Question About Monorail Playsets.

fayt19

Mouseketeer
Joined
Jun 23, 2008
So I had heard about the Monorail playsets a few years ago, but only recently accidentally discovered one on eBay. And, boy, is that little Monorail playset ADORABLE! After doing some more searching through eBay, I found some other Disney park playset things that did or didn't go with the monorail set, officially, so I was just wondering... is there a list of all the the 'official' monorail playsets? So far I've found the actual monorail, a Magic Kingdom playset, an Animal Kingdom playset, Epcot playset, Dumbo ride playset(which the Ebay seller claims is retired, and is simply too cute!), Mickey's House playset, Contemporary Resort playset, and It's A Small World playset. I'm also curious to know if anyone here collects the pieces, and what you think of them. :) Any and all help would be great!
 
Not sure I've ever seen a list of all the sets, but I can tell you many of the pieces are retired now.

Among the retired that I know of:

Polynesian Resort
Haunted Mansion
TTC
Grand Floridian

A lot of these go for big $$$ on Ebay now.
 
Will have to check that out. I have a HM set in the box. Wonder what it goes for...
 
I have seen a lot of sets that come from DCA a couple ago. The ones that i have is the Contemporary hotel that it goes through the center
 


Here's what I know of:

WDW
•Monorail - They have released about 10 colors by now I think and two different versions the newer one has opening doors
•Straight Track - pack of 4
•Curved Track - pack of 4
•Contemporary Hotel
•Spaceship Earth (Discontinued) - This is the original one that the monorail went underneath spaceship earth.
•Disneyana "Silver" Monorail - Very limited edition special packaging and the whole thing is colored silver
•Disneyana "Silver" Contemporary - Same as above
•Disneyana "Silver" Spaceship Earth - Same as above
•TTC Switching Station (Discontinued) - Has three switches at each end to create three separate loops themed to TTC
•Polynesian Hotel (Dicontinued) - Includes a great ceremonial house and station (If you by two of these and put the station parts end to end it creates a station that is the correct length of the train)
•Grand Floridian Hotel (Discontinued) - The grand Floridian station
•Cinderella Castle Playset
•WDW Sign Set (Discontinued) - includes WDW Main Entrance sign(lights up), WDW directional road sign, Contemporary sign, Polynesian sign, and Grand Floridian sign(lights up)
•WDW Tree and Light set (Discontinued) - Includes Main Street Light(lights up), tomorrowland metallic palm tree, and Contemporary "Dixie Cup" style tree
•Astro Orbiter Attracion (Dicontinued) - Includes two disney characters and can be activated by the monorail with seperately sold attraction connector
•Dumbo Attracion (Dicontinued) - Includes two disney characters and can be activated by the monorail with seperately sold attraction connector
•Tea Cup Attracion (Dicontinued) - Includes two disney characters and can be activated by the monorail with seperately sold attraction connector
•Attraction Connector (Dicontinued) - Plugs into attraction and attaches to monorail pylon
•WDW Haunted Mansion (Discontinued) - No attraction connection
•New Spaceship Earth - More of a standalone playset
•Tree of Life Playset (Discontinued) - Really has nothing to do with monorail but is packaged in monorail packaging

Disneyland
•Disneyland Monorail (Discontinued) - An accurate model of the Mark V monorail, this was the most detailed monorail two right down to the doors, rearview mirrors, and escape hatches and includes the Golden Gate Bridge
•Disneyland Mini Monorail (Discontinued) - Same as above but only included the two end cars, a little less track, and no bridge
•DCA Orange Stinger (Discontinued) - Works with attraction connector
•DCA Golden Zephyr (Discontinued) - Works with attraction connector
•DCA King Tritons Carousel (Discontinued) - Works with attraction connector
•DCA California Screamin (Discontinued) - A real pain to put together but really big once its done with either orange or purple cars
•WDW Monorail sold as Disneyland monorail - Just a different package for the WDW one
•Disneyland Haunted Mansion (Discontinued) - Same as WDW version but modeled after Disneyland's Haunted Mansion

I think that covers most of it, I probably left something out or got something wrong so feel free to offer any correction.
 
