If there’s one thing that theme park fans argue about more than new attractions at Disney World, it’s the state of old attractions at Disney World. With so many rides and experiences with so many moving parts, it’s just short of impossible to keep everything running perfectly all the time. Disney World and Disneyland spend millions on upkeep, but I just discovered that a classic and nearly vital attraction at both Disney World and Disneyland is in serious jeopardy, as there is apparently nobody currently making replacement parts for the Monorail.
As the story goes, it was on a vacation in Europe that Walt Disney fell in love with the monorail as a mode of transportation. He saw it as a way to alleviate traffic problems. It was built at Disneyland to act as a model for what the train system could do in cities. It was a key part of Walt's original Epcot concept and was briefly considered to expand outside of Disneyland to be used throughout Southern California.
Why Disney World's Monorail Could Be In Trouble
A recent story on Casino.org spotlights the Las Vegas Monorail, which uses the same track design as the Disney Monorail and also uses former Disney World Monorail vehicles. That monorail is in the process of being decommissioned, and a big part of the reason for that is that there is currently no manufacturer of replacement parts for that particular monorail track design. So at some point, the Vegas monorail will break, and there will be no way to fix it. Since Disney World and Disneyland use the same design, the parks seemingly have the same problem.
This is a particularly unsettling idea since Disney World’s Monorail is especially key to the resort. It’s not just a fun theme park ride; it connects multiple resorts to Magic Kingdom as well as Epcot. The Monorail is a legitimate mode of transportation for thousands of people daily. The Contemporary Resort, allegedly the ugliest building in Florida, was built to allow the Monorail to pass through it. Even at Disneyland Resort, the monorail is an alternate and often convenient method of entry to Disneyland, with a station in the middle of Downtown Disney.
It’s one thing to have to deal with closed attractions at Disney World due to either scheduled or unscheduled maintenance, but this would be another level of inconvenience. And while the resorts will certainly survive without a functioning Monorail, they still have to close now and then to get fixed up; an unfixable monorail here would be like the PeopleMover at Disneyland. It would become a vacant track taking up space, that would just sit there forever.
How Disney Parks Could Respond To The Monorail Problem
Some companies make Monorails today, but they don’t them for the track size that Disney World uses. Disney World would need to completely replace the existing Monorail track to get in line with current manufacturers, and that would cost the resort billions. The prohibitive cost of adding new tracks has long been believed to be the reason that the Disney World Monorail hasn’t grown since being connected to Epcot, while the resort has added numerous new hotels and two new parks in the last few decades. Instead new, and less expensive transportation additions, like the recent Disney World Skyliner, have been implemented.
Of course, nothing here is going to be news to Disney Parks. If there is a concern regarding Monorail replacement parts, Disney is well aware of it and is doing whatever is possible to mitigate the problem. Disney Parks may already have enough stock of replacement parts to last them for a long time, and Disney may be able to find another company willing to build them what they need whenever they run out. Who knows, maybe Disney could even build the parts themselves.
We know that Disney plans to spend $60 billion on theme parks over the next decade, and 30% of that is to be spent on upkeep. It sounds like there's a good chance a not insignificant portion could be spent on making sure Walt Disney's transportation of the future is still running in the future.
