I remember vividly the first time I saw the tube of shrunken people. I was in high school so old enough to know it wasn't *real* but it was one of the things that really drove the Magic home to me.
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My granddaughter in Toontown. Notice, her feet are not touching the ground.
I always thought there were tons of people on the ride but we just missed them all since the line was empty. I wondered why no one was waving at us since we could see them,
Notice that one CM handles greeting / grouping, and another operates dispatching alone. There are no railings at the water's edge. Can you imagine what the dock and staffing of Motor Boat Cruise would be like today?
I would say the Motor Boat Cruise would be pretty similar to the Jungle Cruise. You could only get on the boat in one place with a CM assistance. They then would help you out. The dock would probably keep the boat steady until it is dispatched like a regular dark ride vehicle. There would probably be two docks making for a pair-a-docks.
I realize this isn't a photo, but I stumbled upon this incredible video from the Monorail during the early construction of DCA, when it was essentially just a giant dirt pile and they were still focusing on the infrastructure work. It's crazy to see just how torn up the entire area was at the time; if I'm not mistaken, it looks like trams were running from Mickey & Friends (when did that open), around the backside of the DCA site, to the Harbor Blvd drop-off point; that sort of inconvenience would be all but unthinkable for DLR's current social media-fed vocal customers And I have to imagine that @monorailblue is that charming voice that we hear in the announcements!
I wish! That video was taken just before I trained on Monorail, actually. I started after the round trip operations were curtailed for the bulk of DCA construction. After heavy construction began, the Monorail switched to bidirectional operations where 2 trains traveled in tandem back and forth between Tomorrowland and the hotel (later DTD). With the "Rectifier Train" waiting a few hundred feed past the Tomorrowland Monorail Station, the "West Street Train" would load up and be dispatched to go in reverse to the Hotel Station (around the Matterhorn, past Small World Mall, past the track switch, over and down the grade, around the Motor Boad Cruise area, back over the Submarine Lagoon, backwards out the park, across the Main Entrance area, past Indy, past Pirates, over West Street and into the Hotel Station). Meanwhile, the Rectifier Train would pull back into Tomorrowland and load up, to be dispatched to go in reverse to the Hotel. After the West Street Train unloaded at the Hotel, it would back up without Guests over what was then West Street (now Disneyland Drive, past what is now the Lego Store) and stop and hold. The Rectifer Train would arrive, unload, reload, and be dispatched to go forward along the system back into Tomorrowland. After it cleared West Street and Pirates, the West Street Train would be cleared into the Hotel station to reload and be dispatched to Tomorrowland. When the Rectifier Train arrived in Tomorrowland, it would unload and then pull (this will look familiar) a few hundred feet past the Tomorrowland Monorail Station and wait there. The West Street Train would then pull in, unload and then (as before) load up and be dispatched to go in reverse to the Hotel . . . . And so it went. Tandem operations that never used the beamway across the main DCA / GCH construction areas. In fact, the bus bars on the beam were physically cut so that if an operator attempted to enter the construction area, power would be lost and the train would be disabled. There's your useless Monorail information for today. Monorail CMs hired after DCA opened probably know little or nothing of this history. (OK, a bit more. The Monorail system rectifier is essentially where the beams plug into the power source. The rectifier area connects with both the incoming and outgoing beams, dividing the system into the Inside Beam and the Outside Beam. (There are also smaller zone divisions, including station zones.) The trains are not powered over the Rectifier--they always glide over the area in neutral, lest passing quickly from Inside Beam to Outside Beam (and being connected to both at the same time) cause damages to the train, the system, or both.)
Fascinating stuff! It's crazy to see the effort that they went through to keep the Monorail operational through construction, considering that it's all but unusable on an average day now. Then again, from that video it looked like it was one of the few intra-resort transportation options, so I guess it was much more of a necessity than it is now It's still fascinating to see just how much work was going on at the time of that video. Other than the then-new Martha Schwartz drop-off area next to Harbor Blvd and the soon-to-be-replaced ticket boots in front of the park, nearly everything south and west of the park was unusable. I visited when TL98 was brand new, so I must have experienced this myself, but I have no recollection of it
Love the motorboat picture. Was hit with a huge jolt of nostalgia as soon as I saw it. I loved going on that with my mom.
