2 posts tagged “wdw”
Late last night after the July 4th celebration at Disney world two monorails collided killing one of the drivers, 21 year old Austin Wuennenberg which marks the first death of the monorail system. So tragic, and such a young man, Disney will be collaborating with Orange county police and detectives to figure out the cause of the crash.
I'm very close to this story, my grandfather helped create the monorail system 34 years ago, he was brought out of retirement to help with the MGM Grande in Las Vegas, The monorail system is very safe, they have had some incidents though out the years, none fatal however.
Unfortunately I think this may be user error, unless one of the monorails failed to function correctly and reversed back into the on coming monorail. There are two tracks for the monorail each operates in different directions since these were on the same track one of the monorails was going the wrong way.
The monorail system at Disney World and Disney World resorts is down, meaning longer wait times for those trying to get into the magic kingdom or back to their hotels.
Also note that most of the time the monorails do not operate as late as this. It was only because it was a special occasion, July 4th. They usually stop running at about midnight or so, this incident happened at about 2 or later.
Met some friends for Happy Hour which extended a little longer than normal. We ended up switching bars half way inbetween to get a better deal. I work close to International Drive, which is a haven for tourist and which means the prices are higher than that of other more local areas of town.
Anyway the discussion turned toward Disney. Most people around here refer to Mickey as "The Rat". If you're a local chances are you have worked for the rat atleast once in your life time.
My confession was that I'm a Kingdom Kid, a Disney brat. I used to spend my summers there as a preteen-teen and hop the monorail to the pools of the hotels when the parks got too hot to stand. We'd flirt with the tourist boys, get in trouble for being in the hot tub to late in which they never realized we actually weren't staying at the hotels. We'd sneak up the employee hotel elevator to grab the free food that was set out in dining areas that were supposed to be for guest of the hotels. Rent lockers to put on bathing suits, make up in and take buses to the other parks or downtown disney. As I got older I would take my friends on their birthday to "Drink Around the World" at Epcot. It gets pricy but it's well worth it. We'd start off in Mexico and slowly make are way through the world showcase.
Typical Price is usually 100-150 when drinking around the world but hell we got in free so we didn't care by midway through I had purchased a princess hat for the birthday girl as we giggled down the streets like little girls.
At Happy Hour people seemed pretty curious as to what I actually knew about Disney. No Walt is not frozen but he did make sure none of the parks carried or sold gum because he wanted children to walk around the parks in bare feet.
Yes there are underground tunnels but only for the Magic Kingdom and Epcot. HollyWood Studios(MGM) has a "backstage area" and Animal kingdom has pretty much the same set up as mgm.
The biggest question of the night. What does disney do with all those millions of coins in the fountains , waterfalls, poonds, etc. They do a yearly cleaning and all the coins are donated to childrens charities, Typical things such as the make a wish foundation, Give Kids the World, Childrens Cancer Research. So perhaps Disney isn't too bad after all.
