Sam said they ve looked into electric and hybrid buses but haven t found any that are applicable sky

Disney World making changes to buses, los angeles international airport parking monorails and roadways to meet growth - Orlando Attractions Magazine SUBSCRIBE TO ORLANDO ATTRACTIONS MAGAZINE - ADVERTISE - CONTACT - HOME YOUR SHOPPING CART IS EMPTY - VIEW CART | CHECKOUT | SUBSCRIBE Disney World making changes to buses, monorails and roadways to meet growth Sep 6 2012 Filed under: los angeles international airport parking Disney , Travel sky tv travel shop , Walt Disney World Posted by: Matt Roseboom Share this story: Tweet
Walt Disney World is making los angeles international airport parking a number of small but important changes to the way they transport guests around their property. Some changes have been recently completed and some will take a few years to implement. sky tv travel shop It s all in the name of growth, efficiency, guest satisfaction and safety.
sky tv travel shop Samuel Lau is the vice president of Walt Disney World Transportation. He s been with Disney for a couple of years, but he s been in the transportation business for more than 20, most recently for the city of San Francisco los angeles international airport parking and San Jose, Calif. He also has a planning and engineering background, which comes in handy when planning all the different transportation options at Disney World.
Here (Disney World) it s about guest experience, people going on vacation, said Sam, It s a very different atmosphere and mindset sky tv travel shop expectation is high. Sam added that on average, up to half of all the guests on Disney los angeles international airport parking property use their transportation system. Even some of the folks who drive here will leave their car and take the monorail, buses and boats, added Sam.
Disney s bus system sky tv travel shop transports sky tv travel shop the most guests each day, with the monorail and boats competing for second and third. No immediate changes sky tv travel shop are planned for the boat system, so let s take a look at the buses, monorails and roadways.
Walt Disney los angeles international airport parking World s bus system is larger than the city of Orlando s Lynx system. Disney has 319 buses in their fleet (Lynx has about 280). Each night Disney World buses transport los angeles international airport parking the equivalent of stadiums full of people out of the parks and back to their hotels. If you ve ever driven down Buena Vista Drive at night, you were most likely surrounded by Disney buses.
With New Fantasyland opening soon and the newly opened los angeles international airport parking Art of Animation Resort, Disney is planning for growth. They recently added 28 new buses to their fleet, and this past spring they tested los angeles international airport parking a 60-foot bus with two sections called an articulated bus, which of course helps them transport even more guests at a time. Sam said those tests went well and they are planning on purchasing a few articulated los angeles international airport parking buses to try out.
But the larger buses of course have larger space needs. sky tv travel shop Which brings us to another change that is coming. los angeles international airport parking Sam said they re planning on adding a third bus loop at the Magic Kingdom. The two current bus loops aren t meeting the demand and growth Disney is expecting. Each loop offers stops to the same Disney resorts, so if the line for a particular resort gets too long, the guests can line up for their resort at the second los angeles international airport parking loop, and the third once it s built south of the current loops. Sam said the third loop will take about a year to build and will better accommodate the larger articulated buses.
Disney is also planning on installing cameras los angeles international airport parking sky tv travel shop on their bus fleet. But Sam said this is more of a road safety issue than guest security. We want to know what happened if a bus gets into an accident or there s some incident that happens, said Sam. The cameras allow us to see exactly what is going on around the bus. The cameras will be looking at the outside of the bus and show what the driver sees, rather than being pointed at the guests on the inside of the bus. The only camera that we have inside the bus is facing the driver compartment and the front door.
Sam said they ve looked into electric and hybrid buses but haven t found any that are applicable sky tv travel shop for them right now. Those types of buses work better in an urban environment with stop and go traffic, said Sam. But most buses are clean diesel with the exhaust in the roof and they dissipate the exhaust so it s a lot cleaner.
To help with guest efficiency, as well as safety, Disney is planning on implementing a new monorail train control system which will monitor and control the monorails. The system will allow us to monitor and control train movements in real time, said Sam. But don t worry, sky tv travel shop this doesn t mean there will no longer be monorail drivers. The role might change, said Sam. Instead of actively driving the trains, they still have to enable movement and make spiels to guests. In no way is the pilot position going away.
