Even the Magic Kingdom is not Immune...

Says it happened at 2am....are they open all night? Never been there.....found it odd that they refer to the driver as a cast member...
 
Authorities are looking into the possibility that the driver may have been incapasitated prior to the crash...... also suggested, the age of the equipment may have played a role (monorails have a 15 year lifespan....... these are 20 years old)
 
Says it happened at 2am....are they open all night? Never been there.....found it odd that they refer to the driver as a cast member...


Some of the monorails operate 24/7 there. In reference to him being referred to as a "cast member", all employees of Disney world/Disneyland are referred to as cast members.
 
I read somewhere that they operate until around 4am some days. The words Employee and Boss has long fallen aside. We now have Team Members, Team Leaders, Cast and Crew. Even a garbage collector is now called a Garologist!
 
yes, but according to witnesses, some cast members ran out of the station, to ask passer-bys to assist as, there were not very many people on the platform
 
Says it happened at 2am....are they open all night? Never been there.....found it odd that they refer to the driver as a cast member...

I first went there in the 80s on a high school trip. It was just the Disney park and Epcot was new, not much else.

Went back sometime in the 90s. From what I saw, I named all Disney locations Disney Planet because once there you never need to leave though you may well want to from Disney overload. Or you could call it Disney Prison.
They had:
Disney Park
Epcot
Some other parks I don't remember the name of, the jungle place, the water park, etc..
Several living places, I think a few could be rented on long term or regular basis.
Bus routes in addition to the monorail and they pushed for little car travel.
Full on shopping center with grocery store, clothing store, etc.
Even had a specific area devoted to night life with several teen/adult bars/clubs. That alone would be open for a while 'til 2-4AM EST.
I think this was around the time they considered replacing your cash with Disney money.
All I wanted to do was go to a frickin' park, not another country or prison but it felt like that. I'm surprised Disney hasn't requested secession. And that's just the Florida location, I've never been to California.
 
"This video has been removed due to terms of use violation."

Link's a goner. Maybe on LiveLeak somewhere?
Im goingt o say probably due to either the fact that its a crash video (real life close up with death occuring).....or that disney managed get the vid pulled...... either way, its out of respect for those killed
 
I think a home spun video like that where the monorail passengers seem to be left to their own resources would spell doom for Disneyworld in any court case. The scenes clearly show someone who looks like a security guard being more concerned about a person taking movies than passengers on the train. I know that may sound unfair, but that's the way it looks to the casual observer (me). Duty of Care laws demand that staff, crew or cast of any public event ensure the absolute safety of passengers above all else, but the person doesn't seem to be concerned about their safety at all. Maybe he checked them out before the video started, but the law would demand that he stayed with them to ensure everyone was safe. As such, I'd be asking for the video to be removed also.
 
that kid was my age.....

Really casts a heavy shadow....I drive trains at a Local amusement park in Denver, he cant be more then a year older then I am
 
I think a home spun video like that where the monorail passengers seem to be left to their own resources would spell doom for Disneyworld in any court case. The scenes clearly show someone who looks like a security guard being more concerned about a person taking movies than passengers on the train. I know that may sound unfair, but that's the way it looks to the casual observer (me). Duty of Care laws demand that staff, crew or cast of any public event ensure the absolute safety of passengers above all else, but the person doesn't seem to be concerned about their safety at all. Maybe he checked them out before the video started, but the law would demand that he stayed with them to ensure everyone was safe. As such, I'd be asking for the video to be removed also.
as response to the legal obligations, bear in mind that these monorails, in respect to saftey, have "all the stops pulled out"...... the whole system is designed to not allow these trains to get close to one-another on the main line unless an authorized cast member overrides the system with a number of saftey codes..... truely this was in all respects a "freak accident" seeing as every conceivable saftey measure failed to stop this collision....
 
Im goingt o say probably due to either the fact that its a crash video (real life close up with death occuring).....or that disney managed get the vid pulled...... either way, its out of respect for those killed

Respect for the victims may be one of the reasons, but don't forget that Disney is Very protective over it's name and image and will use copyright laws in every possible way to protect that image. Hence movie disappearing.
 
