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

I am not saying that the Skyliner will not be an efficient mode of transportation; I've argued that it will be. I'm just saying Disney may have to load the cabins close to capacity at park opening as well as at closing.

Capacity is a full bus worth of people every 90 seconds. Ever see full buses depart every 90 seconds for a park/property?
 
Capacity is a full bus worth of people every 90 seconds. Ever see full buses depart every 90 seconds for a park/property?
OK, first of all, if they do attain 4500pph, that's a bus load about every 60 seconds, not every 90 seconds.

BUT I AM NOT SAYING SKYLINER WON'T BE ABLE TO HANDLE THE LOAD!!!

I'm just saying there may be queues at times around park opening, and if there are queues, Disney may want to pack the cabins with more than 4-6 Guests. The queues may well dissipate within 10 minutes, but for those 10 minutes Disney will want to maximize loading.

You can't directly compare the Skyliner to bus frequency. Each bus departure serves one resort & one park (for the larger resorts). At Pop/AoA, the Skyliner will be carrying Guests from the 2 largest resorts to 2 parks simultaneously. At CBR, each line will be going to one park, but carrying Guests from 3 of the largest resorts, plus Riviera and any Epcot resort Guests that choose it for DHS. Yes, the Skyliner's capacity will probably be higher than the buses now running from all of those resorts put together, but the buses can't keep up with the demand currently, so just saying it has a higher capacity than the current buses doesn't guarantee that there won't be queues.
 
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I am not saying that the Skyliner will not be an efficient mode of transportation; I've argued that it will be. I'm just saying Disney may have to load the cabins close to capacity at park opening as well as at closing.
There is just no method of getting people to the skyliner as fast as it'll take them away, except for the mass Exodus at Park closing.

There might be small lines after a bus drops off, but I don't it would be enough for them to start craming people in.
 
OK, first of all, if they do attain 4500pph, that's a bus load about every 60 seconds, not every 90 seconds.

BUT I AM NOT SAYING SKYLINER WON'T BE ABLE TO HANDLE THE LOAD!!!

I'm just saying there may be queues at times around park opening, and if there are queues, Disney may want to pack the cabins with more than 4-6 Guests. The queues may well dissipate within 10 minutes, but for those 10 minutes Disney will want to maximize loading.

You can't directly compare the Skyliner to bus frequency. Each bus departure serves one resort & one park (for the larger resorts). At Pop/AoA, the Skyliner will be carrying Guests from the 2 largest resorts to 2 parks simultaneously. At CBR, each line will be going to one park, but carrying Guests from 3 of the largest resorts, plus Riviera and any Epcot resort Guests that choose it for DHS. Yes, the Skyliner's capacity will probably be higher than the buses now running from all of those resorts put together, but the buses can't keep up with the demand currently, so just saying it has a higher capacity than the current buses doesn't guarantee that there won't be queues.

I agree with what you say. There certainly could be surges in the morning commute where the line backs up. It likely wouldn't be for more than 5 or 10 minutes at a time. I still think that they generally will not pack people on the gondola. If full capacity is 10 you might see them trying to get 8 during those times, but I'm sure if you say to a CM that you have a hard time being crammed in a small spce, they would be willing to put out a smaller load. Or of course if you know you won't like the gondola, you stay elsewhere.
 


They were detachable. They were propelled by gravity, inertia, and muscle power thru the stations. Cm's stopped the cabins for loading, and then pushed them down a rail that sloped down to the reattachment point. That's the same way BGT's skyride works. At night, the cabins were taken off line and stored behind the Tomorrowland station.

They were low capacity because they stopped for loading, they only loaded one cabin at a time, they only carried 4 passengers, and the cable ran at a much slower speed.

At 2:15 in this video, you can see the cm holding the cabin stationary beyond the turning bullwheel.
You have me on that one. I'll admit I'm wrong. That being said, while it is detachable, it's not up to modern standards where the chair/gondolas are powered around, allowing a greater speed.
 
OK, first of all, if they do attain 4500pph, that's a bus load about every 60 seconds, not every 90 seconds.

BUT I AM NOT SAYING SKYLINER WON'T BE ABLE TO HANDLE THE LOAD!!!

I'm just saying there may be queues at times around park opening, and if there are queues, Disney may want to pack the cabins with more than 4-6 Guests. The queues may well dissipate within 10 minutes, but for those 10 minutes Disney will want to maximize loading.

You can't directly compare the Skyliner to bus frequency. Each bus departure serves one resort & one park (for the larger resorts). At Pop/AoA, the Skyliner will be carrying Guests from the 2 largest resorts to 2 parks simultaneously. At CBR, each line will be going to one park, but carrying Guests from 3 of the largest resorts, plus Riviera and any Epcot resort Guests that choose it for DHS. Yes, the Skyliner's capacity will probably be higher than the buses now running from all of those resorts put together, but the buses can't keep up with the demand currently, so just saying it has a higher capacity than the current buses doesn't guarantee that there won't be queues.

The tradition of this thread has been to use conservative numbers. Since you're bring up how many resorts will be served, when have you seen a full bus depart every three minutes to a park/resort?

Think of capacity as a completely full monorail every 3 minutes or as a completely full ferry every 10 minutes.

