Close your eyes for a moment and think about Disney theme parks. What’s the first thing that pops into your head? You probably thought about Mickey Mouse and Space Mountain, as well as some happy memories from your youth. If you thought about it for much time, something else probably sprang to mind. It may even include the phrase, “Please stand clear of the doors. Por favor manténganse alejado de las puertas.”
The monorail is arguably the most iconic aspect of Disney’s theme park empire, inexorably linked with Disneyland and the company’s other theme parks since the beginning. This unforgettable transportation system embodies everything wonderful about Disney’s Happiest Place(s) on Earth. It’s a novelty that sets the tone for your entrance while also providing impressive utility for something so stylish, hauling a massive number of visitors in an organized and efficient manner. The monorail is the gold standard in concise, area-specific transportation even now, more than a half-century after its heralded Disneyland debut. And learning about its history is rich and engrossing, an apt reflection of Walt Disney himself.
So let’s dive in and discover the full story of Disney’s monorails…
Walt Disney envisions the future
Image: Kim Pedersen, Wikipedia (license)
The founder of The Walt Disney Company garnered a well-earned reputation as an innovator and forward-thinker, anticipating the needs of consumers well before even they knew what they wanted. First, he created cinematic shorts and features that built brand loyalty for a mouse named Mickey. Then, he designed animated adaptations of popular fairy tales, updating them with more benevolent messages to enrapture and entertain children. Finally, he fulfilled his ultimate dream when he crafted a unprecedented theme park brimming with his visions, ones that have stood the test of time.
Even though Disney didn’t bear witness to the success of Walt Disney World, his imprint upon both it and Disneyland is unmistakable. The decisions he made in building the two resorts were also revolutionary. Chief among them was the solution to the inevitable congestion problem of a popular tourist destination.
The problem with reaching a popular amusement park is the traffic. Even smaller locales struggle with this issue. For something as ambitious in scope as Disneyland, the idea of Los Angeles traffic was overwhelming, even in the 1950s and 60s. In the years Walt Disney spent planning his dream park, he understood and anticipated this dilemma. If Disneyland were to become the popular vacation spot he expected, its crowding issues could foster negative public perception. A place that’s hard to visit is less likely to attract repeat business from customers.
Walt Disney meets the floating train
Image: Disney
An odd solution presented itself in Germany. When Walt and Lillian Disney visited the country during a business trip in the early 1950s, his discovery of the Wuppertaler Schwebebahn opened his eyes to new possibilities. The man who invented Mickey Mouse started interacting with the local railway employees, asking detailed questions about the structure. These conversations were difficult for a simple reason: Walt Disney didn’t speak German! This fact did nothing to dissuade him from learning everything possible about their hanging-rail transportation system. He found himself captivated by the technology.
The Wuppertaler Schwebebahn aka Wuppertal Suspension Railway provided an elegant means of transporting citizens across the region. Literally translated as “Wuppertal floating train,” the system operates almost exactly as it sounds, even to this day. Due to its sturdy build, it also survived World War II bombings with minimal damage accrued. To wit, it’s the oldest electric elevated railway with hanging cars in the world, a singularly unique architectural marvel that offers tremendous utility.
The genius of all rail systems is that they can achieve something that highways cannot. They can connect a traveler from point A to point B in the most direct fashion, proving the Archimedes adage that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Major interstates generally meander at angles due to regulatory restraints as well as changes in landscape. An above-ground transportation system generally has no such restrictions. When properly designed, it can move a large volume of passengers in a short period of time via the most direct path.
The Wuppertal Suspension Railway does exactly this, transporting approximately 25 million people each year. Its track travels across an 8.3 mile range, roughly four stories in the air. By removing it from the ground where it would conflict with vehicular traffic, the system provided unrestricted destination-to-destination travel at a quick pace. Allowing for stops along the way, a full ride takes a half hour, and the overhead railway has run efficiently in this manner for over a century now.
