While we told you well over a week ago that Disney has reportedly ordered a new monorail fleet for Walt Disney World, former Imagineer Bob Gurr (instrumental in the design and construction of several fleets of Disney monorails) has now come out and reiterated the very same information we provided.
At an event recapping his legendary career, Gurr referred to the current fleet as “duct tape monorails” and went on to claim that a contract for new trains from Bombardier was already signed. Gurr claimed the new trains were still years away from delivery, but are in production.
That being said, Bob Gurr has not been on good terms with the Walt Disney Company for making candid statements much like this and for the various independent business ventures he has embarked on in recent years, capitalizing on his time with the organization. Given this information, it’s unclear if he would be privy to such information currently, or if he just reads WDWNT.com. Only time will tell.
Let’s assume he’s correct.
So why didn’t Disney let Siemens do it on their dime???
It wouldn’t be the first time Disney has “outsourced” work.
Well all from what we heard is that Siemens wanted to have their logo on the monorail cars and Disney didn’t want that. but that is want we heard and there could be more to it though.
Disney screwed themselves by pissing off Siemens as they will still have to buy from them but at higher prices as I doubt they will buy GE products as they own some of NBC Universal and many rides and systems already use Siemens. For large scale projects its a choice of GE or Siemens unless WDI starts making power genorators. I’m surprised they did not jump at the chance to have another companies name on the monorail especially with its current poor reputation and issues. My guess is that it came down to not being able to wrap ads on the monorails for movie promotions as current Disney managment loves to do. I would had just let Seimens have the monorails and wrap the boats, busses, gondolas and trams.