Progress City, U.S.A.

Those of you who are new to Progress City – and there are many! – can catch up with previous entries in this series here.

#3 – Overhaul Resort Transportation

Guess which one transfixed me as a child with its awesomeness? Go ahead, guess.

Criticism – even loving, constructive criticism like the kind your friends craft here at Progress City – can be a difficult thing to pull off. One always wants to cover their flank, and hope that there’s no gaping hole in your logic to render your argument easily dismissible. The hardest counter-argument to overcome, and one that comes up most frequently in (loving, constructive) criticism of Disney is the “if it ain’t broke” school of thought. If attendance at the Magic Kingdom is sky-high, why fork out the millions for a new E-ticket? If the kids are lining up for the zoom-zoom at Test Track, why try to aim any higher conceptually?

Thus the critic can relax a bit when the subject matter presents a nice, slow, sloppy pitch right across the center of the plate. When “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” doesn’t apply. For Walt Disney World, one of those areas is resort transportation. Long neglected by management, it most definitely is broken. The only solution, if I may venture a suggestion, is to fix it!

Transportation has always been a key element of Disney’s themed attractions; in fact, the entire idea of a Disney-designed park sprang from Walt wanting a place to showcase his scale-model trains. Walt’s locomotive collaborations with animators Ward Kimball and Ollie Johnston led at first to his backyard layout, the Carolwood Pacific, but soon Walt wanted to share his trains with the public. From Walt’s first idea for a “Mickey Mouse Park” in Burbank to the opening of Disneyland in 1955, the only constant in Walt’s vision was the presence of a train.

Each of the Magic Kingdoms built since has had a train route, but Walt didn’t stop there. He debuted the first daily-service monorail route in the Western Hemisphere in 1959 with Disneyland’s ALWEG monorail, and introduced a new concept for intra-city transport in 1967 with the creation of the WEDway Peoplemover. All this was a mere prelude to Walt’s plans for Florida, which would use all the technology that WED Enterprises had pioneered in Disneyland’s themed attractions to build a city of the future.

The city of EPCOT’s underground transportation hub

EPCOT – the city – was designed specifically to embrace new concepts in inter and intra-city transportation. Of all the possible changes in the social or technological forces that shape new cities, Walt elected to put a special emphasis on the innovative transportation infrastructure that would determine the layout and structure of EPCOT. EPCOT would be defined by its transportation systems, all designed to mitigate the unfortunate effects that a postwar boom in car ownership had inflicted on the highways and city streets of America. Seeing the blight that traffic had brought to the Southern California freeways, Walt had pushed for a Los Angeles to build its own monorail system. Sadly, the plan was rebuffed by city officials. The Florida project was instigated to give Walt the creative freedom that he could never have in California; no longer handcuffed by short-sighted bureaucrats thanks to the creation of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, Walt could do as he pleased. He could test these new systems in a real-world setting and thus prove their utility to outside skeptics.

The dreams of EPCOT city essentially died along with Walt in 1966, but many of the underlying tenets and philosophies of its design were retained during the creation of Walt Disney World’s Phase One. Key to this was the reliance on mass-transportation and the elimination of auto traffic for transportation within the resort itself. Hubs of activity within the resort would be connected by transportation that would be as entertaining as it was efficient; “getting there” would, for once, actually prove to be half the fun. Most importantly, though, was the idea that guests would no longer have to use their cars after they arrived at the resort. In fact, management originally asked that none of the resort hotels be designed with parking lots; all guests would leave their cars at a central transportation area and reach their hotels via internal transportation. This plan was scuttled due to the obvious objections by hotel managers, but it was clear that cars still weren’t part of the plan for Walt Disney World.

An attraction in its own right – the Osceola-class steamships. PS: BRING BACK THE OSCEOLA-CLASS STEAMSHIPS!

In its early years, Walt Disney World was promoted as much more than a collection of theme parks. It was presented as a fully-integrated resort experience, and key to that image was its internal transportation. Much of the space in those original guidebooks or promotional materials was devoted to the fleet of monorails, watercraft, ferries or trains that kept guests moving within the resort. Again, the transportation was presented as not a utility but an attraction unto itself. And who can argue with that? Sleek monorails gliding through the Contemporary’s lobby, sunset launches on the Seven Seas Lagoon, or Fort Wilderness’s steam trains – these were amenities few other vacation destinations could match.