In researching the mechanics of the Wuppertal, Disney felt like it was the blueprint for future societal traffic solutions. His aspiration to follow this model aptly demonstrated his visionary ideas. He wanted to provide Disney customers with a ride to his signature theme park that didn’t stop with its utility. He also loved the idea of triggering sensory responses by starting the vacation a bit earlier than expected. Anyone who has ever ridden a monorail recognizes that they’re officially at Disneyland or Walt Disney World the instant they step onboard. The association is unmistakable due to the lack of monorails in most of our everyday lives.
Lillian Disney’s upset stomach changes Disneyland forever
Image: Disney
Disney excitedly relayed his vision of bringing a hanging monorail to California to his wife. Then, the plan hit a snag. During her ride in Germany, Lillian struggled with the circular track of the Wuppertal Suspension Railway. She developed motion sickness due to the sharp turns. The cause involves the construction of the German system. While there’s an argument of semantics on the topic, most people would not describe the Schwebebahn as a true monorail.
The assumption people make with a monorail is that it rides on the top of a track, balancing on a beam for support. There is very little movement side-to-side, because stabilization is a key element of the architecture. A hanging train such as the Wuppertal is a bit different. Since the cart is by definition suspended from the railing above, some degree of side-to-side motion is inevitable. Engineers can reduce the swaying if so inclined, but it’s difficult to eliminate entirely, particularly around the corners of a curvy track. Lillian Disney discovered this issue during her initial experience on a suspension railway, and millions of travelers thank her for her temporary suffering.
While Walt Disney still loved the simple elegance of the monorail as a traffic solution, he had to take the health of potential customers into consideration. What if they responded as his wife had? Sick consumers don’t spend money on food and merchandise at the park while visiting, and they aren’t inclined to come back after the ill-fated visit.
There was secondary problem with the Wuppertal design as well. When you’re riding the monorail, you want to enjoy the gorgeous sights of the surrounding landscape. Disney himself noticed while riding on the hanging train that the monorail’s supporting girders were giant obstructions that often interrupted his view of the German terrain below. Because the train cart hung below, the girders were unavoidable.
For these two reasons, Disney deemed a hanging train too dangerous and unseemly, so the idea of a train-on-rail system gained momentum instead. It negated the motion sickness issues, while cleverly designed carts afforded the rider a panoramic view of the world outside, one unsullied by construction girders.
ALWEG comes to California
To bring his plan to fruition, Disney contacted Axel Wenner-Gren, the patent holder for the monorail design. In the 1930s, the Swedish industrialist was among the wealthiest people in the world. The owner of Electrolux, he found himself unable to remove his liquid assets from Germany. In the aftermath of World War II, the German government was sensitive to concerns about industrialists removing wealth from the country. Part of its end-of-war contrition involved historic economic sanctions that made daily life hard enough. Germans didn’t want wealthy visionaries to leave en masse.
Undeterred, Wenner-Gren instead plotted to use this wealth to make the world a better place. He tried to kick-start the future of transportation by turning the negative of his country-locked German currency into a positive. He employed it as seed money for the war-ravaged infrastructure of the country. The otherwise useless capital evolved into something amazing, a refreshing transportation alternative, the ALWEG (taking its letters from Axel Lennart Wenner-Gren).
This monorail style utilized a series of suspension springs and side wheels. Such cart apparatus provided greater stability. By balancing on a notched beam, the Wenner-Gren monorail reduced the chance of rider nausea while offering efficient, timely transportation. Strangely, no one in Germany ever chose to implement Wenner-Gren’s design. In order to entice a local or international government to build a monorail, he installed a full-size prototype complete with station at the end of the track in Cologne, Germany. Called the Fühlingen, it was the original test track, a name Disney would later repurpose at Epcot.
The ALWEG was an impressive architectural feat, and England and Brazil both contemplated building a monorail in populous cities to address growing traffic concerns. Each ultimately passed.
