The Declining Quality of Disney Transportation, and What it Says About the Compa

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The Declining quality of Disney Transportation and what it says about the Company overall

Even before Walt Disney knew what he wanted to do with his "studio park", he knew that he wanted it to be "surrounded by a train". Ever since then, Disney Theme Parks and Resorts have been synonymous with unique, innovative, and impeccably themed means of transportation, both inside and outside of the parks. Functionality, while important, was never as emphasized as the quality of theming in a transportation option. Therefore, the resorts, especially beginning with the scope of Walt Disney World, contained anything from steam engines, to horse drawn carraiges, to fleets of various boats, to people movers, to monorails as means to get people around ever increasing sizes of land masses. This is the way it has always been, but recent cutbacks from Eisner and Pressler have seriously endangered the tradition of unique transportation at the parks. These cutbacks provide an interesting lens to look at what's going on with the company today.

I know, the Discovery River Boats were quickly discontinued after AK's opening, but if management had been willing to give Imagineering the money to conform to their original concept, the boat ride would have served as a preview of Beastly Kingdom, complete with sightings of Dragons, a Kraken, and an Unicorn.

The monorails are by far the most effective, popular mode of transportation at Disneyland and Disney World. They are still, after several decades, novel, unique, and incredibly effective at moving huge numbers of people around in short periods of time. Guests have always, and probably will forever love these futuristic modes of transportation. Indeed, in this country at least, they represent and are a symbol of Disney parks as much as Cinderella Castle or the Matterhorn. Unique transportation creates a unique sense of anticipation for the future day at a Disney park. There's no doubt about this contention. When EPCOT was built in the early eighties, even though it was incredibly expensive (especially given the economic climate of the time), miles of monorail tracks were connected so guests could enjoy the anticipation of EPCOT in the same way they enjoyed the anticipation of The Magic Kingdom. This was, of course, before Eisner came along and dictated that EVERYTHING should be shown to make a profit, even if showing such a thing is inherently impossible beyond a shadow of a doubt. It doesn't seem like an accident that Eisner has never really added monorail capacity in any form throughout his tenure as C.E.O.. With Eisner came ever increasingly reliance on that "magical" form of transportation, the bus. Disney World has over 200 of them working 18 hour days now, making them by far the most used form of transportation on property. At closing times at parks, it's not at all uncommon to see 1.5 to 2 hour waits for an available bus (I'm mostly speaking of the larger value hotels such as Disney's All Star Resorts, and it's only going to get worse when the Decades resort opens in a few years). Hypothetically, if monorails were connected to all of the hotels (I know this is unrealistic, but for the sake of example), and since we know that monorail capacity is at least ten times the capacity of busses, we could divide the two hour wait time by a factor of ten and determine that monorails, if used instead of busses at these larger hotels, would account for a wait time of only twelve minutes. Now that's functionality. Now let's explore the fact that the existing monorails in this country are being ignored in terms of maintinence in an effort to squeeze just a few more bucks out of the increasingly stone like coffers of The Walt Disney Company. Since at least 1990, Eisner has personally forced those working on the monorails to waive yearly "mini rehabs" to tune up the workhorses in an effort to, you guessed it, spend less money. Over the years, this lack of attention has led to numerous mechanical problems with the trains. At Disneyland, they have been forced to take a train out of commission because of the necessity of using it for spare parks.Their budget won't allow for the buying of new monorail components. At DisneyWorld, although the trains FINALLY got a recarpeting job (it only took eleven years), they still suffer from horrible ventilation and mechanical problems. For example, the WDW monorails used to travel roughly twice as fast as they do now. Unfortunately, the rarely tinkered with trains can't take the speeds they were designed to handle anymore, all because of funds being withheld for maintinence purposes. Don't assume, however, that all is lost on the Disney monorail front. In it's expansion of the Tokyo Disney Resort, Oriental Land Company (who pays all the bills, not Disney) is adding over four miles of track and constructing modern monorails, compatible with Japanese monorail standards. The trains are HUGE, have mickey shaped windows and handrails, and are beautiful both inside and out. In addition, Oriental Land Company is constructing absolutely beautiful, fully themed stations outside of it's parks for the monorails to dock at. This of course begs the question, if the much poorer (comparatively) Oriental Land Company can afford to upgrade their transportation, why can't the much richer Disney attempt to do the same. You guessed it, Disney is no longer willing to spend money on such projects, as you can't prove they make money (the same reasoning was used in the cancellation of many recent attractions, including Beastly Kingdom, Fire Mountain, and the scaling down of Mission Space at Epcot). Isn't it grand?

Concept art of the new monorails at the newly refurbished Tokyo Disneyland Resort

Nice, aren't they? Will you be seeing any of these beautiful new monorails at an American park near you? Not a chance in hell.

Of course, that's not all O.L.C. is spending money on to upgrade their transportation.

One of several newly constructed monorail stations ready to receive passengers in Tokyo within the next year.

Unfortunately, monorails aren't the only transportation problem with the modern Disney. Recall that, up until now, all Deluxe Level resorts had access to at least one alternate (monorail or boat) means of transportation. This won't be the case in a few months, when Disney's Safari Lodge opens with only the option of taking those "magical" busses, which is worse in some ways there due to the far west positioning of the resort on Disney property. Some of those the trips will take forever. This isn't good, considering people will be paying (at least) upwards of 300 dollars a night at the resort. I guess no one can any longer make the rationalization that staying in a Deluxe resort means better and more varied transportation options. Other resort transportation has been affected as well. Disney's Dixie Landings and Port Orleans resorts used to have day and nightime boat trips to the Marketplace and Pleasure Island. Those trips, however, were deemed too expensive, and the trips have been cut back to journeys between the resorts. Guess what the guest staying at one of these resorts has to do to get to the Marketplace? That's right, those "magical" busses rear their exhaust in your face once again. Worse yet, rumors suggest that Disney cast members driving the boats between the resorts will soon be fired so that non cast members can be subcontracted out, thus saving money (are you seeing a pattern here?)

Think of Main Street USA for a moment. The music, the food smells being lofted outside in an effort to make you hungry. What's missing? Well if you've been at the park recently and several years ago, you might just realize that those charming Main Street Vehicles, including the horse drawn carriages, are becoming harder and harder to find. They used to operate all day long, giving an incredible sense of theming and ambiance to Main Street. Recently, however, it's become more and more difficult to find these transportation options after noon or so. Why? You guessed it, money. Not that these details cost all that much for a division of the company that made half a billion dollars last quarter, but then again you can't PROVE they make a profit either.

The declining quality of various transportation options at Disney's American parks is clearly indicative of a greater problem discussed at length on this site. Disney is hoarding every cent they get, at the rather suspiciously motived CEO Michael Eisner's directive. Why is this penny pinching suspicious? Eisner's contract with Disney runs out in 2005 (roughly), and his most greedy instincts have got to be tellng him that driving up the stock prices, through penny pinching, is the best way for him to receive a large cash out from his stock options when he leaves. Screw the company that's made him hundreds of millions of dollars. He'll be long gone before any real financial fallout from his cheap strategies comes to the surface:(

The monorails sure haven't seen one of these signs in a while!!

Proposed means of transportation designed to take guests in style from their parking garage to the new Disneyland Resort, including the proposed Westcot Center.

What are guests actually getting as a means of transportation to and from the parking lots?

Yes, those lovely Six Flags style trams.

Now that's "magical".