Disney World Monorail Closures Beginning in Later January

By Dave Shute

RESORT AND EXPRESS MONORAILS TO CLOSE PARTS OF WEEKDAYS BEGINNING 1/21/14

The two Magic Kingdom monorail routes around Seven Seas Lagoon—the Express and Resort monorails—will be down on weekdays from 11.30a til 7p beginning January 21, 2014.

This beginning date is the day after the busy Martin Luther King Day weekend. An end date for these weekday closures is not firm, but is expected to be in March.

• The Express Monorail normally goes counterclockwise around Seven Seas Lagoon in a loop from the Transportation and Ticket Center (TTC) to the Magic Kingdom and back to the TTC.
• The Resort Monorail normally goes clockwise around the Lagoon, in a loop that takes it from TTC to the Polynesian, Grand Floridian, Magic Kingdom, and Contemporary, and from there back to the TTC.
• The Epcot Monorail—which goes in a loop from TTC to Epcot and back—is not affected.

The two Magic Kingdom monorails are heavily patronized, serving guests going from TTC to the Magic Kingdom, from the Magic Kingdom to the Epcot monorail station at TTC, and to and among the monorail resorts.

At peak usage—like right after the evening parade–2,000+ people might be on these monorails at once (6 monorails at ~350 people each). That’s the equivalent of around 40 buses or 3 and a half ferryboats…

But—with a few exceptions—weekdays in later January, and much of February, from 11.30a to 7p,  are not the time of peak usage of the Magic Kingdom monorails.

This is especially true since the 3p parade “Celebrate a Dream Come True” has ended its run, and will not be replaced until March with the “Festival of Fantasy Parade.”

I suspect the monorail repairs and afternoon parade hiatus are related to each other, as getting people to the Magic Kingdom in time for it, and even more so out of the Magic Kingdom after it, are the heaviest afternoon uses of the system.

Disney will be providing additional buses (especially to the monorail resorts), motor launches and motor cruisers, and likely will be using its third ferryboat, which usually comes out only during the busier hours of the day, to help people move among the areas served by the monorail during these outages.

Most days, most of the time, with the added ferry this will work OK—although it will take a lot of buses to serve the monorail resorts. Perhaps the new double-sized articulated buses will by then be in service at the larger moderates and values, freeing up older buses—but not drivers?  or capacity in the roads?—for this.

But most of the time, most people should be OK if they add an extra 20 minutes to their transport times.

Guests at the monorail resorts should ask cast members—and other guests—whether walking, the boats or buses seem the best choice, and how much extra time they should plan for.

• Guests at the Polynesian should still be able to walk to TTC, and from there use either the ferry to the Magic Kingdom or the monorail to Epcot. Despite the other construction at the Polynesian, this walkway was still open on my December visit.
• Guests at the Contemporary can walk to the Magic Kingdom. Buses or boats will serve other monorail destinations
• Grand Floridian guests can’t really walk anywhere…so will rely on buses and boats.

Here’s the issues for everyone I foresee:

• There may be capacity crunches many January and February evenings for people trying to get to the 7p Electrical Parade—the most common show time for it on weeknights during the outage.
• The very busy week of Presidents Day will be a zoo.  If I were Disney, I’d not work on the monorails this week but rather stop the work and run them instead.
• Peak Spring Break crowds will begin the week of March 9th.  This almost has to be the real targeted end date for the monorail work…otherwise perhaps Disney is buying another ferry?  Or moving the Liberty Belle out from the Rivers of America to Seven Seas Lagoon?

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