To garner further interest, Wenner-Gren and his people continued to streamline and perfect his monorail concept. No country could garner the requisite public support to justify the expense, though. Conveniently, Walt Disney was a visionary who answered to no one. He appreciated that Wenner-Gren’s monorail was ideal for the germinating Anaheim theme park, Disneyland.
How it works
Image: Disney
In order to comprehend Walt Disney’s vision for the future of his theme parks and, later, EPCOT, you have to understand the underlying mechanics of the monorail. The next time you ride one, notice the giant beam on the track in front of you. It’s functionally the stabilizing element in the design. It’s also the guide. The train cart moves along the path designated by the beam.
The propellant for monorail movement is electricity. The technique is simple. Wheels on the side of the carriage straddle this kinetic energy, which a hidden third rail produces. It’s located either beside or inside the main beam. The motion action for a monorail operates in a few steps. The third rail produces the energy, which activates pneumatic rubber tires. They follow the linear path of the beam.
In order to reduce the motion sickness issues that Lillian Disney experienced, monorails such as the ones at Disneyland and Walt Disney World include additional tire clamps. Their primary purpose is to limit bouncing inside the train cart, and they also aid the monorail’s guidance as well. A hanging railway system lacks this additional layer of stability, which explains why riders occasionally suffer bouts of nausea during their travels.
Suffice to say that the straddle-beam monorail with additional tire support is much better for guests with queasy stomachs. In addition, they’re much more cost-effective and energy-efficient than other forms of travel. Plus, they cultivate less noise pollution since the rubberized tires are quieter than other forms of railway travel. Quietness was especially important to Disney, because he didn’t want anything distracting visitors from enjoying his breathtaking theme park.
Given the efficiency, quietness, and stability of the monorail, Disney’s infatuation was understandable. He stated on several occasions that it would become the rapid transit solution of tomorrow. He loved the fact that his park would offer one of the first previews of future transportation.
Disneyland – Mark I
Image: ALWEG
Starting with the initial batch in 1959, all monorails receive the Mark designation. A larger number reflects that it’s a newer model. The Mark I series was obviously the initial batch, and its heritage is memorialized at its park of origin.
A plaque at Disneyland proudly notes that the monorail system has operated since 1959, and it even lists the specific architecture from its 2004 rededication ceremony. The applicable quote is, “Disney engineers designed this monorail system, based on the system developed by Axel L. Werner-Gren (ALWEG). Built at the Walt Disney Studios, the system is intended to apply to urban transit. Opened in 1959, it has been in daily passenger service ever since. The cars are equipped with 600 volt D.C. 100 HP electric motors driving rubber tired wheels on a single beam trackway.”
Rather than copy the ALWEG system completely, Disney and his Imagineers settled on a smaller 3/5 scale version of the original Swedish design. The team at WED Enterprises (now Walt Disney Imagineering) called on a rising talent, Bob Gurr, to craft the now-famous bubble style. Gurr understood that his job was more than simply delivering a functional monorail.
Googie style
The monorail represented one of the initial sights a guest would enjoy of Disneyland. It had to grab attention with its look. The current style of monorail championed by ALWEG fundamentally failed the eye test in this regard. Gurr famously described the style as, “A loaf of bread with a slot in the bottom, sitting on a stick.” If Disneyland implemented that monorail design, it may not have stood the test of time.
Instead, Gurr settled on a sleek appearance for the monorail. The pop culture zeitgeist of the 1950s fixated on one subject: space exploration. Man’s race to the Moon was in full bloom, and the popular science fiction of the era influenced people across all fields. Imagineers were no different, which is why Gurr threw out the loaf of bread in favor of a rocket ship facing, which he claimed came about after a Saturday morning viewing of an episode of Buck Rogers.
The bubble look of the monorail distinguished it from all peers, making it an industry novelty. The technical term for the design is – seriously – Googie, which means exaggerated Modernism, an apt description for the space-age rail system. It was especially popular in Southern California in the 1950s.
