High Speed Rail

Just looking at the new High Speed Rail line that is scheduled to be completed in 2012 which will link WDW with MCO. What I think is the coolest is being at WDW (or at least less then 5 miles) in about 16 mins.

The website is at http://www.floridahighspeedrail.org/

A very large PDF of the location of the WDW station can be found at https://fl.myhighspeedrail.com/ADPublic/files.aspx - it is the file 13.FHSR-rollplot.pdf

This makes me wonder 2 things.... What is the future of DME and what will this cost per trip.

 

What a coincidence I just stumbled across this:

Fewer take Disney's free ride from OIA

More passengers are landing at Orlando International Airport this year, but Walt Disney World is taking fewer of them straight to its own hotels.

New airport data show that ridership aboard Disney's Magical Express, the complimentary shuttle-and-luggage service that Disney World offers to guests staying in its resort hotels, is in the midst of its first extended decline since its launch five years ago.

Traffic on Disney's buses fell 3.8 percent during the first nine months of the year. From January to September, Disney transported about 1.6 million arriving passengers at OIA to its hotels — about 64,000 fewer guests than it carried during the same period last year.

What makes the decline especially striking is that Disney's bus traffic is shrinking even though overall airport traffic is growing: Passenger traffic at Orlando International Airport is up 1.9 percent this year through August, the most recent month for which figures are available.


It's a reversal from just one year ago, when ridership aboard Disney's Magical Express grew 1.2 percent even as overall airport traffic sank 5.5 percent.

Experts aren't sure what's causing the shift, though they say it's likely a combination of factors. They note, for instance, that Disney has been slowly scaling back the discounts it used last year to prop up attendance, which is likely steering some travelers to off-property hotels. They also suspect Disney now faces stiffer competition from Universal Orlando and its new Wizarding World of Harry Potter, though the declines in Magical Express ridership began months before Wizarding World opened in June.

Whatever the reason, some analysts say the shift has significant implications for Disney. Magical Express riders are among the resort's most valuable customers: guests likely to spend their entire vacation — and their entire vacation budget — on Disney property.

"If you look at the business model at Disney, they say, 'We're a destination unto ourselves, and we're so strong we can keep people on our property the whole time,' " said Scott Smith, a professor in the University of Central Florida's Rosen College of Hospitality Management. But "if they [tourists] are not riding that [Magical Express], then they're venturing out to the other theme parks and the other attractions."

Disney downplays the significance of the slide in shuttle traffic.

"The ridership of Disney's Magical Express alone is not an indicator of business performance," Disney World spokeswoman Andrea Finger said. "By any measure, Disney's Magical Express is extremely successful. Not only do our guests love the service, but it also positively impacts the airport and our community in numerous ways."

Launched in May 2005, Disney's Magical Express quickly caught on with resort guests, who are bused from Orlando International to Disney's hotels while their luggage is shipped separately and delivered straight to their rooms. By its second full year of operation, the service was already ferrying more than 2 million people away from OIA each year.

It has been just as popular with Disney executives. The company has credited Magical Express with driving both higher hotel occupancy and higher spending, as guests without rental cars spend more time visiting Disney's theme parks, shopping in its stores and eating in its restaurants.

Disney's bus traffic began to slide late last year, according to the airport data, and the declines have continued through most of 2010. In its worst single month — February — ridership tumbled 10.5 percent from a year earlier.

Falling ridership is clearly linked to a broader slump in hotel occupancy at Disney World. Occupancy in the resort's roughly 25,000 hotel rooms and time-share suites was down a little less than 9 percent during the six months that ended July 3, the most recent company data available.

Disney is scheduled to report results for the July-through-September quarter next month. The Magical Express data suggest the resort's slump in hotel occupancy has continued.

Though Magical Express ridership spiked 5.9 percent in July — the first full month of operation for Universal's Wizarding World — it then plummeted 9.7 percent in August and an additional 4.6 percent in September.

Many industry followers think Disney's theme-park attendance is likely getting a boost from the popularity of Wizarding World, as the huge crowds drawn to Universal also spend time in Disney's parks. But they also say those travelers are far less likely to be Magical Express riders.

"If Harry Potter was bringing you to Orlando, and you book a trip and you were going to include Disney, the one perk that would probably not interest you is Magical Express," said Robert Niles, publisher of ThemeParkInsider.com. "Disney's not going to drive you there."

And it's Magical Express riders who are especially valuable to Disney, said Smith, the UCF professor.

Scott noted that, in addition to keeping guests on property, Magical Express benefits Disney through a concept he called " mental accounting." Many tourists have a set budget in mind of how much money they are going to spend on their vacations, and when they don't have to shell out for a rental car or taxi ride, they are more likely to spend that money somewhere else rather than save it.

"Now, not only do you not have all of their spending, but they have a smaller budget to spend with you," Smith said.

Jason Garcia can be reached at jrgarcia@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5414.

Source: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/the-dail ... 5241.story

 

Very interesting stuff. ; Nice find!