Disney Skyliner Accident

[seashoreCM]

When the entire gondola line was halted, were individual gondolas up in the air all perfectly still or were they rocking a bit? If perfectly still, no one in that gondola should be getting motion sickness (unless they already had it). Maybe anxiety nausea though for which we won't always rule out a stretcher.

The $100. gift card and comp ticket might be sufficient if in addition the charge for the missed restaurant reservation was also refunded.

If the monorail you were riding stalled and you had to go potty, could you do it in front of the others in the cabin? If the bus you were on stalled on the road and you had to go potty, could you do it ...

With a crash en route and gondolas clumping up behind the crash, it is no longer possible to bring the rest of the gondolas on that line/loop (both directions of travel) into stations one at a time.

Was it really necessary for the gondolas to be up to 60 feet above the ground? If 30 feet was enough to clear obstructions on the ground then it would be much easier to do rescues.

With a rope rescue was the guest wrapped in a harness and steadied by firefighters so if the guest's fingers lost hold of the rope the guest would not fall to the ground or slide down the rope too fast?

 

[NoTime42]

Supposedly a guest in one of the yellow cars wrote their experience on another site. There was a ~10 minute system stop while in Riviera, then when it started again, the aqua car didn’t move so their moving yellow car was essentially being squeezed. (plexiglass panels popping, etc) they believe at least 3 cars were damaged. At ground level, they had a much faster evacuation than others.

 

[SG131]

Supposedly a guest in one of the yellow cars wrote their experience on another site. There was a ~10 minute system stop while in Riviera, then when it started again, the aqua car didn’t move so their moving yellow car was essentially being squeezed. (plexiglass panels popping, etc) they believe at least 3 cars were damaged. At ground level, they had a much faster evacuation than others.

Thank god there weren’t any injuries. Sounds terrifying.

 

[OSUZorba]

This is outrageous if true. 3.5 hours in a sweltering box makes the air c

Lol. Not an accident when we can clearly see cars crashed into each other in a photo. Also unbelievable that they designed a system with no air conditioning or active ventilation that can potentially leave infants and disabled people stranded for over 3 hours in a metal box at near 100 degree temperatures outside. Just unbelievable.

I think they should've put emergency active ventilation on these if they are going to take 4 hours to evac people. Passive ventilation really doesn't help much when you are stopped. But they still won't heat up to the point of a parked car with all the windows up.

 

[OSUZorba]

So either the power failure line from Disney’s mouthpiece isn’t true OR power failures can cause crashes. Either way, bad look WDW.

And if this has anything to do with power (which I doubt), Disney really needs to upgrade their power grid. There have been multiple large power outage this year. When I was at MK LD weekend, every ride in the park went down, everyone had to be evaced (I was on PM). I've heard of at least 3 others this year.

 

[UmmGooD]

I'm not gonna go so far as to say that I would want or expect the trip to be comped, but that $100 and park ticket compensation would feel like gaslighting me into trying to believe that what happened to me was a delay rather than a very scary subpar evacuation system. I would be very angry to think that would be considered adequate. I would hope they would circle back to me after i had had a chance to sleep and recover and that they would recognize the seriousness of what happened.

I agree. Big companies think they can get away with small things that really don’t effect their bottom line. Let’s be honest here a $100 gift card won’t even make any difference to Disney. I am a huge Disney fan and I am not unreasonable. When I purchase a package them giving me a free day in the park and $100 isn’t anything. I can’t extend my trip because I have airfare. I was just in the parks two weeks ago and spent a ton on a 4 night trip. $100 is nothing. A lunch for two with three drinks at California grill was $250. $100 seems like a cop out to me.

So if this was night 7, Disney would have to pay for your perfectly fine first 6 nights? Seems totally reasonable.

Yep

We aren’t talking about an extra wait on the ground for an hour. We are talking about 3.5 hours in the air with no AC and no bathroom. This is an entire different thing here.