Colors should be:
Red (Series 1)
Black (Series 1)
Yellow (Series 2)
Purple (Series 2)
Gold (Series 2)
Green (Series 3)
Silver (Series 3)(Currently being sold at resorts)
Orange (Series 3)(Currently being sold at resorts)

Here's what I know of:

WDW
•Monorail - They have released about 10 colors by now I think and two different versions the newer one has opening doors
•Straight Track - pack of 4
•Curved Track - pack of 4
•Contemporary Hotel
•Spaceship Earth (Discontinued) - This is the original one that the monorail went underneath spaceship earth.
•Disneyana "Silver" Monorail - Very limited edition special packaging and the whole thing is colored silver
•Disneyana "Silver" Contemporary - Same as above
•Disneyana "Silver" Spaceship Earth - Same as above
•TTC Switching Station (Discontinued) - Has three switches at each end to create three separate loops themed to TTC
•Polynesian Hotel (Dicontinued) - Includes a great ceremonial house and station (If you by two of these and put the station parts end to end it creates a station that is the correct length of the train)
•Grand Floridian Hotel (Discontinued) - The grand Floridian station
•Cinderella Castle Playset
•WDW Sign Set (Discontinued) - includes WDW Main Entrance sign(lights up), WDW directional road sign, Contemporary sign, Polynesian sign, and Grand Floridian sign(lights up)
•WDW Tree and Light set (Discontinued) - Includes Main Street Light(lights up), tomorrowland metallic palm tree, and Contemporary "Dixie Cup" style tree
•Astro Orbiter Attracion (Dicontinued) - Includes two disney characters and can be activated by the monorail with seperately sold attraction connector
•Dumbo Attracion (Dicontinued) - Includes two disney characters and can be activated by the monorail with seperately sold attraction connector
•Tea Cup Attracion (Dicontinued) - Includes two disney characters and can be activated by the monorail with seperately sold attraction connector
•Attraction Connector (Dicontinued) - Plugs into attraction and attaches to monorail pylon
•WDW Haunted Mansion (Discontinued) - No attraction connection
•New Spaceship Earth - More of a standalone playset
•Tree of Life Playset (Discontinued) - Really has nothing to do with monorail but is packaged in monorail packaging

Disneyland
•Disneyland Monorail (Discontinued) - An accurate model of the Mark V monorail, this was the most detailed monorail two right down to the doors, rearview mirrors, and escape hatches and includes the Golden Gate Bridge
•Disneyland Mini Monorail (Discontinued) - Same as above but only included the two end cars, a little less track, and no bridge
•DCA Orange Stinger (Discontinued) - Works with attraction connector
•DCA Golden Zephyr (Discontinued) - Works with attraction connector
•DCA King Tritons Carousel (Discontinued) - Works with attraction connector
•DCA California Screamin (Discontinued) - A real pain to put together but really big once its done with either orange or purple cars
•WDW Monorail sold as Disneyland monorail - Just a different package for the WDW one
•Disneyland Haunted Mansion (Discontinued) - Same as WDW version but modeled after Disneyland's Haunted Mansion

I think that covers most of it, I probably left something out or got something wrong so feel free to offer any correction.
 
Blue has also been released it was the first of the series with opening doors. So I guess that would leave Pink, Lime, and Coral to be made. Pink will probably be a huge hit but I doubt they will ever make lime and coral and even if they do they won't get it right.
 