As the press grew aware of this bold, inventive piece of architecture, they started to celebrate the monorail for its technology as well as its style. Then again, many of them believed that the project was doomed to become a historic failure. Gurr, fittingly named a Disney Legend in 2004, proved them wrong with the Mark I. Afterward, he became the go-to designer for all monorail designs as well as other transportation devices at Disney’s properties. He had a hand in the Matterhorn Bobsleds, the Submarine Voyage, and Autopia. He grew so powerful at the company that he eventually gave himself a grand job title, Director of Special Vehicle Development.
The monorail was always Gurr’s crown jewel. The initial 1959 version with the rocket ship bubble at the front came in two colors, red and blue. They were identical in every other regard. Each Mark I train included three cars, all of which could simultaneously ride on the same track There were 10 large pneumatic tires for most of the movement plus 44 smaller ones for stabilization.
The Disneyland Monorail System – under the hood
Motion occurred when copper and steel busbars received a 600-volt current from the stabilizing, primary beam. This electric charge was shared among all the cars, not just the one in front. The trains featured a quartet of 100 horsepower motors that pushed them down the initial 12,300 feet of track. While they were not intended to run at maximum speed, the Mark I trains could reach speeds of 50 miles per hour. They generally operate at 30 miles per hour
The specifications of the track were a bit smaller than the German version. Built to 3/5 scale, the 26-inch-wide concrete beam provided the path and stabilizing force for the train. Giant concrete columns spaced 110 feet apart supported the weight of the beams. The beams and columns were built separately and then tethered at the end of the process, creating 600-feet superstructures capable of elegant transportation. Since the power source is electric, the monorail is environmentally friendly. It emits no pollutants into the atmosphere.
The cost of building the monorail from the ground up was hefty. Disney Imagineers explained that each mile of construction cost over a million dollars. That’s the equivalent of over eight million dollars today.
Just to show that nothing ever goes as planned, even the introduction orthf the monorail involved a misfire. The ceremonial scissors planned for the nationally televised ribbon cutting ceremony failed to cut the ribbon. Disney had to take the novelty material and tear it himself. Fortunately, the initial rides on the monorail were not as eventful. Disney considered the successful implementation of the monorail to be a critical step toward building the community of tomorrow, one of his life’s true ambitions.
The E-Ticket ride
Upon the debut of the monorail at Disneyland on June 14, 1959, it was instantly the first monorail in the Western Hemisphere to operate daily. As you would expect, it was immediately beloved. The monorail was not only the most discussed attraction at the park but also the most popular. Notably, it was not employed as transportation at first but simply an attraction instead. It was also not free to ride in the early days.
Have you heard of the E Ticket at Disneyland? This admission system entitled its possessor to ride the latest and greatest attractions at the park. Obviously, it wasn’t free or even cheap for the era. The E Ticket was superior to the A Ticket, B Ticket, and so forth, and it didn’t even exist until the monorail debuted. At that point, Disney employees added what would become two of their most popular rides, the Submarine Voyage and Matterhorn Bobsleds, and the brand new monorail to the E Ticket, the best of the best.
A trivia note about the monorail involves its first version. Since the red color was the first to debut, Imagineers offer a tip of the cap every time they refresh the line. The first functional unit is ordinarily the red one, a nice touch of symmetry to the monorail’s 1959 debut.
Disneyland – Mark II and Mark III
The original intention of the monorail was to highlight all the wonders of Disneyland. The track passed directly through Tomorrowland, with the idea of people enjoying the unique view so much that they’d fall in love with the park. The instant, immense popularity of the monorail altered those plans. By 1961, the company already determined that the new transportation system should become an integral part of the visitation experience.
Disney Imagineers took the knowledge they gained from become the Western Hemisphere’s trial run for monorails and developed new trains. The Mark II vehicles were four cars instead of three. Disney also increased the size of the fleet from two to three, effectively doubling the maximum ride capacity. After only two years, Disney already knew that they needed to handle more traffic on each monorail ride.
