Fantasyland expansion?

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/features_orlando/2009/07/disney-world-fantasyland-expansion-magic-kingdom-princesses.html#trackback

Walter Cronkite

I grew up with Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News.  I loved his voice.  So authorotative.

 

And for me, I will always think of him as the signature voice of Spaceship Earth.  He did the original narration from the opening of EPCOT in '82 until the re-did it in 1990.

 

I can still hear his voice "Travel back in time...."

Are you kidding?

There was a bus accident on Disney property yesterday afternoon.  But this was your basic traffic accident and is unlikely to have been caused by a confluence of events.  A bus was attempting to merge into traffic, and had to hit his brakes.  Another bus didn't stop in time, and rear ended him.

 

20 or so people were mildly injured, and a few went to a hospital for a checkup.

still more to the story

As it often happens in accidents where there a lot of safeguards, it takes many things to simultaneously happen in order to cause the accident.

 

In the case of the monorail, there's an indication that the person in the roundhouse who is responsible for the switch thought he activated the switch, and then radioed that he activated the switch.  Only, he didn't actually throw the switch.  That prompted the supervisor who was off site (on what might have been a legit dinner break) to radio the monorail to back up.

 

Now had someoneone been in the control station, or had the roundhouse person noticed, or even if the person with the kill switch was paying attention, this might not have happened.

 

The final report is due out by the NTSB in a week or so.

 

And...No surprise, the mother of the pilot who died is suing Disney.

The final tally on the "quest for food"

Back in the early 1990s, a friend and I decided to start on a quest to
visit every restaurant on Dinsey property. And over the next 18
months, we made a tremendous effort, heading over to the park
regularly and doing some serious eating.

How did we do? Well there were 121 (and a half) restaurants on
property at the time, and we went to an astonishing 116 of them!
While we fell short of our quest to eat at *all* of them, we did
manage to get to 96% of them.

I'm pretty proud of that!

=======================
Here's the summary:

On the monroail resort hotels, I was a little weak. During the tour, I
ate at 12.5 of the 17 dining options, which is only 74%.
While I did eat at most of them at one time or another, there are 2.5
that I have never eaten at.

Inside the Magic Kingdom, I fared much better eating at 27.5 of the
28.5 restaurants (96%) during my 18 month quest. I missed only one due
to bad timing; it was closed often.

I also gave myself a bonus point for my panache in dining at the
Liberty Tree Tavern during my lunch break while I was a CM.

In the Studios, I went 15 for 15. Perfect.

At the Swan & Dolphin, I also was a perfect 6/6.

The "other" hotels: 11 out of 15 (73%), with one that I ate at later.

In Ft Wilderness I went 1/2, though I ate at 1 before the tour.

In Downtown Disney / PI, I was 10/10

In EPCOT's Future World, we went 12 /12 including all the food in the
Land's food court

And in World Showcase, we would 21 / 22, only missing in Marrakesh.

So there are only a handful of restauarants that I've never tried on property...

Hunh?

There's a piece floating around that quotes a former monorail pilot about the supervisor who should have been at the control when the crash happened....but wasn't.

 

Apparently, its not uncommon for him to be *off property* and directing trains via his radio.  Once, according to the source, he was in a bathroom at a McDonalds telling pilots what to do.

 

And it appears as though last weekend, he was at a restaurant when the crash happened.

 

Basically the key person who could have prevented this may have been derelict in his duty.

 

That's unconscionable.  Assuming its true.

a couple of quick updates

Disney decided to suspend the driver of monorail pink, the person was at the control in the maintenance shed (the one who should have thrown the switch), and the supervisor who had taken over at the monorail control station.  They are all "with pay, and not disciplinary."

 

There was a change in operating procedures that was made a few years ago that seems to have some bearing here.   Before the change, the pilot leaving the epcot line would make his last stop in the TTC, power down the "front" of the monorail, and would physically move to the "back" of the train and power it up.  On getting clearance, he would then make it move toward the switch, in reverse from his position, but still in the same direction as traffic.  That is, the train would move toward the switch, but the driver would be in back.

 

That way, when he got to the switch, he was facing it and could visually observe what was happening as he moved through it and against the flow of traffic. Once the switch was complete, he would then stay in that section of the train and drive to the next switch (between the MK and Contemporary) to take the train to the roundhouse.

 

The change they implemented was to have the driver stay in the "front" of the monorail after dropping off passengers, and drive to the switch.  He would then back up - blind - to the switch and into the TTC.  Once he was in the TTC on the new track, he would initiate the change to the other cab (the "back").

 

Ostensibly the change was made to keep the passenger flow moving.  It takes up to 10 minutes to switch ends on the train, plus the time spent at the switch.  That means people might have to wait another 10 minutes to get between EPCOT and the MK....they moved that time to the resort line, so people wouldn't have to wait as long.

 

The risk to safety was seemingly small.  Except that it meant that everyone had to be doing their job or something might happen