Disney Skyliner (Gondola Transportation System) Read Post 1 Now Open!

I’ve been looking at DHS’s new bus depot in the construction photos and it looks to be a really long hike to the entry to the park. Last Dec. a Disney bus dumped us off in the middle of a parking lot in that general vicinity and we had to wind our way by some construction fences to get to the path to DHS’s entry - it was quite the hike before we even got to the park.
Has anybody confirmed that that is the resort bus loop? It looks like there's plenty of room to build a 2nd loop to the west. I'm thinking the resort bus loop might go there, and the one nearing completion now could be the charter bus loop. Note that the area behind the stops is pretty narrow to accommodate queues + pedestrian movement, and there's no sign of shelter construction, which was apparent by this stage of construction of the new DS bus depot. The bus entrance also looks rather awkward.
 
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Has anybody confirmed that that is the resort bus loop? It looks like there's plenty of room to build a 2nd loop to the west. I'm thinking the resort bus loop might go there, and the one nearing completion now could be the charter bus loop. Note that the area behind the stops is pretty narrow to accommodate queues + pedestrian movement, and there's no sign of shelter construction, which was apparent by this stage of construction of the new DS bus depot. The bus entrance also looks rather awkward.
There is no way the bus loop being built now will just be for outside/3rd parties. This new loop is MK/Disney Springs size.
 
There is no way the bus loop being built now will just be for outside/3rd parties. This new loop is MK/Disney Springs size.
There are 23 or 24 bays. The old DHS charter lot had 28, and sometimes filled to capacity. It's also used to park Disney buses not needed during midday.

The main MK lot has over 30.
 
There are 23 or 24 bays. The old DHS charter lot had 28, and sometimes filled to capacity.
Are you going off the last aerial image? Only one side of the loop had concrete. So double that 48 bays is what we are looking at.
 


Are you going off the last aerial image? Only one side of the loop had concrete. So double that 48 bays is what we are looking at.
There would not be 48 bays for the resorts. What I'm saying is that the paved area may be the charter bus loop. The resort loop would be in the area not yet paved, and possibly some of the area currently being used for charter buses, bus parking, and construction staging. It would have a bus entrance at the end of the drive, as opposed to the left turn entrance into the currently paved area. That would put it closer to the park for pedestrians, and separate Disney buses from charter buses. Transportation does not like to put charter buses in the resort bus loop, as the drivers often don't know where they're going and gum up the works.

ETA: I actually under-counted the number of bays in the old charter lot. I left out one whole row, so it's about 40% more than I said.

ETA: Building the charter loop first frees up the area currently being used for charters, so that part of the resort loop can be built there.
 
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To add what I said previously the WDW bus section will have shelters. The un-shelterd area will be for charter buses.
I think we're pretty much saying the same thing, except you're lumping the resort and charter as 2 sides of one bus loop, whereas I consider them separate entities.
 


I think we're pretty much saying the same thing, except you're lumping the resort and charter as 2 sides of one bus loop, whereas I consider them separate entities.
Yes two sides of one loop. One side charter the other resorts. A total of 48ish bays with half for resorts half for the rest.

The resort loop gets covered stops.
 
All indications/speculation are that there will be no a/c but some sort of open window ventilation/cross-breeze. I don't blame you not wanting to trudge through nearly 150 pages of discussion here, but the last 4 or 5 have been going through this. A few weeks ago, the first gondola was spotted being brought on property on a flatbed truck and there was no indication of an onboard a/c unit.

It'll be very interesting indeed!

That’ll be fun when it starts pouring rain out of nowhere like it does practically every afternoon in Florida.
 
They are louvered windows, just like ones that many houses in tropical environments have already. It's actually hard for rain to get in substantially.

Yeah - I would picture that Disney would know how to do angle the windows to prevent the rain from getting in.

Why do so many people assume that Disney has designed a transportation system that will (a) bake you to death, (b) soak you to the bone, (c) strand you in the air for hours on end and (d) get you killed with lightning strike? I'm sure they never even thought of ANY of these things. :rolleyes:
 
Yeah - I would picture that Disney would know how to do angle the windows to prevent the rain from getting in.

Why do so many people assume that Disney has designed a transportation system that will (a) bake you to death, (b) soak you to the bone, (c) strand you in the air for hours on end and (d) get you killed with lightning strike? I'm sure they never even thought of ANY of these things. :rolleyes:
I’ve said this many times over. At the very least you know the lawyers triple checked this before construction was even considered
 
Yeah - I would picture that Disney would know how to do angle the windows to prevent the rain from getting in.

Why do so many people assume that Disney has designed a transportation system that will (a) bake you to death, (b) soak you to the bone, (c) strand you in the air for hours on end and (d) get you killed with lightning strike? I'm sure they never even thought of ANY of these things. :rolleyes:

agree 100% - though sometimes I think they can be off/underestimate perception of things ... so even if this system is 100% safe and won't be too hot and won't get hit with lightning, etc. - the perception is out there - and then they will have to overreact to counter it

But no way they would invest this much $ into the system if they thought they would get more $ back off that investment - and if a large % of people wouldn't ride them or they would have to close a lot, etc. then the return wouldn't be there
 
agree 100% - though sometimes I think they can be off/underestimate perception of things ... so even if this system is 100% safe and won't be too hot and won't get hit with lightning, etc. - the perception is out there - and then they will have to overreact to counter it

But no way they would invest this much $ into the system if they thought they would get more $ back off that investment - and if a large % of people wouldn't ride them or they would have to close a lot, etc. then the return wouldn't be there

Well - I've said it before - but the "return on investment" is really about Riviera. Without the gondola, there's no way they can pull off Riviera as a deluxe DVC destination. They could put the entire gondola costruction into the Riviera budget and still pull at $500 million profit. Then it's just a matter of making it cost neutral (minimum) compared to buses. This has a lot of factors in place. (Who knows exactly what maintence costs are on 30 buses vs a gondola system?) But again, I am sure Disney has it all well in hand.