Or think of it this way, when you're walking to the bus stop and can see the stop for 2 minutes before you get to the stop 2 bus loads of people could be loaded and on their way in while you walked those 2 minutes.
 
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I have no experience with cable cars AT ALL...The capacity of the system is calculated based on loading the cables with the maximum number of cars that it can safely hold if they were all loaded to capacity. Do we know that Disney is going to have as many cars as the system can hold? If that hasn’t been definitely established, then it’s possible that Disney set any other capacity number they wanted in order to save on the expense of the cars. Disney may not have chosen to serve at the highest capacity and instead established their own acceptable level of service (average calculated wait time 4 minutes for example, less midday, more at peak).

Do less cars allow for more time to load each one in the station?
 
I have no experience with cable cars AT ALL...The capacity of the system is calculated based on loading the cables with the maximum number of cars that it can safely hold if they were all loaded to capacity. Do we know that Disney is going to have as many cars as the system can hold? If that hasn’t been definitely established, then it’s possible that Disney set any other capacity number they wanted in order to save on the expense of the cars. Disney may not have chosen to serve at the highest capacity and instead established their own acceptable level of service (average calculated wait time 4 minutes for example, less midday, more at peak).

Do less cars allow for more time to load each one in the station?

The capacity numbers are not based on what the system can handle, they are based on what it has been rumored Disney is shooting for which is 5000 people per hour, per leg in each direction.
 
The capacity numbers are not based on what the system can handle, they are based on what it has been rumored Disney is shooting for which is 5000 people per hour, per leg in each direction.

Right - it's easy enough to think about. If Disney is gunning for 5000 per hour -that's 83 people per minute or 8.3 cars per minute (assuming 10 people is used for the capacity calculations) or a car leaving every 7.2 seconds).

Personally I don't think this is all that realistic, so I am not sure where the 5000 per hour each way number came from. If that's really the capacity each way - that's also a full bus in less than a minute, or around 80 busses an hour. I am sure Disney wants to make sure they don't have bottlenecks, but even 3000 per hour is 50 buses an hour, and that's more than twice the CURRENT bus capacity, and also a more reasonable 12 seconds per car.

In the end - I don't think it really matters - capacity is NEVER going to be an issue.
The big issue will be how they handle shutdown for weather.
And of course we can't forget air conditioning. :goodvibes
 
You have me on that one. I'll admit I'm wrong. That being said, while it is detachable, it's not up to modern standards where the chair/gondolas are powered around, allowing a greater speed.

Don't the new Skyliner cabins detach if needed for "slower" loading (like ECV etc) while other cars keep going around?

Looks like this old system was only able to slow down (detach or not) and the other cabins had to wait for that "slower" load to happen?
 
Don't the new Skyliner cabins detach if needed for "slower" loading (like ECV etc) while other cars keep going around?

Looks like this old system was only able to slow down (detach or not) and the other cabins had to wait for that "slower" load to happen?
There are dual tracks at 3 of the 4 stations, and the presumption is that the 2nd track is to allow for stopping some cabins to allow more time to load, but AFAIK that has not been confirmed.

The Skyway was not accessible to wheelchairs or strollers. If there was a delay loading, I think they just stopped the rope for a short time; maybe there was an option to slow it, but I don't remember it.
 
The tradition of this thread has been to use conservative numbers. Since you're bring up how many resorts will be served, when have you seen a full bus depart every three minutes to a park/resort?
When dual loading was being used.
 
Don't the new Skyliner cabins detach if needed for "slower" loading (like ECV etc) while other cars keep going around?

Looks like this old system was only able to slow down (detach or not) and the other cabins had to wait for that "slower" load to happen?
It's the same concept, the cabin detaches from the haul rope.
The issue is that you can't hold more than x amount of cabins in the station, detached or not. So if you stations capacity is 4 cabins, you find yourself with 4 cabins in station, without one ready to leave, you can't accept a 5th cabin into station. At that point you stop or significantly slow the haul rope down until the problem resolves.
It is somewhat different in a dual load system. Cabins can leap frog each other in theory. Lets say each bull wheel can hold 4 cabins as well, that is a total capacity of 8 at a time. In theory you could have 3 locked into the outer bullwheel until you want to put it back in line. So you don't really have to stop anything to load the time consuming customers. So in theory, the need to slow the haul rope down should be reduced if run correctly. It will be interesting to see them operate it, as it is a significantly different than the industry norm.
 
There are dual tracks at 3 of the 4 stations, and the presumption is that the 2nd track is to allow for stopping some cabins to allow more time to load, but AFAIK that has not been confirmed.

Ah yea that sounds like what I heard. That would be dramatic time saver IMO-esp at WDW with so many "slower" guests in line.


It is somewhat different in a dual load system. Cabins can leap frog each other in theory. Lets say each bull wheel can hold 4 cabins as well, that is a total capacity of 8 at a time. In theory you could have 3 locked into the outer bullwheel until you want to put it back in line. So you don't really have to stop anything to load the time consuming customers. So in theory, the need to slow the haul rope down should be reduced if run correctly. It will be interesting to see them operate it, as it is a significantly different than the industry norm.
 

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