A new tram color, yellow, was also added. Cosmetically, the trains were very similar in design, and that look has largely stood as status quo throughout the monorail’s Anaheim existence. The lone change with the Mark II was a larger bubble facing on the front and rear cars. This look was status quo from 1961 until 1969.
The other new addition was the crucial change. The monorail tracks were expanded to the Disneyland Hotel. With the additional two and a half miles of track, the monorail needed a new station. It was added at the hotel itself, creating the seminal experience of the monorail train running directly to the hotel. It’s among the most iconic Disney theme park experiences, yet it wasn’t available when the monorail originally debuted.
The Mark III joined the line in 1968. These green-colored trains offered a streamlined design and better efficiency. They also added an additional car and other vehicle to the fleet, increasing the maximum capacity yet again. The other modifications were minor but focused on enhancing the guest experience. The windows increased in size to provide a better view of the area, and bucket seats offered a more comfortable ride experience. The new monorail line cost more than two million dollars, over double the 1959 fleet expense. The Mark III line proved so popular and reliable that it remained in operation for almost 20 years, eventually getting phased out in 1987.
The other notable change during the 1970s didn’t involve the vehicles themselves. Instead, it was a name change for the Disney fleet. Since ALWEG had been closed for a decade, Disney dropped the unwieldy original name of Disneyland ALWEG Monorail System. They settled on the much cleaner identifier of the Disneyland Monorail System, which remains its title to this day.
Disneyland – Mark V and Mark VII
In September of 1987, a new fleet of trams debuted at Disneyland. The Mark V vehicles came in the colors of Blue, Orange, Purple, and Red, and there were five fiberglass-encased cars comprising each train, the same as the Mark III. The fiberglass frame reduced the weight of the vehicles, thereby increasing their energy efficiency. The trains all featured an onboard computer to maintain performance logs.
The most distinctive change with the Mark V is one that we take for granted today. The doors opened automatically. Other than offering enhanced technology and the long overdue introduction of air conditioning, the primary differences were cosmetic. The infamous bubble style was mothballed in favor of the Learjet look that better resembled mankind’s attempts to ride the sky during the era. With the space race no longer front page news, quasi-futurism fell out of favor. The new monorail aesthetics were less ambitious, and this style remained in place for over 20 years. An odd bit of trivia about the Mark V is that they were the original Mark I trains, redesigned with new bodies.
In July of 2008, the Mark VII debuted after a series of failed starts. The first monorail built in Canada, it suffered from design flaws that proved difficult to debug, delaying the reboot of the fleet by several months. The Mark VII is the current train deployed at Disneyland, so if you’ve visited the park at any point since then, you know about its look and style. They claim a modified style that is basically a combination of the Mark V and the original Mark I. It’s more spaceship-styled in appearance, but it’s not as bubble-like in design, primarily due to wind resistance considerations. The larger bubble reduces efficiency so the sleek, Learjet facing is kept to a degree.
The Mark VII comes in three colors: orange, red, and blue. In terms of ride improvements, the most important one is seating. The Mark VII discards prior designs in favor of the much cleverer inward-facing benches on the ends and back-to-back window facing benches in the middle. The outcome is a less in-your-face monorail ride experience while the train manages to seat more guests simultaneously. Disney Imagineers are masters of eking out more capacity from the same designated area.
Now that we’ve explored the history of the monorail at Disneyland, let’s take a look at Walt Disney World…
Project X
The proverbial City of Tomorrow Disney envisioned was not originally known as EPCOT but instead Project X. The company secretly acquired over 27,000 acres of Florida land in hopes of crafting a future utopia. EPCOT stood for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, and the company’s visionary founder had been obsessed with this ambitious idea for a decade by the time they finally purchased the land.
Monorails were considered a key aspect of the future community. While the one at Disneyland originally lacked novelty, its advancement into the actual transportation stage was successful beyond Disney’s wildest dreams. He planned to incorporate the premise while adding new elements to solve the issues of traffic and transportation once and for all.
