That’s not true. They have always come off.
Here is a photo where you can kind of see it. This is from Cedar Point’s Sky Ride. I highlighted in Blue where the cable goes around the cogwheel, but you can see in red the track upon which the gondolas come off the cable and around SEPARATE from the cable.
IDK. I worked at a theme park before and they did not come off.
But at any rate, they were not flying out of the station.
I would think there might be some that didn’t come off, like old non high speed chairlifts at ski resorts
They all worked this way. I just think you didn’t realize they came off the cable is all. This has been the design of sky rides from the beginning. Instead, they transfer from the cable to a rail system where they can be manually towed around by the workers, stop them, let people on/off, etc. When they come back around to go back on the cable, there is this stop which releases, and gravity pulls the gondola down a track back onto the cable so that when it meets the cable, the speed of the gondola and the cable are the same so that the transition is smooth.
In the case of the Skyliner, the basics of the design are similar, although they are more advanced because rather than simply rely on gravity, they used a more motorized approach. But the idea is the same that the nearly stationary gondola must be accelerated to match the speed of the cable so that it is a smooth transition back ONTO the cable.
Well, I never saw them stop a car. The cars continually moved and you moved with it.
I guess the obvious giveaway is, if they are close to each other in the station and far apart on the cable, they are definitely coming off the cable in the station. No way around that.
Yes, good point.
Here is a photo of Disney’s original Skyway. You can also see here that the path of the cable is decided different from the path of the gondola.
The employees have to keep things moving. The next gondolas will back up if they stop for long. They stop them just long enough to let people stop on safely. Truth is, they don’t even have to necessarily stop them entirely most of the time. But if someone has difficulty boarding, they would bring it to a complete stop. Then once in, they could push it around. It would appear to be continuously moving, but they are moving at whatever pace the employees work.
The Skyliner is a bit more automated, though.
Still skipping the death buckets. Especially as fast as these are coming out.
Are people also skipping a bus based on the speed with which they drive on the roads?
Ok, so all lifts can come off of the cable at some point, but the “old school” fixed-grip lifts (of which the original Skyway was one) don’t come on and off the line within the station. They would have to be manually removed. So the line speed is the same in and out of the station. If they slow down the cars within the station they slow the whole line. These are the lines that will stop you in the air. I actually think that a lot of the misconceptions of the new Skyliner come from these types of ski lifts and stuff where the entire line stops if something happens in one of the stations.
Well, actually, they did. First of all, the speed that they move on the cable, if they moved in the station at that speed, people would have to get a running start to get on, and then jump off. That is terribly dangerous. They move slightly faster than a normal walking speed. So they have to slow down. Do did this by coming off the cable onto a separate rail that allowed them to move freely at any speed that an employee controlled manually. This also gave them for the employee to manually unlock/open the door.
There are probably better videos, but here is a video of the Skyway at Disney when it was still running. If you watch/pause it at exactly 1:11 you can see the employee stopping the gondola manually for the people to get off. You can also see in the background that the wheel that powers the cable is in the background. The gondola is NOT on the cable at that point. (Here is the link, but I did take a screen grab to post here: - YouTube)
I highlighted in red where the cable is because it is hard to make out in the video still:
The only way they could keep them on the cable and allow passengers to board/unboard safely would be to have a moving walk-way below it to match the speed similar to how the PeopleMover works. But that would have been far too expensive.
Yes. This is absolutely true. The cable never slows down UNLESS they need to for a specific purpose, such as they are ending up with a backup in a station which might happen if there was someone with a disability trying to load, etc.
But that part isn’t true. Since, as I said, the cars are lifted OFF the cable and onto a separate rail.
I’ll go back to Cedar Point, since their Sky Ride is still operational. But the mechanism/design is the same as the Skyway at Disneyland.
If you watch this video you’ll see some close-up shots of the operation of it, including entering/leaving the station. You can see points where, for example, it enters the station and the gondola starts to swing a little bit. This is due to the transition OFF the cable, etc.
I’ll take your word for it on the original Skyway and I’m sure there are plenty of detachable gondolas like the ones at Cedar Point. My point is that not every single gondola/chair lift is detachable.
This is true. Sky Lifts at ski resorts often aren’t. Those types are forward-facing bench seats that allow the skier to “ski off” the lift easily and move out of the way.
But, the one at Disney always was detachable from the start. In fact, the original design was referred to as “Von Roll Type 101 detachable monocable gondola lift”.
They won’t come off at Riviera because it’s not a terminus. Of course it will when you reach the next stop, so that’s little consolation I guess.
Wouldn’t they still be able to have a parallel cable running slower through the station?
There will be no boarding/unboarding at Riviera? I thought there would be. If there is, they would have to come off the line.
ETA: Looking at photos of the Riviera stations, even if there isn’t loading, it would have to come off the line. It couldn’t safely make that turn without slowing down.
I was wondering the same thing
Yes you can board and get off. But no second line, no secondary boarding either. If someone needs extra time they will have to stop the line is what I meant. 
There is just one cable, it will slow right down.