All this came to an end with Michael Eisner’s arrival at Disney. The Walt Disney World resort began an unprecedented period of expansion and growth under Eisner’s leadership, but the transportation infrastructure did not grow accordingly. Buses became the default transportation option for the new resort hotels that were springing up nearly every year, and the monorail line was not extended to the new theme and water parks. A bus depot was added to the Magic Kingdom, bypassing the TTC altogether and removing the element of theatrical reveal provided by the trip across the Seven Seas Lagoon. This was necessitated by the thousands of guests pouring in from the new hotels, with buses as their only means of transportation within the resort.

That is where the situation still stands today. Dozens upon dozens of buses queue up outside the parks, belching diesel exhaust into the air and crowding the roads of the resort. They’re loud and overcrowded; no matter how many times Disney redesigns the buses to allow for more guests to be crammed in each individual vehicle, guests at peak ridership times wind up packed in like sardines. There’s nothing like walking all day in the parks, then standing during a long ride back to your resort while stuffed in with dozens of other sweaty guests while several babies scream all around you. That’s Disney magic ™ at work.

What’s ultimately the most frustrating is not the current situation in and of itself, but that it could have been avoided had any of the many alternative plans developed over the past several decades been enacted. Disney knows that there’s a problem, and has actually created elaborate plans to mitigate the situation, but whenever it comes down to a decision they opt to buy more buses instead. Many times these plans have been stymied by a lack of vision or sheer avarice, while others have been made impractical at key moments by world events.

The current Downtown Disney area, with the once planned monorail route (blue) and WEDway route (green)

While Walt Disney World was a meticulously planned resort upon its opening in 1971, many of the developments built subsequently were not as well linked into the transportation system. This was not for a lack of planning, however. Materials discussing the development of the Lake Buena Vista Marketplace and Villas during the 1970s always focused on the automobile-free nature of their design. Internal paths through the Villa communities were intended for bicycles, pedestrians, electric carts and even horses – but not cars. By the late 1970s there was a plan to connect the Village to the monorail line, and to provide a convenient WEDway loop through the area that would eventually become Downtown Disney and the Hotel Plaza.

During Eisner’s reign, plans were drawn up but not executed to connect the Disney-MGM Studios to a monorail spur from EPCOT. This line would also connect the EPCOT resort area to the monorail line, an amenity befitting their supposed status as “deluxe” resorts. Even as late as the year 2000, our very own Beacon Joe sat in on a cast member presentation by the then-Senior Vice President of Operations, Lee Cockerell, in which Cockerell outlined a sweeping new program to upgrade the resort’s transportation infrastructure. The plan incorporated light rail and possibly more monorails, and would have had the goal of phasing out bus use across the resort. Following the tourism downturn of 2001, however, these plans were abandoned and Disney began once more to buy more buses.

The proposed monorail route from EPCOT to the Disney-MGM Studios, passing by the Yacht & Beach and Swan & Dolphin resorts (Martin Smith)

One could argue against the bus-centric plan on the old-fashioned grounds of “guest experience” or “immersive theming.” But the fact of the matter is that the system has become so overloaded, unwieldy and downright unpleasant that it demands a solution. Disney could once make an argument for their steep room rates on the grounds of convenience; you would be right on property, after all, and could easily access the parks and resort via Disney’s free transportation. But in recent years it’s become such a headache to use Disney transportation that guests would often reach their destinations more quickly if they stayed off property and drove in themselves. Their off-property room would be a fraction of the price of Disney’s lodging, and one wouldn’t have to deal with the hassle of those packed-in bus rides.

To give Disney some credit, a few improvements have been made in the last couple of years or so. The introduction of GPS technology and centralized tracking software has made the system somewhat more efficient. Five or six years ago, I thought that if I had one more bus driver take me on a ridiculously circuitous route across property to reach a nearby destination, I’d never stay in a Disney hotel again. Another improvement, although purely cosmetic, is the addition of the site-specific soundtracks on the buses. I actually find that incredibly cool, and hope that whoever thought that one up got a bonus.

