Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover
| Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover | |
|---|---|
| Park | Magic Kingdom |
| Land / area | Tomorrowland |
| Type | People mover |
| Opened | July 1, 1975 |
| Designer | WED Enterprises
|
| Status | Operating |
The Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover is an elevated people mover attraction in Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World, Florida. It opened on July 1, 1975, as the WEDway PeopleMover, and carries passengers on a continuous ten-minute circuit above Tomorrowland, passing through the show buildings of several other attractions. Presented in the park's fiction as the Blue Line of a metropolitan transit system, it is a working demonstration of the WEDway transport system Walt Disney had intended for his planned city of EPCOT.
Unlike its Disneyland predecessor, which closed in 1995, the Florida PeopleMover has operated continuously under three names: WEDway PeopleMover (1975–1994), Tomorrowland Transit Authority (1994–2010) and its present combined name.
History
Disneyland's original PeopleMover opened in 1967, its cars pushed along by rotating Goodyear tyres set into the track. For Florida, WED Enterprises reworked the system to use linear synchronous motors embedded in the guideway, leaving the vehicles themselves with no motors at all. Because the propulsion no longer depended on its tyres, Goodyear declined to sponsor the eastern version; the original sponsor was instead the Edison Electric Institute. The name WEDway was formed from Walt Disney's initials — Walter Elias Disney.
The Florida system opened on July 1, 1975, the same summer as Space Mountain, whose building the track was designed to pass through. At a larger scale, the same linear-motor WEDway technology was marketed for airports and cities and was central to the transport plan for Walt's EPCOT city, in which residents would have travelled by monorail between districts and by PeopleMover within them. A section of the Progress City model built to display that concept still stands beside the track, where riders pass it in a tunnel early in the circuit.
The attraction's first narration was provided by Jack Wagner, the long-serving park announcer. In 1985 his track was replaced by a robotic narrator character, ORAC One, the "Commuter Computer". The most extensive change came with the 1994 rebuilding of Tomorrowland, when the land was rethemed as a working city of the future: the track structures were reclad in bolder metallic forms, the cars received a new colour scheme, and the ride was renamed the Tomorrowland Transit Authority, with a new narration written as transit announcements for the fictional system. On August 5, 2010, the PeopleMover name was restored to the title. The attraction closed with the park in March 2020 and, after an extended refurbishment, reopened in April 2021.
Experience
The single station stands in Rocket Tower Plaza, beneath the Astro Orbiter. Guests step onto a moving platform travelling at the speed of the arriving trains and board cars that never fully stop. Trains are formed of five cars, each seating four passengers in two rows, and travel at about 6.8 mph (10.9 km/h) along a mainline of roughly 4,600 feet (1,400 m).
The route amounts to a tour of the land. From the station it runs past the buildings on Tomorrowland's north side, through a tunnel containing the Progress City diorama and a view into a shop, then out over the walkway to Fantasyland and the Tomorrowland Speedway, with views across to TRON Lightcycle / Run. Crossing the Walt Disney World Railroad, the trains enter Space Mountain and pass between the coaster's lift hills in the dark, hearing riders on the trains around them, before emerging and running along the outside of Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress and past Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin back to the station.
Recorded narration runs throughout, identifying attractions and delivering transit-style announcements; the current version includes references to TRON Lightcycle / Run. The elevated, open-sided cars and continuous loading make the ride both a sightseeing circuit and a demonstration of the transit idea it was built to promote.