Skip to content

Report: Guests evacuated off EPCOT Monorail After Power Failure

A possible lightning strike caused a power outage along the Walt Disney World monorail system just after 6pm today. Most of the trains were able to get running under their own power, but monorail gold was unable to restart. Approximiately 120 guests were evacuated via a combination of stairs, moving platforms, and firetruck lifts.

The monorail stopped on a stretch of track between the Ticket and Transportation Center and EPCOT, near Wilderness Lodge. Part of the train was near an evacuation ladder on next to the new spur Disney built to house the an extra diesel powered engine. It’s unclear if the train stopped right there, or was pushed ther, but photos seem to show the train and the diesel engine right next to each other, so the diesel engine may not have been able to get out on to the track.

Some guests climbed onto the roof and then down into a car that could open to the evacation stairs, others had to be evacuated via a fire engine’s ladder bucket. Both of these appear to be standard operating procedure.

It did take about 30+ minutes before evacuations could begin. Those cars can get really hot without air conditioning running. After evacuation guests were provided ground transportation to their destination within the resort.

WDW News Today was on the scene and posted this photo to Twitter.

Twitter user Lilymock was stuck on the monorail 1.5 hours, but she did get some free ice cream bars, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train fastpasses, and other Fastpasses.

It’s been a long while since we’ve had bad news from the WDW Transportation system. That’s a sign they’ve fixed a few of the maintenance issues that had been bugging them. But also just the luck of the draw. Hopefully this is a one-off incident, not the start of another string of bad incidents for Disney.

Have you ever been evacuated off the monorail before?

Tags:

1 thought on “Report: Guests evacuated off EPCOT Monorail After Power Failure”

  1. Steven Buehler

    I’ve been on the monorail line between TTC and MK when the track lost power after passing through the Contemporary Resort. A quite abrupt stop followed by dead silence. However, they were able to use the PA to explain what had happened and the track was back up and running within about 10-15 minutes.

    I do notice that if my calculations are correct from the onboard spiel, the trains have a good 20-years plus on them. Don’t know how long the previous Marks were allowed to run on the west coast but it may be time for Florida to get an upgrade.

Comments are closed.