Despite these improvements, though, the fact remains that the system is broken. Waits are often far too long, and buses are often far too crowded. Again, the transportation system used to be a selling point for Walt Disney World. Now it’s something you have to overlook and deal with if you want to experience the “magic.”

Wouldn’t you rather take the WEDway?

Let me make up a scenario off the top of my head. Let’s say that a guest is staying at Coronado Springs, and they want to go to EPCOT in the morning, do some shopping at the Village for lunch, go back to their hotel to change and wind up at the California Grill for dinner. First, they take a bus to EPCOT – that’s easy, unless there’s a long wait or the bus is crammed in with strollers and ECVs. EPCOT to the Village is a difficult one, since Disney doesn’t run buses from the parks to the Village to stick it to those tiny fraction of guests who would park at the Village to avoid parking fees. So instead guests are either forced to walk through EPCOT to the International Gateway, to take a Downtown Disney bus from Boardwalk or the Yacht Club, or to take a monorail to the TTC and catch a bus there. This trip, being wildly optimistic, would take at least an hour. Downtown Disney to Coronado Springs requires a single bus trip, although you might have to stop at Marketplace, Pleasure Island and Typhoon Lagoon along the way. That eats up quite a bit of your time as well. To get to the California Grill from your hotel, you’d either have to catch a bus to the Magic Kingdom and walk to the Contemporary, or take a bus to the Village and then take another bus to the Contemporary. This route would include all of the internal stops in Coronado Springs, and the Contemporary bus may stop at the TTC or other resorts – I’m not sure on that one. Heaven help you if you want to do something afterwards; a minigolf whim would require a trip from the Contemporary to a theme park or the Village, then a bus to the Swan hotel, then a walk to Fantasia Gardens. When all is said and done, you have to hope that transportation is still operating to get you back to a theme park or the Village to take you to the connecting bus back to Coronado Springs. Don’ t you wish you had your car?

Basically, unless you’re just going from your hotel to a theme park and back, internal transportation is a headache. Fixing the system would require a massive investment, tackling many separate goals simultaneously. It would require an entirely different plan for the resort’s infrastructure, and it’s needed immediately. They won’t do it, but they should.

When Walt Disney was involved in planning the Florida property, transportation was one of his highest priorities.   A jet airport of the future, a revolutionary city (EPCOT) that would provide public transportation to all, and a welcome center where folks could leave their cars behind and board a high speed monorail that connected the entire property.

When Walt passed away and plans were scaled back bit by bit, the priority of transportation stayed.  Instead of a transportation hub intersecting with Highway 192 as originally planned, Roy Disney and Co. moved it up to its current location on the shores of the Seven Seas Lagoon at the tip of the Magic Kingdom parking lot.  Still, everything was connected by monorail or boat, as all early publications boasted.

Another priority for Walt (no doubt a product of the 1950s and 60s Freeway revolution) was that there were to be no traffic lights on Disney property.  You can see interesting solutions to this in the roundabouts of the proposed EPCOT street layout and the “jug handle,” still in existence in the Magic Kingdom parking lot at the intersection of World Drive and Vista Blvd.

The first outlyer to this system was the construction of the Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village (now Downtown Disney) and the community of Lake Buena Vista – at the time planned as a retirement community of sorts, and a sort of testing grounds for what was to be EPCOT (city).   Even then, as plans were being drawn up for what was to become World Showcase (then right by the TTC), you can see plans for a monorail running past towards the south, no doubt connecting Lake Buena Vista to the rest of the property.

Then, the proverbial mess hit the fan.  As Walt Disney World was still in its infancy,  projects like the Asian, Venetian, and Persian Resorts, as well as attractions such as Thunder Mesa, were shelved due to the OPEC Oil Crisis – it was assumed that so much of WDW’s guests would quit coming from states far and wide due to “pain at the pump,” in an era before the giant airline deregulation and Orlando Airport expansion of the 1980s.

