Monorail Experience

Walt Disney World Other
1

When I was a kid, I loved the monorail. I found the views to be an excellent way to get excited about getting to the park. This is particularly true during the non peak hours. I remember one time we ran to the front car, and the conductor offered is a chance to watch from the cockpit. He chatted with us for a whole loop from Contemporary until we came back around to MK. My mom, bless her heart, asked the conductor if the monorail works during snowstorms. I loved it! This was an attraction in and of itself that proved way more memorable than some other actual attractions.

Here’s where I’m going with this. I want to give my kids a similar experience if I can. Now that we’re in a post 9/11 high security world, I’m wondering if it’s even possible. Has anyone else had an experience like this? If so, is it just dumb luck that you get the chance or is there an actual strategy to it?

2

No more riding up front. Some years ago, there was a crash. No guest were in the cab, but a pilot was lost.

3

I, too, had the chance to ride up front once. But, sadly, as stated above, that is no longer allowed.

4

You can still ride in the front car at Disneyland. My kids loved it. Looks like you need a California vacation next trip!

5

That’s horrible! But understandable that they made that decision. Oh well. I’m still going to go out of my way to do a monorail trip around both loops even though we’re staying at Port Orleans and won’t have any need to. I just think there’s a lot of value in it

6

We did the same thing. TONS of fun - but yes unfortunately they have discontinued it due to the crash (think it was actually within the concourse of the Contemporary.

I actually think that staying on properly (non monorail resort) - you loose something. MK especially was to be a destination and taking the BUS there - you loose that “journey” aspect. Funny how almost 50 years later the monorail is still awesome.

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7

Yes, I agree. We’re staying at Port Orleans, but on whatever day we end up doing the Chef Mickey’s breakfast, we will hop on the monorail and do both of the loops before going to Magic Kingdom even though there’s no practical need for it

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8

A few weeks ago, I saw a parent ask if their child could ride up front at the Disney Ticket and Transportation Center at WDW and the conductor said no. :frowning:

9

I’m old enough to remember when you could ask to go in the cockpit of an aircraft during the flight and they’d let you.

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10

That might’ve still been allowed when I was little, but I don’t remember doing it

11

The last time I did it was in the mid 1990s. I was travelling alone on the flight from hell. We had horrific turbulence and I was pretty distressed when it was all over. A stewardess chatted to me to calm me down (she took me to first class and gave me brandy!). I told her I was a math teacher and she asked if I’d like to meet the captain to talk about what had happened. I said yes and she took me into the cockpit.

He explained some of the physics of what had happened, though he actually made me more more anxious – he drew a graph and said “we got as far as here” points to graph “but if we’d got here” points a bit higher up the graph “we’d have been in serious trouble”.

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12

I used to fly unaccompanied a lot while I was 11 to 16 or so. We were all taken up to the cockpit to meet the pilots (all of us on the flight would be seated together). Happy days :grinning:

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13

So I asked my wife to get married while we were on a plane. Long story short - I did it over the loudspeaker with the help of a stewardess. They then took us up to the cockpit - it was pretty cool. OBVIOUSLY this was before 9/11. The real kicker was that we met our next door neighbors as a result of it when we landed in Jamaica . We were building a house at the time - the neighbor introduced herself to my wife and they got talking and realized that we were building our house next to theirs. Their names of course are DICK and JANE!

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