The disappearance of the movie is probably a bit of both. I have to say that I agree with them. One of their employees DIED. I think they have the right to have the video removed and that the guard had the right to have the person stop filming. He probably knew the driver and was almost freaking out. Who knows, the driver could even have been a close relative of the guard or something like that.
 
Re: "Cast member" Disney theme park employees have been cast members since the opening of the first park in CA.

Re: Lack of cast members on the platform. Compare it to any train station. At least at Disney World Reedy Creek FD is only a couple minutes away (station is just north of the Kingdom).

Note: One report said the driver who was killed was in Pink, parked in the station. Purple backed into Pink while moving into position to switch to Exterior Beam to go back to maintenance. Current reports indicate that the Purple driver was not aware that Pink was in the station. I don't know details for today's operations but back in my time on the rails the MAPO system (anti collision system) didn't work during switching operations thus we were always extra vigilent during them. Todays trains are considerably more sophisticated as they should be nearly 30 years later. They have systems to keep trains at the speed limit now. They also have blackboxes now.

We will probably never know the details of what actually happened. Disney is pretty good at making bad news go away. This would probably not been as big a story but for another fatality at another park earlier in the week.

1 fatality in over 1 billion passenger miles (90K pass/mi/day for 39 years) still makes monorails the safest form of mass transportation.
 
For all practical purposes The Disney Corp owns Orlando and the country its in. They generate so much income they pretty much are a power unto themselves. What the mad mouse wants the mad mouse gets. Mere motals like sheriffs and country commisioners don't count. I do agree with the idea of pulling the video out of respect for family of the deceased but on the other hand pulling it shows how much power the Disney Corp has. Anywhere else and it most likely would not have been pulled. What would be interesting to see is if one of the major news networks can obtain the video. Would the Disney Corp be able to squash that too? I wouldn't be surprised if they could.

Ben
 
Human error...

:cool: This is of course not the first rear-end collision that has occurred at Walt Disney World...they average about one in eight years...this is the first fatality in 38 years of operation.

The "cast members" are all in the Teamsters Union. Everyone attends a casting-call to apply for a job with Walt Disney Enterprises.

They do have a standard procedure for rescue of passengers & crew in case of emergency...by a scissor lift aerial platform like the airlines use for cargo, however with 9 people simpler quicker ways are used.

In any event the cast will not hesitate to ask for help if no threat to life is present...the power is automatically cut to the train if there is a crash.

I enjoy riding the monorail cab(either end, preferably the rear)as you have been able to & there are extra seats...Uncle Walt knew there would be visitors that wished to ride the cab...but that's no fun since the driver becomes a tour-guide & you become self-conscious about your own safety.

There are many safe-guards to prevent this but no positive train control(PTC)...if there were, none of these rear-end collisions would happen, but the chance of a rear-ender is relatively low...really. The PTC would cause more logistics problems than necessary to maintain a safe transportation system...if implemented, it would restrict the ability to "stack" trains in blocks behind signals, restricting the close stations too much. PTC is more than a warning, when it says stop, you stop unless you have an ability to overide...that friends, is not PTC.

It's likely that human error will be identified in the cause of this, just as any other investigation will reveal now days...not coming to grips with operating late-night, early-morning, something all railroaders face, the seasoned one's that survive the longest tell you that sleep is not to be taken lightly.

Face it, there is no perfected cure-all for transportation. Just as you would have problems with dispatching our AI Drivers & AI Dispatch, so be it on the prototype. The business is about transportation, moving forward, ever on Further...

I enjoy visiting WDW when possible, have been since the first year of opening. I enjoy when the cast take serious care for the safety of us...guests & though I have a keen eye for my safety on-board the WDW monorail system & know they are the best with what they have to work with.

The shame of it is all the politicians who have visited the theme parks & did nothing to implement the different systems of transportation in their domain, back when the costs were nothing compared to now.
 
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