Skyway (Disney)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Land | Fantasyland; Tomorrowland |
| Designer | WED Enterprises |
| Manufacturer | Vonroll LTD |
| Attraction type | Vonroll Type 101 detachable monocable gondola lift |
| Propulsion method | Top-mounted, 55HP electric motor |
| Soft opening date | June 10 1956 |
| Opening date | June 23 1956 |
| Closing date | Nov 9 1994 |
| Vehicle type | Passenger |
| Vehicle names | Cabin, Gondola cars |
| Vehicle capacity | 4 |
| Guests per car | 4 |
| Ride duration | 3:36 minutes |
| Length | 1200 ft (365.8 m) |
| Total height | 60 ft (18.3 m) |
| Maximum speed | 4.0 mph (6.4 km/h) |
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| Disneyland | |
| Opening date | June 23, 1956 |
| Closing date | November 9, 1994 |
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| Magic Kingdom | |
| Opening date | October 1, 1971 |
| Closing date | November 10, 1999 |
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| Tokyo Disneyland | |
| Opening date | April 15, 1983 |
| Closing date | November 3, 1998 |
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The Skyway was a gondola lift attraction at Disneyland, at the Magic Kingdom, and at Tokyo Disneyland. Since all versions of this attraction took riders back and forth between Fantasyland and Tomorrowland, the route from Tomorrowland was called Skyway to Fantasyland, and the route from Fantasyland was called Skyway to Tomorrowland.
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[edit] History
The Skyway at Disneyland opened on June 23, 1956. It was built by Vonroll, Ltd. of Berne, Switzerland. It was the first Vonroll Type 101 aerial ropeway in the USA. Walt Disney Imagineering bought the ride from Switzerland. It was a 1947 Vonroll sidechair model. In 1959, a major renovation added The Submarine Voyage, the Disneyland Monorail, the Matterhorn (now a Fantasyland Attraction), and the Motorboat Cruise, but when the Matterhorn was planned it was designed to be built right in the path of the Skyway, so without a single closure of the Skyway, they tunneled through the Matterhorn. However, during the Fantasyland renovation at Disneyland in the mid-1980s, the Skyway made only roundtrips from Tomorrowland.
There is a legend, often told to new employees at Walt Disney World Resort, that Walt Disney got the inspiration to build a second theme park when a family decided to leave Disneyland after observing, from the Skyway, that rush hour traffic was beginning to build on the nearby Santa Ana Freeway (I-5). He determined that he needed to build a theme park in a more remote location to improve suspension of disbelief.
The Disneyland Skyway was removed in November 1994 due to stress cracks in the matterhorn roller battery supports. At Disneyland, the Fantasyland Skyway station remains, but the Tomorrowland station has been mostly removed. In 1998, Tokyo Disneyland closed their Skyway attraction and the Fantasyland station was removed to make room for Pooh's Hunny Hunt, while the Tomorrowland station was remodeled into a candy store. At the Magic Kingdom, the Skyway was removed in 1999, but not before a worker was killed when he was swept off the platform and dropped 40 feet on February 14 of that year. [1] The Tomorrowland station is off-limits to guests, while the Fantasyland station is now used for stroller parking. When the Disneyland Skyway closed, the holes in the Matterhorn were filled in and the supports were dismantled within weeks.
Another key reason for the decision to remove the Skyways was because they were in technical violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act. It was very difficult to load and unload mobility-impaired guests (one must step up when boarding and down when de-boarding), and this usually required having to stop the ride. Furthermore, wheelchairs could not be loaded onboard because the vehicles were too small.
On Sunday morning, 17 April 1994, a 30-year-old man named Randle Charles fell approximately 20 feet from one of the Skyway cabins and landed in a tree near the "Alice in Wonderland" attraction. He was helped out of the tree by paramedics and taken to nearby Western Medical Center, where he was treated for minor injuries and released. Charles later filed a $25,000 negligence lawsuit against Disney, claiming that he had suffered permanent neck and back injuries as a result of his fall.
Despite the initial assertion of Mr. Charles' attorney that Randle "wasn't doing anything improper, and he certainly wasn't trying to get out of the ride," Charles indeed jumped, not fell, from his Skyway cabin. Charles' lawsuit was dismissed just before it was to go to trial on 23 September 1996; at that time he admitted that he "came out" of his Skyway cabin and that his lawsuit against Disney was "ill-advised."
Events seemingly repeated themselves five years later. In February 1999, a park custodian at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom was killed when the skyway started up unexpectedly while he was cleaning one of its platforms. Raymond Barlow, 65, was sweeping off a narrow skyway platform inaccessible to park guests an hour after the park's 9:00 A.M. opening when other cast members, unaware of his presence, started up the ride. Barlow, startled by the approaching gondola, grabbed onto it and tried to climb inside; he fell 40 feet into a flower bed, hitting a tree on the way down, and died. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration later ruled that the area in which Barlow had been working violated federal safety codes and fined Walt Disney World $4,500 for a "serious" violation of safety standards. Several months later, in November 1999, the Magic Kingdom's skyway was also permanently closed. Once again, the decision to close the attraction was supposedly based on factors other than its being involved in a recent accidental death.
[edit] References
- ^ Skyway accident. "(Sunday, February 14, 1999) - At Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, a maintenance worker was killed in an accident on the Magic Kingdom's Skyway cable-car ride." http://www.rideaccidents.com/1999.html#feb14
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