First off, nice job S8Film40 on your compilation. The list is very accurate and complete, well done.
I just have a few "addendums" for lack of a better word, these are a few items we "serious collectors" (now there's an oxymoron for ya!), I used both "serious" and "collectors" when referring to a bunch of 20-60 year old folks like me who collect toys for a hobby! Re-think my life...NAH! I love Disney and I've been out of the closet for years.
Some items we often use for our DTPR's (going forward this is an acronym for Disney Theme Park Replicas) that I find noteworthy:
1) Disney Town Square Playset from Sears in 1988: This is a "must have" for your DTPR. It'll take me too long to detail, but it's basically an entire recreation of Main Street made from mostly heavy gauge cardboard stock and plastic. It's enormous and comes with well over 200 pieces, it takes most people I know the better part of 3 evenings to build. They also released small accessory packs to add on to make your Main Street look more realistic. Available were figurines in packs of about 3-4 figs, some are the "Fab Five", park guests, kids, dads, moms with babies etc. There were lighting kits to illuminate your display, the Christmas Tree on MS, a furniture pack, music box, Horse Trolley and a few more.
The Town Square MIB (mint in box) complete with sealed bags will run you about $150-$200 on the Bay depending on box condition and guaranteed complete. A strongly worded caution, make 100% certain you are buying a complete set and in mint shape. I know that's a tall order for a 21 year old playset with hundreds of pieces but here's why it's so critical: Many of the pieces are essential to erect this set, any combination of broken or missing items and you'll be stuck with a $200 paperweight. Any real exposure to moisture and the cardboard stock building facades will be warped and you won't be able to clip them in place. Do not buy from someone who says, "it looks complete to me", that's basically code for "it isn't complete" or "I'm too lazy to inventory it". Do not buy a set without the instructions either, that's a guarantee it's not complete (how would they know it's complete without the instructions that have the parts list?) also Frank Lloyd Wright couldn't build this set without blueprints, errr, instructions. If you're really nice and tell me how great I look for my age, I might email you a copy. I've sold a number of these over the years and know it well and I couldn't memorize all the pieces it comes with. Get it in writing "this is a complete set" in case you need to return it. Oh, this is huge and weighs about 12 pounds, the box, ironically is very thin cardboard, much too thin for such weighty contents so MIB is relative, if it isn't badly crushed or torn, it's MIB. A few wrinkles are almost a certainty. You can use this set as your hub for your entire Monorail DTPR and just build the "lands" around it.
2) The Main Street Station: Awesome item with over 100 pieces, you'll use this at your entrance and set it up at the front of the Sears Town Square set. It has realistic recorded announcements with the sound of the train coming into the Station and the actual guys voice who does the shtick at the Parks, "The Walter E Disney is now entering on track #2, all aboard!) This one is volatile in regards to price, I've seen them as low as $50 (unusual) and as high as $175, but the average is closer to $75-$110. Depends on how many were available on the Bay at the time.
3)Walt Disney World HO Scale Railroad (the Walter E Disney) this was made for the MSS I just described in #2, it's a powered unit and a very handsome replica, and pretty fast too (variable speed) It'll cost you around $140-$175 to win one.
4) Splash Mountain from Hasbro: Pretty simple explanation, they never made one for the Mono sets so we adopted this to fill our need. It's a Polly Pocket style playset and really hard to find MIB, expect to pay $75-$100.
5) Small World: Same line as the Splash Mt $50-$75 MIB
6) Race Car Set: These are slot cars, a replica of the Tomorrowland attraction, very popular with Mono collectors $125-$175
7) Test Track: Some use this one as a "Poor Man's" Race Car Set, $40-$70
8) Wilderness Playset: This is a Lincoln Logs playset that, once built is a great Wilderness Lodge. Everyone knows about the Contemp, Poly and FL but not many know this, but enough do that make it go for about $125 MIB.
9) You missed the Sunwheel ride playset from DCA, ($100-$150) same line as the Zephyr, Triton etc. My favorite DCA ride Mono playset. Also the Epcot Sorcerers Hat Playset ($150-$175).
10) Let's not forget the Sleeping Beauty Castle Playset
11) Cinderella's Golden Carousel (Polly style too) good for the Carousel behind the Castle ($15)
12) Paradise Pier Monorail connector 3 pack: These are the only ones that work with the so-called Mini Monorail as the tracks and support beams are half the size of the standard set and can't be swapped. The full size connectors do not fit on the Mini or Vice Versa. Drives me nuts when sellers conveniently "forget" to mention that when selling these. Buyers think they are getting a 3 pack of connectors that will work with their setups, they don't. Expect to pay $50-$75 still. VHTF.
I like to use the diecast buses, trucks and fire trucks etc to put near the TTC also.
That's about it for my "supplemental" Monorail DTPR list. There are some "custom jobs out there worth a look, one guy makes graduating support beams that allow you to make a figure 8 by making one track line pass over another. Another guy installs custom high speed motors that give the Monorails more than double their normal speed, allowing for a much more realistic scale versus speed pairing. I...."ahem", he mentions "why should the Monos run at the scale speed of 5-10 MPH as originally designed when they run much faster at the Parks". The extra speed looks much more in line with how it ought to in your DTPR. He's also very clever and devilishly handsome (chuckle). Give this wonderful hobby that is so much fun for Disney families both young and old to enjoy a try. Feel free to drop me a line if you ever need any suggestions on building your DTPR, I love talking about it with both novice and expert alike. Have a Magical day.
 