Plans were scaled back – EPCOT was turned into a theme park (due to reasons more governmental than tourist related), and World Showcase was shoved into what is now known as Future World.

The dream of a transportation system were still alive – a spur of the monorail line ran into EPCOT from the TTC, and an extra pad was left at the EPCOT monorail station for a future line.  Lake Buena Vista was still serviceable only by bus, but the future seemed bright.

Enter Eisner and Co., and their disbelief that the property was so underdeveloped.  Massive expansion efforts began, but none with the care for development and planning that Walt and his successors had.  Not only were parks such as the MGM Studios built in the most unseemly of places, without any care for the flow of the theme park that the Magic Kingdom and EPCOT show, they also were built at such a pace that the increasingly expensive monorail system could not keep up with.  Bus service grew to dwarf any other on property – the TTC was abandonned mostly as a bus hub for individual theme park bus stations, wait times grew, and magic was lost.

The second time I worked at Disney were the salad days of 2000 in Magic Kingdom Guest Relations.  Animal Kingdom was entering its second year – attendance had been disappointing, particularly with the new threat of Islands of Adventure next door, and new theme park rumors were slowly dying.  I still believe that among the whispering, the ESPN theme park next to the Wild World of Sports was perhaps most credible.

Instead, Disney execs moved their sights towards keeping WDW a “destination resort,” where folks could come and not have an excuse to leave for any reason to give money to the competition.  The jet airport was considered again – I don’t know for how long or seriously, as was an airline.  This I believe gave rise to what is now known as the Magical Express free bus service to the airport.

The idea and hope was that folks would not rent a car or need one while on Disney property so it would be harder to get off.   Thus, the transportation service was looked at seriously.  In my last day of an extensive several week long training program, we met with WDW President Al Weiss and VP Lee Cockerell, and they outlined two new initiatives for the Florida property.

The first was a hand held computer device that every resort guest could be given that would manage their stay – a palm pilot like device that could reserve Fastpasses, order photos from rides, dinner reservations, etc.

The second was a renovation of the transportation system.  A study was done to see where it was needed the most – for environmental and gridlock concerns.  I remember Cockerell telling that they had researchers posted at spots all across property to average out the average amount of time that a Disney bus was in view.  At Downtown Disney, busses literally never left view.

In July 2000, Weiss even went so far as saying, “in two years, we are committed to drastically reducing the number of buses required to fulfill our internal transportation needs.”  He put the two year date on a “transport system which will whisk guests from the airport to a new hub on property in five minutes.”

In most every office room in the Magic Kingdom, there is a property map – and not all are current.  Most had “Future Monorail Expansion” leaving the EPCOT pad and going through the gap between Journey Into Imagination and The Land, down by the Yacht, Beach, and Dolphin, and ending at the Studios.  Some had a line leaving from there to Animal Kingdom as well.

Speculation ran rampant, and Cockerell and Weiss admitted that plans were not finalized – but they were looking at several transportation systems and knew they would not use the monorail to connect everything, just perhaps the theme parks.  A lead contender was a light rail line – and though there were several rumors, I believe the most credible was a spur going from the TTC down to Fort Wilderness, Dixie Landings, and Port Orleans, and another going down Buena Vista Drive basically from Downtown Disney, Typhoon Lagoon, Carribean Beach, Studios, Coronado Springs, Blizzard Beach, and perhaps the All Stars.

It was exciting to hear of these changes, and with attendance booming, why not take some time to invest in infrastructure?

Then, everything stopped.  September 11 took away the record numbers flocking into the theme parks, and in a scramble to compensate for problems, the WDW execs put the band aid on quietly and bought a new fleet of more fuel efficient busses.  The plans discussed in 2000 were dead.

In this time of financial crisis, I can only hope that the new regime of Disney execs, who appear very able and in touch with Disney history learn the lessons of their fathers and don’t respond with knee jerk reactions to economic turmoil.  Shelve the plans for now if you must – but don’t forget them, and don’t come up with the lowest possible solution to your problems.

