It's been several weeks since our last update, and
there have been some surprising changes around Disneyland. Some of them
are good, some are not, and some still hold
promise for the next few years. We've also got some news that will likely keep
fans of DCA's upcoming Extreme Makeover: Theme Park edition excited, while other
plans for the
original Anaheim park will strike fear in the hearts of most die-hard fans. In addition
to a few other news items, there's also the groaner of a new marketing campaign that will
soon be announced as a successor to the bewildering Year Of A Million Dreams.
(Before I forget, most of the photos here today were taken
yesterday by yours truly.)
Got that decadent cupcake (with the heap of rich frosting)
plucked out of it's paper cup? Have that mocha latte picked up
from the barista already? Well then, let's get going; we have a
lot to cover today! - Al
Monorail Blew
Let's start by getting some of the bad news out of the
way, most of it centered on Disneyland. Things had been looking up for
the original park in 2008, what with the new fleet of monorails arriving on property
and some major refurbishments planned for favorite attractions. The first of the
new monorails arrived to media fanfare and plenty of online chatter back in
December, and we had told you that the original plan was to have the new train
finished with testing on the beam by the busy Presidents Day weekend. Well,
Presidents Day has come and gone and the new train has only made it around the
beam once, and even then the trip was only accomplished by towing the train with
the maintenance tractor. As it stands now, it might be many months before anyone
is allowed to actually ride on the new train, while the remaining trains undergo
major redesign at the factory up in British Columbia.
It looked good, until...
What happened? Things began to go wrong just a few
days after the new train arrived and was gingerly set down on the beam back at
the roundhouse adjacent to Harbor Blvd. The arrival and installation of the
train onto the track went fairly smoothly, with the exception of some scuffed up
paint caused by the shrink wrap used for shipping. After securing the train
inside the roundhouse, and ordering up some additional metallic reflective paint
at a cost of over $1,000 per gallon, things were progressing smoothly on
Disneyland's first new monorail in over 20 years. By the first of the year
it was time to take the train out for a spin and begin the official test and
adjust phase.
When the train was being moved out of the roundhouse and towards
the track switch that leads to the mainline at the back of Tomorrowland, the
front of the train began to ease through a gentle S-curve that leads from the
roundhouse towards the track switch. It was at that point that a grinding and crumpling noise was heard from under the train itself, and the
horrified engineer immediately brought the train to a stop.
Much alarm and
consternation surrounded the initial cursory inspection of the damaged train,
and eventually the monorail was eased back on to the straightaway and reversed
back inside the roundhouse. A more thorough inspection of the underside of the
train revealed a shocking discovery; that major portions of the cars chassis had
failed to make the clearance in the gentle S-curve the train had slowly moved
through. The structure of the chassis itself was heavily damaged, and the
underside of the exterior body panels had been impacted as well. The response to
this discovery was utter shock and disbelief amongst the assembled Imagineers
and Disneyland maintenance team.
A look under a current train.
A further assessment of the situation revealed a
fairly simple problem, that the chassis superstructure and suspension system had
been incorrectly constructed in such a way that it was not making the clearance
between the chassis itself and the cement beam. To make matters worse, this
damage was only caused on a gentle S-curve of a turn that is far more mild than
some of the sharper twists and turns the monorail would need to make out on the
tightly wound beam way in and around Tomorrowland and the Matterhorn. If this
much damage was caused by a very gentle curve at slow speed, then the Imagineers
knew there was no way the train would be able to navigate the rest of the 49
year old bowl-of-spaghetti beam way at a normal pace.
While the new train sat silently inside the roundhouse
awaiting repairs, a few weeks of furious meetings and finger pointing between
Imagineering and the contractor up in Vancouver took up most of January. There
is still a formal investigation yet to be completed, but the smoking gun now
appears to be the original 1980's blueprints that were maintained by Disneyland
and WDI. Apparently some changes to the chassis were undertaken back in the
1980's prior to entering service, but they never made it onto the blueprints
kept on file back in that less technologically savvy time. When one of the old
trains was dissected and used in a form of reverse engineering, the difference
between the actual chassis and what the blueprints called for helped cause a
miscalculation in the dimensions of the new trains chassis. The result is a new
train that now has structural damage to the chassis and that still hasn't been
able to make it around the track on its own.
Plastered with ads, just like
your local public bus
After the reconfiguration of some of the support arms
on the chassis that were supposed to be a temporary fix, two weeks ago the new
train was towed around the beam late at night by the biodiesel powered
maintenance tractor used by the Disneyland Facilities Department. With some of
the chassis structure removed and reconfigured, the train was able to make it
around the track without crumpling body panels. While there was no major damage
to the train itself, the reconfigured train still couldn't make the tighter
clearances through turns and it ripped out dozens of brackets that hold the
electric bus bar to the cement beam. It took hours to reattach all the damaged
brackets to the beam and restore power to the track, and the Disneyland Monorail
System remained closed to passengers well into the next day while the frantic
repairs took place. Presidents Day weekend then came and went without the new
monorail in operation.
Obviously a permanent fix will eventually be made and
a new chassis structure will be fitted to the new train. But in the meantime,
all work on the remaining two trains has been stopped up in Vancouver until a
permanent engineering resolution can be found. As of this writing, there is not
an estimate on how long it may be before the new monorail on property makes its
debut. And with construction stopped on the rest of the fleet, there is also no
longer an estimate for how long it may be before the second and third trains
arrive from Canada. The original timeline called for all three trains to be up
and running by Christmas, but that is looking very doubtful now. About the only
thing that is certain at this point is next month's arrival of the snazzy new
costumes for the Monorail Cast Members that were designed to match the new
trains.
Unfortunately, there is still plenty of finger
pointing going on and even the hint of legal action lingering in the air, so the
arrival of the actual trains may be an ongoing story we'll have to keep updating
you on in 2008. The fact that the original track layout and construction of the
first two trains only took 12 months back in 1958-59 hasn't been lost on some in
Imagineering. It's very disappointing that in this modern age of computerized
design and instant global communication a simple oversight like this is causing
further delays and cost overruns in what has already been a four year, big
budget project.
Where's Bob Gurr when you need him?
it's a changed world
Meanwhile, right next door to the Disneyland monorail
roundhouse work is well underway on the 10 month project to replace the flume in
the sprawling it's a small world show building. While the Disneyland PR
department did a bit of fancy doubletalk with the media in trying to convince
them that instead of heavier 21st century Americans it was really
just a "buildup of fiberglass" heretofore unheard of by anyone who actually
works on the attraction that was somehow causing the boats to bottom out in the
flume.
The fact of the matter is that the small world refurbishment project was
driven by a clearly stated desire to allow today's lower riding boats to travel
easier through the ride. The old flume from the World's Fair is being gutted,
and a new flume conveniently designed to be one inch deeper will contain a new
fleet of purposely lighter boats that ride up to an inch higher in the water.
Those extra two inches of clearance will allow for several hundred more pounds
of weight in each boat, keeping the churro loving tourists of today sailing
through the ride just as easily as their lighter predecessors did back in the
1960's.
But it now appears that the inside of the attraction
will be quite different from the original 1964 version that has hosted tens of
millions of Disneyland over the years. Imagineers have recently been inside the
ride placing temporary cutouts of Disney characters in scenes along the flume
trying to determine where those characters would look the best in each scene.
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