Will have to check that out. I have a HM set in the box. Wonder what it goes for...

I've been looking for the HM to go with my monorail (HM is my favorite, and the only attraction I would want to add to the monorail under the tree-yeah, I'm warped :rotfl2:). Anyway, the HM attraction is very rare apparently and usually sells for around $100-not bad. Just thought I'd share
 
I'm kind late to this thread but hopefully I'll get an answer to my monorail question. Do the monorails make any announcements? I saw a video with a monorail going and it was making the Disney World stop announcements (poly, contemp, grand fl etc). I didn't know if that was added soundtrack or if the monorails actually included that. The descriptions all say "authentic monorail noises" but I really have no idea what that means.
 
I'm kind late to this thread but hopefully I'll get an answer to my monorail question. Do the monorails make any announcements? I saw a video with a monorail going and it was making the Disney World stop announcements (poly, contemp, grand fl etc). I didn't know if that was added soundtrack or if the monorails actually included that. The descriptions all say "authentic monorail noises" but I really have no idea what that means.

Yes, the monorails make announcements. You can run the monorail with either the annoucements on or off.

The sayings are the following: "Please stay clear of the doors. On behalf of the cast of the Walt Disney World Resort, welcome to the Magic Kingdom. No smoking please! Please hold on to the handrails." That's what the current monorail playsets are doing.

A couple years back, Disney also sold a track switching station that gave out the stop announcements for the various resort hotels, which is what you probably have heard in that video.
 
Howdy all!
I am REALLY late in deciding to try to buy in on this really cool bit of Disneyana! I was wondering if Disney is still selling any of these items at the parks. We will be in Disneyland in two weeks (woohoo!!!) and want to know what I can get there rather than having to pick them up on eBay before we go. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!
:love:
 
Howdy all!
I am REALLY late in deciding to try to buy in on this really cool bit of Disneyana! I was wondering if Disney is still selling any of these items at the parks. We will be in Disneyland in two weeks (woohoo!!!) and want to know what I can get there rather than having to pick them up on eBay before we go. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!
:love:

Umm, not sure what the current selection at DL is, but I can tell you what WDW had when I was there last November. I assume it's more or less the same at DL.

I saw monorail playsets of the following colors: Black, red, teal and yellow. The only resort playset available was the Contemporary. Plenty of Cinderella Castle playsets there, as always and I also remember seeing the die-cast bus models, containing a WDW, DCL and a Magical Express bus. Extension track sets for the monorail is available as well. At DL, I think they sell the Sleeping Beauty castle playset, but I'm not sure if they also have any resort playsets.