Its €250 for 3 hour delay on journeys less than 1500km. €600 is for Intercontinental travel on journeys more than 3500km.

The gondola isnt travelling 3500km!

Yeah and you have access to bathrooms and AC. This is much worse and I fly 100k miles a year. This is much worse than a 3 hour delay on an international flight.

 

[OSUZorba]

Disney is so so so so lucky this happenned at 9 pm in October and not at 3 pm in July. I admit I don’t completely know the science behind the glass they have on these things, but someone explain to me how being stuck in something like this in the July heat for this length of time doesn’t lead to fatalities for children and the elderly.

Here’s a study that showed that a car parked in the sun in the summer reaches temperatures that are fatal for a 2 year old in 1 hour: https://time.com/5291550/cars-dangerous-temperatures/

My understanding is that when these monorail cars are not moving they have no ventilation, is that correct?

You still have the open windows, so even with no wind, natural conviction will help carry away the heat. The slant of the window vents hurt the natural convection though. The tint on the windows also reflects nearly all UV and IR radiation, as well as the majority of visible light radiation, so only ~10-20% of the sun's heat will actually pass through the windows. This is where being in a wrapped cabin would really suck, because the wrap will absorb the sun's heat (at least in the visible spectrum, but probably also IR) as opposed to reflecting it. For anyone that cares, the split of the sun's energy on the surface is about 8% UV, 42% Visible Light, 40% IR (this is from memory, so might be slightly off).

From personal experience, I have a good ceramic tint on my car, that is not as good as what is on the Skyliner (can't have reflective tint on a car) and I can sit in the car with the windows up in 105 heat and be fine (assuming I have the windshield shade up), it isn't comfortable, but it wouldn't give me heat stroke either.

FYI: The car example assume rolled up windows, so not ventilation of any kind. Then normal car glass absorbs most IR and UV light, so the glass itself gets pretty hot. It then allows nearly all visible light to come in, which is then absorbed by everything in the care that isn't clear, heating them up. As those items heat up, they start giving off IR which is blocked by the glass. That is why cars can get significantly hotter than the outside temperature.

 

[OSUZorba]

I think for some people $100 and a park ticket would be fair and reasonable compensation. For others, it won’t be. It really depends on what’s happening inside each gondola. Some gondolas may be full of calm people who have spent the time quietly chatting, while other gondolas may have sick or hysterical people on it. Imagine dealing with hysterical people for 2-3 hours that you don’t even know.

 

[NoTime42]

Part of airplane compensation is the fact that guests are handsomely paying for that Specific flight while airlines don’t allow unloading the plane since they need the plane at the next airport. Is there mandatory stuck elevator compensation?

 

[suemom2kay]

Someone stated on Twitter that an empty car fell off line at the station another said two cars collided. I guess both could be right. No one hurt. But they had to shut it down. No idea if it’s true. Sounds like a total PR nightmare for Disney. Lots of stories on twitter...

Didn’t fall off the line. Shudder. It failed to leave the station and then a chain reaction occurred.

 

[dizneefan13]

It’s not. This will spread through the Disney community but I don’t think anyone will cancel their trip over it. Heck I still plan to ride it- just not when I’m on my way to the airport and not without a water bottle and snack...

and depends. and after the sun goes down....

I doubt if anyone will cancel their trip over this either, but I bet there are many who won't ride the thing, if its still running and not sidelined and examined for awhile. I was looking forward to riding it next month, but I dunno know. Will have to see how this shakes out.

 

[OSUZorba]

@rteetz posted this earlier, but there have been updates: https://blogmickey.com/2019/10/appa...crash-shuts-down-system-evacuations-underway/

Looks like there is a pull off point at the end of the station that they pushed the blue car on to. Then got the line moving again and let most people off at a station. I'm wondering if they never actually started a full evac and only pulled off people that were having medical issues, since they knew they could clear the line and restart.