The other point is we here an awful lot of negative concern about the gondolas, but I would be very surprise if there isn't at least 75% of the people that see riding the gondolas to the parks as a perk of staying at those resorts. Not just for the faster transport, but for the FUN of the transport. Not different from those that love riding the monorails. (Me - I am indifferent to the monorails - they are in no way different to riding a bus except that they are consistently crowded whereas buses seem to be mostly crowded in the mornings and evenings.)
 
Well - I've said it before - but the "return on investment" is really about Riviera. Without the gondola, there's no way they can pull off Riviera as a deluxe DVC destination. They could put the entire gondola costruction into the Riviera budget and still pull at $500 million profit. Then it's just a matter of making it cost neutral (minimum) compared to buses. This has a lot of factors in place. (Who knows exactly what maintence costs are on 30 buses vs a gondola system?) But again, I am sure Disney has it all well in hand.

The other point is we here an awful lot of negative concern about the gondolas, but I would be very surprise if there isn't at least 75% of the people that see riding the gondolas to the parks as a perk of staying at those resorts. Not just for the faster transport, but for the FUN of the transport. Not different from those that love riding the monorails. (Me - I am indifferent to the monorails - they are in no way different to riding a bus except that they are consistently crowded whereas buses seem to be mostly crowded in the mornings and evenings.)

Agree with everything you said - though while I do agree the Riviera is the driver behind the system, I also think they eventual want to move away from "Value", "Moderate", "Deluxe" and instead have like "Monorail" and "Gondola", etc. resorts so they can charge even more for, say, Pop than they do for the All Stars - especially when Galaxy's Edge opens
 
Agree with everything you said - though while I do agree the Riviera is the driver behind the system, I also think they eventual want to move away from "Value", "Moderate", "Deluxe" and instead have like "Monorail" and "Gondola", etc. resorts so they can charge even more for, say, Pop than they do for the All Stars - especially when Galaxy's Edge opens

Oh, they certainly will be charging more for Pop than All-stars....don't they already? The thing is that premium is small fry compared to the money from Riviera. DVC is such a cash cow right now...they only have to worry if the economy goes down the toilet and they have inventory they can't sell, but the fact they convincing people to buy at CCV at the price point they are now says they will be selling Riviera like Mickey Waffles.
 
Yeah - I would picture that Disney would know how to do angle the windows to prevent the rain from getting in.

Oh, yes, the mfr will angle the jalousie window correctly. Here's the thing, though -- jalousie windows are notorious for broken hinges. Based on the cabin photo that we've seen, the jalousie is at middle-height, where a lot of small fingers will probably be tempted to mess with it. Unlike the average skier, the average WDW guest won't be wearing ski gloves.

Why do so many people assume that Disney has designed a transportation system that will (a) bake you to death, (b) soak you to the bone, (c) strand you in the air for hours on end and (d) get you killed with lightning strike? I'm sure they never even thought of ANY of these things. :rolleyes:

Disney didn't design the system; this is an off-the-rack Dopplmeyr D-Line. Disney decided where it will go and how it will be decorated, but that's about it. I agree that many of the negative comments that have turned up have been pure hyperbole, and that disastrous experiences are unlikely to be any more common than with current systems. However, I do think that the possibility for simple discomfort is quite high, especially in summer. (This past week the parking lot trams were quite uncomfortable in the heat, and they are not 80% glass-enclosed.) Enough guest discomfort and the take-up with definitely suffer.
 
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Disney didn't design the system; this is an off-the-rack Dopplmeyr D-Line. Disney decided where it will go and how it will be decorated, but that's about it.

I think calling this "off-the-rack" isn't quite fair. Doppelmayr is arguably the world's best manufacturer of ropeway products like gondolas. And the product that Disney chose is Doppelmayr's newest, "next generation" ropeway.

D-Line Information at the Doppelmayr website: https://www.doppelmayr.com/en/products/new-d-line/

I think it's also worth noting that Doppelmayr has their products on six continents. Some of the installations have been in subtropical climates that are similar to Florida. Nothing found at Disney World is unique for Doppelmayr. Given the topography of Central Florida, this is probably one of their easier projects.
 
Right - I think security will actually become easier. Much like at Universal, they are likely moving the security back to the resorts. So for folks on the boats you will go through security as you are queuing up for the boat, gondola folks will also go through security. So the only people seeing the security site at the IG will be people walking up to the gate. While this isn't a zero number, it (a) is not a huge number as it is really only BC/YC and some BW people (I don't think many S/D people would walk to Epcot) and (b) won't be affected by the gondola at all. So they'll expand the number of tap stations for entering the park, but might actually lower the size of the security station there. By pulling security back to the resorts, I think you'll find that the park entry will be much quicker - with the only real potential issue being right when the park opens.
Sorry, a lot of pages to catch up on. Arriving Nov 2018, last visit. June 2015. Disney moved security from the parks to the resort transportation stations (boat, bus, monorail)?
 

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