Disney Apologized To Guests Who Were Stranded On Walt Disney World’s Skyliner
You just have to feel for the families who were stuck on the Skyliner on Sunday night.
Disney sure does.
And USAToday.com reported that the company apologized to riders who were caught up in the weekend incident that has grounded the gondolas.
Disney Apologized To Guests
David Oliver wrote:
File Photo
Walt Disney World Resort has yet to set a reopening date for its new aerial cable car system, the Skyliner, after it stranded passengers for hours on Saturday night.
Riders were stuck when one of the Skyliner cars became stuck in the air, the company said. Disney’s website still says the service is “temporarily closed.”
“We have a team diligently looking into the cause of Saturday’s malfunction on the Epcot line of the Disney Skyliner,” Disney told USA TODAY in a statement. “We have been in contact with the guests, many of whom were on the Skyliner for more than three hours until we were able to restart the system. We express our sincere apologies for the inconvenience and continue to work with each guest individually.”
In-Depth Coverage
We covered the blow-by-blow and the aftermath of the Skyliner pile-up, which shocked Disney Parks fandom and caused many to question “what the heck happened.”
USA Today explained:
From Saturday night’s coverage.
The Skyliner system opened a week ago to much fanfare; Disney announced it would be ready in fall 2019 in November of last year. The company describes the Skyliner on its website as a “grand, state-of-the-art gondola system” that connects Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Epcot to four Disney hotels.
Glitches aren’t an anomaly for newly opened attractions, according to amusement park safety expert Bill Avery of Avery Safety Consulting Inc.
“Glitches are rarely catastrophic and more often than not associated with minor malfunctions where a little extra ‘tweaking’ may be necessary,” Avery tells USA TODAY. Assuming Disney followed typical safety precautions for new attractions, they would have operated it for some time testing safety features — first unloaded, then with load testing. Next, in-house personnel would ride it before guests ever got on.
Skyliner Testing Resumes
And that exactly what Walt Disney World did; MickeyBlog.com witnessed the empty gondola testing, first hand:
Check out my video overview of #DisneySkyliner testing at #PopCentury and #HollywoodStudios. @WaltDisneyWorld @WDWToday pic.twitter.com/iptF5YFynx
— John Bishop (@jmbishopjr) August 21, 2019
And now it seems that testing the Skyliner has resumed.
Greg Antonelle, editor-in-chief of Mickeyblog.com, took the above video on Monday afternoon, October 7; just two days after the Skliner shut down.
“This was from the affected line; Epcot to Riviera,” said Greg. “They were running the line, testing it presumably, but nobody was on it and the Skyliner is still closed.”
Meanwhile, at least one theme park expert thinks that when the Skyliner returns to service, so will the guests.
Guests Will Return To The Gondolas
USA Today added:
Dennis Speigel, president of industry consultant International Theme Park Services Inc., told USA TODAY that Disney will likely look at all of the systems, including braking, pulley and wind systems as a means of testing. He says it shouldn’t take more than a couple of days to figure out what happened before putting it back in service and that the public shouldn’t be concerned.
Speigel recalled another sky attraction incident: In the early 1980s at Kings Island theme park in Ohio, a sky ride stranded people for six hours. After getting everyone down safely, the attraction shut down for a week and went through testing. Once it reopened, lines were longer than the previous few years.
“People’s memories are short,” Speigel noted.
Photo: Heather Farr
Thanks to Jack Bishop for cutting up the video on short notice.