My speculation: The blue car didn't grab the cable for some reason and there is a fail safe feature that caused it to move into an overrun area. This would explain why they have a pull out right there. I would think if they did have a fail safe run out, though, there would be a kill switch in it to prevent the stack up of cabins.

 

[we"reofftoneverland]

If there is an a/c system when does it kick in? There are reports of people being stranded for 2 hours a couple of days ago and they said it was incredibly hot and miserable. Seems like if there is one it would have kicked in for them.

 

[Haley R]

And if this has anything to do with power (which I doubt), Disney really needs to upgrade their power grid. There have been multiple large power outage this year. When I was at MK LD weekend, every ride in the park went down, everyone had to be evaced (I was on PM). I've heard of at least 3 others this year.

We were just there a couple weeks ago eating at Garden Grill and the entire building lost power. We sat in the dark with backup lights for our meal. They were great about it but I didn’t realize they had other power issues going on

 

[joelkfla]

I'm wondering if they never actually started a full evac and only pulled off people that were having medical issues, since they knew they could clear the line and restart.

No, a woman who was stuck was talking on her phone to the WKMG newscast. She said the RCFD was working their way down the line, and they had just started to raise the bucket to her cabin when the line started moving. She sounded disappointed because after the line started, it stopped again within a few seconds. It started moving again while she was still on the phone.

 

[Ladyandthepuppies]

A $100 gift card and a park ticket sounds reasonable... so long as nothing traumatic happened while stuck on the gondola. I was doing the math in my head and deluxe resorts tend to cost around $17/hr, park tickets are variable but worst case are probably $9/hr, so it’s up to $78 wasted while sitting in the Skyliner. Obviously your time is worth something too, but $100 plus a park ticket does seem to be fair from a strict dollars and cents view, assuming your experience was a calm but boring 3 hour delay.

But, if those 3 hours included any kind of experience-induced illness (panic attack, nausea, etc.) or traumatic experience (stuck with a screaming baby for 3 hours, or a stranger having to use the bag in front of you / being the one using the bag / smelling that bag for 3 hours, etc.) then yeah, I would expect far more compensation. Or at least, that’s what my lawyer would be telling the jury when I sued.

Praying there are no serious injuries and those people on stretchers were being treated as a precaution.

Also I can’t help but chime in that I’ve traveled through Europe extensively and gotten €0 for delayed flights. I didn’t know €600 was an option but they certainly don’t go handing it out frequently.

 

[anthony2k7]

What use is a day ticket to anyone who lives out of state?! Which, I'm guessing is the majority of guests in wdw.


Is the $100 per guest? If so kids as well? A family of 4 getting $400 in total probably seems fair maybe even a little generous to me.

 

[anthony2k7]

So presumably we can expect ticket prices to go up next week now to cover the fall in bookings from this news?

 

[Maistre Gracey]

Good thing a big thunder-boomer didn’t roll through.

 

[MichelinMan]

I'm a safety professional and a health and safety inspector in the UK.

This incident worries me in lots of ways.

First, I am gobsmacked that they are still running the gondola system at the moment with passengers in, until they have identified the root cause and addresed it. If this happened in the UK, the likely result would be a prohibition notice slapped on the system until the cause has been identified. Whilst fortunately nobody appears to have been seriously hurt, those cars just shouldn't be colliding with each other like that.

Which leads me onto my 2nd point. I suspect there might be design issues that have contributed to this incident. Somebody up thread mentioned that this was caused by a sensor failure. Well if true, then I would suggest that there is a design flaw. This should have been designed as a safety instrumented system, and if failure of just one sensor could result in this, then that suggests to me that their design is inadequate.

Alternatively, if this wasn't a hardware failure, then that implies human error - in which case it will take longer to really establish the facts, and will require an element of staff re-training.

In both scenarios, they shouldn't be running the gondolas until they have addressed the root cause.