No self-respecting city of the future would be caught dead without a thoroughly modern method of mass transportation. This was the thinking of Walt Disney Productions when they were creating Walt Disney World, and part of Disney’s vision for future cities was the sleek and efficient monorail. We’ve already discussed Community Transportation Services, the division of Walt Disney Productions set up to develop transportation systems for Disney’s Florida property and to then market them to cities and communities around the country. And what better way to market yourself than a colorful brochure?

Below are the scanned pages from a 1979 brochure intended to market the Mark IV monorail which was then in service at Walt Disney World. Sadly, they didn’t succeed in flooding our nation with monorails, but they’re a nice reminder of an era when big ideas were still in fashion.

The first few decades of Walt Disney Imagineering were marked by a series of escalating technical innovations that built on previous achievements while preparing Walt Disney Productions for subsequent phases of development. Under Walt’s guidance the profits and knowledge gained from each new project were funneled into the next, with every step pushing the limits of the company in new and unexpected directions. At the time of his death, Disney was preparing for the greatest challenge of his career – the creation of Walt Disney World in Florida and the design process for the “city of the future” that he called EPCOT.

The original concept for EPCOT was a massive and risky undertaking, which sought not only to entertain or inform but to completely change the way the American public thought about their cities and communities. EPCOT would be a complete, functioning city designed to not only provide services for its residents and guests but to act as a testbed for new technologies and theories of urban design which could then be exported to the country at large. EPCOT would not be built so that one could travel to Florida and ride a monorail, it was designed so that guests might be able to one day ride a monorail in their own community. Corporations and designers would come to EPCOT to test and refine their designs, which would then become part of the urban fabric nationwide.

When Walt Disney died in 1966, the seeds of EPCOT’s own demise were sown. EPCOT was such an exotic and expensive project that many believed it couldn’t be built, but those same words had been spoken about many projects from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves to Disneyland itself. Disney scholars will disagree to the end of time whether, had Walt lived, EPCOT would have been completed. Knowing Walt’s track record, though, I can’t help but to believe it would have happened. Without Disney himself at the helm, though, the project had no champion or unified vision.

Yet even after Walt’s death, Walt Disney Productions didn’t immediately abandon the plan for EPCOT. Walt’s brother Roy rededicated the company to the purpose of completing Walt Disney World in Florida by 1971, and in the process of creating the resort they developed and prototyped many of the technologies intended for use in EPCOT. The master planning process in Florida mirrored many of the guiding theories behind EPCOT, and even as EPCOT city itself faded into history a great number of the programs that had been created to prepare its design continued their work.

One of these divisions was Community Transportation Services, a branch of the company founded in 1974 “in response to numerous requests from cities, airports and shopping centers interested in applications of the company’s monorail and WEDway PeopleMover systems.” Disney had debuted both the monorail and PeopleMover in his theme parks with the intention of promoting both technologies for use outside the berm. The PeopleMover, which opened at Disneyland in 1967, was created specifically in preparation for EPCOT. A more refined design, which opened at Walt Disney World in 1975, would mark the first use of linear induction motors for public transportation. The CTS division would spin off these technologies for outside use, helping to fulfill the mandate of EPCOT even as plans for the city itself fell by the wayside. CTS would “consult in the master planning of new short-range intra-city mass transportation systems, license Disney-developed systems for these applications, and administer their construction and installation.”

The following document is dated to June 3rd, 1974, and both promotes the CTS division and gives a selection of its monorail-based designs. It appears that the main goal of the CTS designs was flexibility; the document touts their modular construction and the wide array of configurations available to customers. If you notice, designs were made for standard, medium and narrow gauge tracks. Trains were available with high or low ceilings, and wide, standard or narrow bodies. The modularity of the design allowed for cars to be as long as desired and feature any number of seating arrangements. Trains could have cabs on one or both ends, or could even operate without drivers.

Click below for some scans of the document; it’s a fascinating peek into a hopeful era of Imagineering and a time when Disney was still trying to forge into new frontiers and to lead instead of follow. With gasoline at record highs and more people longing for functional mass transportation in cities worldwide, wouldn’t it be nice to have a CTS-designed rail system to take to work in the morning?

