak crowds. However, they still had to have extra buses from third parties to help at night after the mass exodus, which was just cram as many people on a ferry and get the next boat in as fast as possible. Resort service suffered the most.

It was actually when the monorails were bringing guests back from Epcot following the fireworks that the accident happened. The park had been open quite late that evening for the holiday, it happened at 2am.