Guests would arrange their own travel to Orlando, Florida. At that point, Disney employees would greet them – in their own language, no less – and craft an itinerary for the duration of the visit. With the plans finalized, the EPCOT guest would take the monorail to the City of Tomorrow. Inside the city limits, the PeopleMover would address all intra-city transportation. It was a plan so brilliant that it would stand out just as much today as it did fifty years ago when it was announced.
Building a monorail on water
As Walt Disney plotted strategy for building his dream city of tomorrow, EPCOT, the first step was the introduction of Walt Disney World. The theme park opened in 1971, a dozen years after the original Mark I line at Disneyland. Since there were already three generations of monorails in existence, Disney Imagineers had detailed information about the best tactics for monorail design. The problem is that the state of Florida offered different challenges.
In California, WED Enterprises had free reign with their construction. They built Disneyland on 160 acres that had previously stood as orange groves, 30 minutes south of Los Angeles. There were no topographical restrictions for the build, so they included their own in order to highlight the potential of a monorail system. It featured seven perfect grades and curvatures of 120 feet in radius, none of which was needed to the overall quality of the land.
The Orlando build was quite a bit trickier. With the parking lot on the opposite side of the water from the park, the monorail is not just ornamental in Orlando. While the Disneyland course primarily travels through the park itself, the Disney World version needed to transfer guests across Seven Seas Lagoon. Boats were the plain solution, but theme park tourists expected another world-famous monorail at the new Florida locale. Walt Disney wasn’t about to disappoint, but fate intervened.
Death of a dreamer but not a dream
In 1966, Walt Disney’s death robbed the world of the bold dream of Project X. After he died, the project proved unsustainable without his force of will. As a newpaper headline viciously but accurately stated, “EPCOT Died Ten Minutes After Walt’s Body Cooled.”
Disney World was also temporarily imperiled by its creator’s death. Walt’s older brother, Roy, interceded by taking the helm of a company from which he had previously announced his impending retirement. While Walt didn’t live to see the park’s debut, his fingerprints were all over its design, and Roy ensured his brother’s dream would live on to inspire future generations. Roy even slightly altered the name of the new resort by adding a single word to Disney World, Walt.
Walt Disney left behind a legacy, and a lot of the plans in Orlando were lofty, especially the ones for the latest “highway in the sky.” He viewed it as the first step toward his city of tomorrow. Bob Gurr once again took the lead in building the latest monorail, the Mark IV. His explicit instruction from his boss was to take advantage of the lake crossing. The monorail should make guests feel as if they’re leaving the real world behind the moment they step onboard to journey to Walt Disney World.
Walt Disney World – Mark IV
The blueprint Disney left Gurr was “specifically vague.” The company founder notoriously knew precisely what he wanted yet left his plans ambiguous. His preferred management style was to lead his employees to his way of thinking rather than dictate ideas. In this fashion, they’d discover the same positives that he’d known all along. It added to the communal nature of the creative process.
Once the vision for EPCOT died, the adaptation to Walt Disney World operated fairly smoothly. The company included many of the world’s foremost experts on monorail technology, and Gurr was the greatest of them all. He determined that the ideas of the Disneyland monorail were still sound, so very few adjustments were required.
The trick with the Orlando rail system is the space required. Whereas the Disneyland track only covers two-and-a-half miles, Walt Disney World’s monorail must crisscross 14.7 miles. When it debuted in 1971, it was a bit shorter, but the larger issue is the same. The need to transport guests from multiple entry points across a huge area requires a larger monorail system. In order to solve the problem, Orlando features a dual-beam track as opposed to the single-beam at Anaheim, cleverly doubling the potential rider capacity.
In 1971, the Walt Disney World tracks circled the Seven Seas Lagoon. The monorail made stops at Magic Kingdom, the Transportation and Ticket Center, and two resorts. Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort and the Contemporary Resort Hotel were stopping points on the original route. The idea was for guests staying at the deluxe hotels to enjoy convenient transport to and from the park. Over time, the monorail added an additional stop at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa.