I got myself a monorail teal at WDW


Me Posing with a Monorail Playset on Main Street USA - Magic Kingdom - Walt Disney World by Reto Kurmann, on Flickr

The monorail playsets aren't too bad. Batteries last for about 2 hours and the track fits together well. I actually run it around my christmas tree every year. I agree that the high-speed monorails from the guy on Ebay are cool. The batteries drain a bit faster (I get about 45 mins of playtime out of it), but the speed looks definitely more realistic. I also have the custom tracks wyattsdaddy2 mentioned, but I found out I can only run the high-speed monorails properly on them since there's sometimes a little bump or gap between these tracks. The high-speed monorails can handle that with their power, but the regular ones often get stuck.

Hope that helps!
 
A couple years back, Disney also sold a track switching station that gave out the stop announcements for the various resort hotels, which is what you probably have heard in that video.

We have one of these and it is arguably the best accessory to the Monorail playset -it lets you move the monorail between up to three different track loops and has six different announcements that can be set to run by specific track (one for each of the three monorail resorts as well as two for the MK and one for Epcot.) All this adds a significant amount of "play value" to a running setup.

mnrl-wdw-switchstation.jpg


However, there are issues with the station. The first is a design problem with the track switching mechanism that often causes it to jam. The second is the announcement audio level being very weak because of the cheap, tiny speaker the station uses.

It took him several hours, but my husband took care of the jamming issue by adding plastic "tables" to each side of the switching pole system that is inside each side of the station. That keeps the "feet" of that mechanism from sliding off the pieces they move on, which is what causes the jamming issue.

The audio problem was easier to deal with, he simply cut the wires going to the original speaker and attached them to a larger, higher quality one. He somehow managed to squeeze a three inch long speaker (scavenged from an old radio) into an open interior space near the middle section of the station, facing down through the bottom via a hole he cut in the floor. Nice approach, much better sound but you can’t see the change. He also added some sort of high level to low level circuit to the audio system, which is connected to a stereo headphone jack installed under the station controls. That allows the station to be connected to outside amp/speakers if we ever want/need to do that.

If anyone is interested in more details on these upgrades, let me know and I'll see it I can get him to open up the station again and take some pictures of the changes he made.
 
I agree that the high-speed monorails from the guy on Ebay are cool. The batteries drain a bit faster (I get about 45 mins of playtime out of it), but the speed looks definitely more realistic.

We have one of the upgraded motor trains you refer to and the batteries actually last a lot longer if you take things to the next level: remote radio control. That allows you to control both speed and direction, so the batteries (we use rechargeables) last a few hours.

That's the good news. The not so good news is modifying the stock monorail to remote radio control is involved and really requires moderate to advanced modelling and electronic skills.

Fortunately, that's up my husband's alley, so he was able to successfully employ the information posted by a fellow named Bon Quincy at the site below. It's a walkthrough of how to gut, modify and rewire the front monorail car (and the one immediately behind it) for full remote control using R/C radio equipment used for model planes.

http://www.mindspring.com/~bobquincy/wdw/monorail/rcmonorail.html

Again, this modification is involved (major "hacking" of the R/C receiver and servo and then getting both to fit into very small spaces), but when added to an upgraded higher speed monrail you move from this being a toy to a true (and impressive) operating model.

Our Christmas guests loved seeing the train leave the switching station after running its loading announcements, followed by the appropriate spiel for the destination (made by the switching station), followed by the train slowing to a stop at the appropriate resort (we have all three - the Poly, Grand Floridian and Contemporary). Since the audio on the train is timed to repeat every minute or so, you can always have it running just before departing a location, which adds to the realism.:goodvibes
 
Hi all. Just finished digging through my parents attic and I found my old Monorail items from when I was a kid. Found the Contemporary Resort and a boxed Monorail Attraction connector. Put them on the EBay, as I didn't see any connectors on there at all.

Not trying to spam it up here (as this place is kinda cool!) mainly I was wondering what something like these would still sell for.

I saw the list of what was Discontinued, and I heard the Resort is now, is that true?
 

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