Monorail Red will open to the public tonight
July 3rd, 2008, 4:11 pm · 1 Comment · posted by Sonya Smith
Disney’s Monorail Red (or Mark VII) will open to the public this evening as part of a “soft opening.”
UPDATE: Click here for a story and photos of the new trains opening to the public.
Disney Spokeswoman Betsy Sanchez said this afternoon that the new monorail train will be open on and off again throughout the weekend.
The Mark VII line of trains (three in all) will slowly replace the current monorail trains. The red monorail is the first to roll-out and the blue train arrived a few weeks ago. No word yet on when the orange train will arrive at the park.
The public launch of the new red train with blue glass windows was expected to be in late February. But, testing and adjusting the monorail to work perfectly has pushed the opening back again and again.
The biggest change to the monorail trains is in the look: The first electric cars have blue glass and red stripes that change color in the sunlight. The next two cars will be blue with purple glass and orange with blue glass.
Bench seats will face the windows, allowing visitors a full view of the parks, Downtown Disney and the Disneyland Hotel. The capacity and speed will remain the same.
The Monorail started in 1959 as part of Disneyland’s first expansion and the track was extended to the Disneyland Hotel in 1961 to a length of two and a half miles.
For three years, Disney Imagineers have been working on the train upgrades.
(Photo at top right provided by Walt Disney Co. Click it to see a slide show of monorail images.)
Related posts:
- LA Times’ Brady MacDonald writes about the air flow problems with Monorail Red
- Millions goes to O.C. monorail proposal
- Monorail Red opening date pushed backDid you know? Facts about the Disneyland Monorail
- Disneyland Monorail milestones
- Will Disney pay for monorail beyond its parks?
- New monorail rolls in
- By the way, if you want to see more photos of the red train, CLICK HERE for some photos uploaded by Darkbeer who takes photos of Disneyland for various Disney sites. CLICK HERE for his photos of the blue monorail train.
July 3rd, 2008 at 8:28 pm
The new monorail red looks great.
But how could Disney stuff up so poorly by not including air conditioning on the new monorail. Of course it gets hot in Southern California! The imagineers let the side down on this one. And now they are trying to retrofit a new ride that is not even launched yet??? Back to the drawing board for Mark VII.