The Contemporary Resort Hotel, as it was called in 1971, offers a dazzling feature that continues to impress even to this day. The monorail passes directly through the facility. Onlookers are treated to the shocking vision of a futuristic train passing right by their room. The feature has proven so popular that when Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa debuted in 2001, it mimicked the concept. The crucial difference is that guests cannot board a monorail at the Anaheim property, but they can walk right on the one that stops at the Contemporary’s boarding station.
The major physical addition to the Orlando monorail system occurred in 1982. With the debut of Epcot, Disney wisely expanded the track. The Transportation and Ticket Center near Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort was extended to service the new theme park. The aforementioned double-beam system comes into play with this track. The outer beam loop provides direct transport from Magic Kingdom to the Transportation and Ticket Center. Meanwhile, the inner beam loop stops at the three magic hotels, the Transportation and Ticket Center, and Magic Kingdom. It’s an elegant method to keep thousands of guests heading in the right direction at the same time.
Due to the massive length of the track and the sheer volume of guests at Walt Disney World, the Mark IV fleet had 10 trains, easily the most for a monorail up until that point. The monorail system featured five cars per train, and their primary distinguishing characteristic was a colored stripe. The vehicles were otherwise cosmetically identical. Each train cost $6 million to construct, making the Orlando monorail system the most expensive monorail project ever at the time. The Mark IV fleet largely remained in operation until 1989, although some survived until 1991.
Walt Disney World – Mark VI
If you visit Walt Disney World today, this is the fleet in operation. Oddly, the same is true if you visit Las Vegas. They contracted Bombardier Transportation to build the same trains as are used in Orlando. Their physical appearance is different, so it’s easy to distinguish the two monorails in pictures, though. Since Disney launched their new line in 1989, it’s fair to say that the company should be planning the next monorail iteration in the near future.
The Mark VI line is less expensive than the last iteration. Each train carries a price tag of $3.5 million. There are a dozen of them in the fleet, and each one contains six cars. For this reason, the current trains are over 200 feet long. The maximum capacity is 361 people, with 20 seated and 40 standing guests per car plus the tram operator.
Originally, the capacity was 365 people, with four guests allowed in the cab. Alas, two monorails collided in 2009, killing the pilot of one of the vehicles. It was the only monorail death in the history of its Disney operation, and as a safety precaution, cab guests are now prohibited. Disney’s North American monorails continue to require a human operator, though.
Marty Sklar, the famed International Ambassador for Walt Disney Imagineering, once said of Walt Disney, “Walt Disney had one foot in the past, because he loved nostalgia, and one foot in the future, because he loved new technology.” The monorail matches this description as well. The technology harkens back to the turn of the century, the LAST century. Somehow, it still feels like an early warning signal of a science-fiction utopia we’ve yet to create.
Every ride exemplifies how far Walt Disney stood beyond his peers. Something that existed only as a test track simulation in the mid-1950s now stands as one of the most recognizable staples of multiple Disney theme parks. Even today, monorails stand apart for their energy-efficiency, reliability, and stylishness. As one of the primary remnants of Walt Disney’s legacy, they remind visitors not just of the man but also of his epic vision.
The history of the monorail encapsulates all that is amazing about the founder of The Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney anticipated a problem years before his park opened to the public. He understood all too well that the problem with major roads is that everyone uses them.
From the moment Disney gazed upon his first hanging train, he envisioned a better tomorrow at Disneyland and then a utopian community in Florida. He appreciated that the Monorail would empower Disney theme parks with the ability to transfer their customers directly to company facilities without worrying about non-Disney traffic. In Orlando alone, people have ridden so many miles on the monorail that’s it the equivalent of 30 round-trips to the Moon, a statistic that Disney himself would love. The next time you enjoy a ride on the monorail, take a moment to appreciate the vision of the man who started it all with a mouse.