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A recent story on MiceAge detailed the problems that continue to plague the rollout of Disneyland’s new Mark VII Monorails. Since the delivery of Monorail Red last December, a series of mechanical and operational issues have repeatedly pushed back the attraction’s opening date far past its original February timeframe.

In fact, it had been projected that by summer of this year all three refurbished trains would be fully checked out and in service. While the second new train has indeed been delivered to Disneyland from its Canadian factory, neither of the Mark VII vehicles have been cleared for guest use and it has been left to the lone remaining Mark V train – itself nearly falling apart at the seams – to continue monorail service to the Disneyland Hotel.

The problems plaguing the Mark VIIs come down to a few issues, many of which stem from poor cooperation between WDI, corporate management at Team Disney Anaheim, and the Canadian fabricators. The most glaring initial problem facing the cars was that their new design led to a number of issues with track clearance. Due to discrepancies in Disney records, the new chassis design did not allow enough room to clear a number of turns on the monorail track; this resulted in the monorail’s body scraping against the beam and a great deal of damage to the monorail’s chassis, body, and the beam itself.

While some of these problems with the suspension and chassis have been solved through various modifications, other issues linger and delivery of the remaining two trains was delayed by the need to retrofit them with the design fixes. A number of operational issues then began to show themselves, key among them the inability to open the monorail car windows more than a few inches. Disney lawyers and California safety officials, keen to absolve guests of any responsibility or common sense whatsoever, felt that the Mark V cars allowed guests too much access to open windows and mandated the change in design. Overlooked was the fact that the reason the windows on the Mark V trains were allowed to fully open was that the train bodies did not have enough space for adequate air conditioning equipment in the car and ventilation was necessary to keep guests comfortable. Now that the lawyers have sealed the windows, temperatures in the cars soar to intolerable levels even on seasonable days. It remains to be seen how WDI will solve this issue.

Sadly, the problems facing the Mark VII rollout could have easily been avoided by a little something which seems sorely missing at WDI these days – institutional knowledge. This is something that has concerned me for a while, and the monorail fiasco has only brought the issue to the fore.

When Walt founded WED Enterprises in 1952, he pulled his best designers and technicians from the studio to begin work on his concepts for Disneyland. These artists and engineers began a process that lasted decades, with each successive creative step building upon the lessons learned in their last project. From studio work like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea they proceeded to Disneyland, which led to the 1964 World’s Fair, Walt Disney World, and eventually EPCOT and Tokyo Disneyland. Along the way they accrued a great deal of experience which allowed them to avoid mistakes – of which they made many early on – and push Imagineering to greater heights.

The 1980s proved the last hurrah for many of that first wave of Imagineers, as retirement and age began to claim many of their ranks. The huge staff that been needed for the construction of EPCOT and Tokyo Disneyland were faced with layoffs, and following Eisner’s loss of vision in the post-EuroDisney panic even more Imagineers were let go. The 1990s saw wave after wave of creative staff leave for other companies as Eisner and his lackey Paul Pressler decimated the WDI ranks.

While some of the old guard remain, and some have returned following Eisner’s departure, there still was a great deal of common sense and lessons learned that were lost during those purges. This is not to slag on the new generation of Imagineers – anyone familiar with Disneyland’s disasterous debut knows that even the the most legendary of Walt’s creative team learned their lessons the hard way. It’s just that after thirty or forty years of experience, those mistakes had been cut to a minimum and WDI had enough organizational shorthand within its ranks to avoid issues as pedestrian as forgetting to have enough air cooling in a southern California ride vehicle.

The new generation will learn in time; it’s just that we’ll have to experience the growing pains with them. Hopefully the one thing we can take from all of this, and never let management forget (and eventually, no matter what, they will), is to never let this happen again. Never let Disney sell out its legacy and purge its Imagineering ranks for the benefit of middle management and the detriment of creative personnel. Keep the knowledge in-house, avoid outsourcing (a futile hope, I fear), and hopefully some day all we’ll have to worry about is when the next amazing E-ticket will be opening and not whether the darn thing will even move or not.