Because the new system will be computer controlled, it will reduce the wait times for guests. The system will know that a train is late or needs to speed up, versus how it s done now with humans, added Sam. From a safety perspective sky tv travel shop it will allow us to protect work zones. It will also reduce system down time. Right now when a train switches from one beam to another, we stop all train movement on the beam, but in the future the system would keep running and open up a gap to allow one train to switch from one side to another and do that more efficiently. sky tv travel shop Right now everything just stops and the guests see that and feel that.
This is bringing us to state-of-the-art. Most train systems in the world are using these types of control systems, added Sam. It will give us a lot more data and information about how we re operating and how we can operate more efficiently.
But even when this new system is in place in about two and a half years, guests los angeles international airport parking probably won t be allowed to ride in the cabin with the monorail pilots like they used to. The driver is focused on what he or she needs to do in terms of safe operation, so we won t be bringing that back, said Sam. ( EDITOR S NOTE : Disney later followed-up los angeles international airport parking to clarify sky tv travel shop that there are no plans to allow guests in the cabins at this time.)
A recent change to the monorail service is the reduction of hours during sky tv travel los angeles international airport parking shop Extra Magic Hours nights at the Magic Kingdom. This was done to allow more time for maintenance of the monorail trains and beam. To make up for the earlier stopping times, sky tv travel shop they ve added more busses sky tv travel shop late at night. They ve also reduced the number of monorail trains running mid-day because of less guest use. This allows los angeles international airport parking more time for maintenance, which helps keep downtime los angeles international airport parking to a minimum.
In addition to the monorail and bus changes, Disney has also made some changes to their roadways. A new turn lane was added extended at the Magic Kingdom sky tv travel shop to allow more busses to stack, which prevents a bottleneck with other vehicles and allows sky tv travel shop the buses to get to the park quicker. sky tv travel shop A new lane was also added to Buena Vista Drive near Disney s Hollywood Studios. (Sam squashed rumors of Hollywood Studios Buena Vista Road entrance closing.) Another new turn lane is planned for Osceola Parkway and Serbeth Road near Disney s Animal Kingdom.
Sam summed up the changes: All these different strategies help us continue los angeles international airport parking to make sure the guest experience is the best it could be. Related Posts: Avengers wrapped monorail los angeles international airport parking rumored los angeles international airport parking for Walt Disney World The latest on the early-morning crash between two Disney monorails High speed rail to offer a new option for getting to some Central Florida attractions The Avengers monorail debuts at Walt Disney World Video/Photos President sky tv travel shop Obama coming to Disney World No guest access, but entertainment sky tv travel shop options sky tv travel los angeles international airport parking shop have been added
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I wish WDW had the compressed propane trams (the ones that transport from parking lot to entrances). They use them at Disneyland in California and they are ultra-quiet and have clean exhaust los angeles international airport parking at least not diesel smelling.
Disney los angeles international airport parking should focus much less on buses and more on expanding the monorail system. Going to Disney los angeles international airport parking is a unique experience and there is nothing los angeles international airport parking unique sky tv travel shop about being in a crowded noisy bus that has to fight with car traffic along the way. Walt saw the benefit sky tv travel shop of trains (traditional or monorail) that was different from normal city planners. Having someone else who thinks like a normal city planner los angeles international airport parking takes away from the unique qualities of Disney. The dream continues to fade.
@Joe S only problem with expanding the monorail sky tv travel shop system is that each mile of track costs several million dollars. At the moment, it s more economical to focus on improving transportation systems already sky tv travel shop in place instead of subjecting the entire resort property to construction. In the future, I would definitely love to see resort-wide monorails but right now, it s just not practical. The dream only fades if you let it, my friend.
Russell, where I agree with you on improving the existing systems los angeles international airport parking already in place, sky tv travel shop I feel it would be prudent to begin expansion of the monorail system. Each year the expansion is delayed the cost will continue to rise. We see that daily in cities and states across the nation when it is reported that roadway expansion cost increase, so the same principle applies. I feel it should los angeles international airport parking be a balancing act and focus should begin to shift toward monorail expansion.
Expanding the current monorail system los angeles international airport parking would be transportation suicide for WDW. Monorails have one big inherant flaw in that they are not flexible like a bus system. If a mo