Mark VII

The wife and I decided to spend the evening at Disneyland and were somewhat shocked at how light the crowd was for a Friday night in the peak of summer. When I worked there (just after the earth cooled) the crowds in August were huge - biggest of the summer. Tonight there was very little traffic coming in, no waiting at the main gate, and 5 minute lines for Pirates and the Haunted Mansion. I don't know if it's the big gas prices or the general state of the economy, but the Disneyland crowds were way down from what I would have expected. I'm not sure this is the best time for Disneyland to be raising admission prices.

The Mrs. always wears her lanyard loaded down with Disney pins when we go to the park. It always gets a lot of attention from other people because she only buys the most sparkly pins and it's pretty eye-catching. It can also be a little bit noisy because, depending on how she moves, the pins sometimes clank together. It's a bit like walking around Disneyland with Marley's ghost.
As we were walking through Fantasyland we spotted one of the brand new Mark VII monorails. I posted an item last April announcing their arrival, but testing and other issues had delayed them until now. The cellphone shots don't really do it justice. Monorail Red is a deep metallic red color - very sharp.

Monorail Blue has been delivered and Orange is due soon. The last of the Mark VI trains is due for the scrapyard after Labor Day.

I talked with the Disney monorail employee and he told me the transition to the new trains has not gone that smoothly. They've had trouble getting enough air into the cars to keep them comfortable. In fact, they get so hot they can only run the new trains in the early morning or evening. They've undergone one round of reengineering, but that didn't fix the problem. The windows are being redesigned to be more like the Mark VI trains (the windows on the old trains could be opened).

During this testing phase they were only loading 15 people per car. We got lucky and rode in the tail cone which is nicely air-conditioned. I don't know what it was like in the main cars. The new cars have a center line seat with seating on both sides, along with some regular seats like the old trains.

The new train seemed to be faster than the old ones, though that might have just been the perception sitting in the tail surrounded by windows. It was very smooth, and they have cool blue lighting in the cars. If they can work out the cooling problems, they'll be pretty nice

Just as an aside, parked next to us in the parking garage was a car with this symbol on the back:

Does the fact that the one on the right has only half a brain supposed to mean anything?