The monorail is an iconic part of the Disney
experience, and for good reason. When Walt opened the Disneyland monorail in
1959 it was the very first instance of a daily running monorail in the Western Hemisphere. It evolved from a simple attraction to an
actual means of transportation and so naturally when it came time to build Walt Disney World,
it was included as a means for guests to get around. However one question I’ve gotten from subscribers
many times over the years is “Why stop at the Magic Kingdom and Epcot? Why isn’t there a monorail to Hollywood
Studios or the Animal Kingdom or more resorts? Where are all the monorails?” Now there’s probably already a bunch of
people writing up comments like “It’s too expensive! There, I saved you six minutes!” and you
know what? They’re not wrong. While a monorail extension would be financially
possible for The Walt Disney Company, it wouldn’t be very financially reasonable, and I’ll
go into why in a moment. However beyond just the fiscal considerations,
I think there’s an argument to be made that it just isn’t the right system anymore in
relation to what Walt Disney World has become. But first, the money issue. This one is a little difficult to tackle because
as they are with many details, Disney is pretty tight lipped when it comes to how much they’re
spending on specific projects. There are figures out there for other monorail
systems around the world and we can try to use those to estimate what it would cost for
Disney, but even that’s going to be a guess since there are so many different variables
to consider. Looking at more recent monorail systems, the
Mumbai Monorail in India cost an estimated $43.8 million dollars per mile. The Las Vegas Monorail cost an estimated $88
million per mile, and coming in at the top, the Palm Jumeirah Monorail in Dubai cost around
$118 million dollars per mile. That’s a pretty wide range. If we aim for the middle we would land at
$80.5 million, which isn’t far off from the Vegas estimate which, as far as supplies
and labor go, is probably the closer to Orlando than Mumbai and Dubai is. Then of course we have to consider that those
three systems were all built between 2004 and 2008, so when we adjust the estimates
for inflation, that $80.5 million becomes $100.4 million. We’ll round down to a clean hundred million
for the sake of simplicity. The next question then becomes, how long would
a new monorail extension be? Now that becomes a real wild card because
by owning the land, Disney would have a lot more freedom to build the track wherever they
want, within reason. I took a stab at a track layout that would
extend from the Epcot track, which saves us about 4 miles, and sticks towards roads much
in the same way the Epcot line does. That would put an extension to both Hollywood
Studios and the Animal Kingdom at around twelve miles of new track. At an estimation of $100 million per mile,
that’s $1.2 billion dollars. So to my earlier point, it’s financially
possible. The Walt Disney Company’s 2017 annual earnings
report showing that Parks and Resorts had operating income of $3.7 billion dollars that year. But would it make sense to spend upwards of
a third of the entire division’s profit on just two new monorail stops? Consider for a moment that it would only benefit
two groups. Those who are staying at one of the three
monorail resorts out of the over twenty resorts on property, and those looking to park hop,
which is a feature that isn’t even standard with a Disney World pass today. Don’t get me wrong, it’d be pretty cool
if the Disney World monorail went to all the parks, but even as a die-hard fan I’d admit
that the costs are just too high for benefits that are too few. Not to mention for the same amount of money,
you could buy literally thousands of buses. And this kind of leads me to my second argument,
which is that the monorail just isn’t the best method anymore. Walt Disney proposed a project that would
have, while inhabiting the same space as today’s Disney World, looked radically different. His Disney World was one that was more or
less arranged north to south. There was the airport at the south end, then
the welcome center, followed by the industrial park, followed by EPCOT, and then at the northern
tip the theme park and resorts. It was the perfect layout for a monorail system
that would run through the middle of everything and connect these different segments of the
property. Now today we have the hindsight that allows
us to realize that Walt’s dream died with him, but it’s important to note that to
the public at the time, it took much longer than that. When Walt’s brother Roy postponed his retirement
to oversee the construction of Disney World, it was with the goal of completing the first
phase of Walt’s Disney World. Years later, while the form changed quite
a bit, Disney still committed to delivering an EPCOT to the public, and like Walt’s
plan for Disney World, it was just south of the theme park area. It wasn’t until shortly after EPCOT Center
opened that the company underwent a radical change in leadership, and it was then that
we began to see Disney evolve into something else. More resorts, more theme parks, more water
parks. With the figurative change in direction Disney
World also saw a literal change in direction, with more projects springing up to the west
and east portions of the property. Without that tight layout, the idea of a monorail
system became less practical. Suddenly transportation like buses were not only the cheaper option, but they were the better option as well. Pair that with the costs needed to expand
it and the price tag of all the other projects Disney was getting involved in as a company,
and it’s no surprise that we didn’t get more monorails. Today we’re seeing transportation expansions
in the form of bigger buses and Minnie vans and even gondolas. And with automated driving becoming bigger
and bigger with each year, who knows what transportation at Disney World will look like
in the future. So while we’ll hopefully see some new monorail
vehicles at the resort in the near future, it’s pretty unlikely it’ll be making any
new stops.
