Disneyland Monorail Mark V Footage from Fantasia Gardens – June 7, 2003 – Monorail Blue & Purple

The Disneyland Mark V Monorail began to replace the old Mark III’s one train at a time in 1986. Mark III Green was the first one to go in 1985 and it was deconstructed down to its chassis. Imagineer George McGinnis designed the new model with a fiberglass body, wheelchair access, new suspension, roof hatches, sliding windows, air-conditioning, and on-board computer system. German engineering company Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm (MBB) produced the Mark V parts. Ride & Show Engineering Inc. of San Dimas, California rebuilt the new fleet. The new trains looked like Walt Disney World’s Mark IV Monorails, with a white body and color stripe along the side. Pneumatic doors slid shut instead of swinging. Sadly, the cool bubble top above the pilot’s cab was removed from this design. Kids could still ride up front with the driver, just not up in the bubble anymore. Mark V Purple came out first in fall of 1986, then Mark III Gold became Mark V Orange. Blue stayed Blue and Red stayed Red. All the Mark V trains were out by 1988 and operated for about 20 years. The five-car trains could seat twenty-four riders per car, seven in the back cab, and five with the pilot up front.

Mark V Design. Imagineer George McGinnis wrote an awesome autobiography about his life at WED (WDI) and it contains a whole chapter on monorail design. He painted a spectacular illustration of Bob Gurr’s monorail (Orange) exiting the Contemporary Resort which was used to promote Walt Disney World and can be seen behind the check-in desk at the Contemporary today. After Gurr left WDI in 1981 Marty Sklar asked George to design the new fleet of Disneyland monorails. The Mark V’s centerline profile is based on the Mark IV at WDW so it had rounded sides and a pointed nose. McGinnis insisted the scale be kept the same as the Mark III with its 5-foot-3-inch doorways. Full-scale trains would not be beneficial to the ups and downs and turns around Tomorrowland. The Mark V was built with new composite materials used on helicopters, without rivets, to give it that sleek monorail look that Bob Gurr wanted with the older trains. Not an exact duplicate of the Mark IV’s color design, the Mark V’s were painted with a little more color at the nose.

Mark V years. From 1986 to 2008, during the Mark V Monorail’s years of service, several changes occurred at the Disneyland Resort. During the construction of the Indiana Jones Adventure show building, the monorail beam was rerouted into the Eeyore parking lot. The trains were given new electrical shoes and rear-view cameras to allow for shuttle service during the construction of Disney’s California Adventure. The DCA side of the beamway was not used, and monorails would shuttle back and forth between Tomorrowland and the Disneyland Hotel Station. In 2000, the Disneyland Hotel Station was redesigned to the Downtown Disney Station. Full loop operation resumed in 2001, with the monorails now passing through the new Grand Californian Hotel. During the later half of 2006 the monorail didn’t operate while construction of the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage was taking place.

Land on the Move. The Disneyland Monorail is an extraordinary component to the “Land on the Move” aesthetic of Tomorrowland. I would have loved to experience the 1970s with the sleek Mark III bubble top monorails gliding around, submarines traveling under waterfalls, Rocket Jets flying overhead, the PeopleMover transporting passengers, and the sound and smell of Autopia cars zooming by.

If you want to take a full ride up front of the Mark V Monorail from 2005 here is the link to my home video: https://youtu.be/LL6N-sCsnU4
If you want to take a ride on the Mark V Monorail from 2005 looking out the side, here is my footage of that: https://youtu.be/ODde7rf7WTM

REFERENCE:
The Disney Monorail: Imagineering a Highway in the Sky, Jeff Kurtti, Vanessa Hunt, Paul Wolski, 2020, Disney Editions
From Horizons to Space Mountain: The Life of a Disney Imagineer, George McGinnis, 2016, Theme Park Press
The Imagineering Field Guide to Disneyland, Alex Wright, 2008, Disney Editions
Secret Stories of Disneyland, Jim Korkis, 2017, Theme Park Press
The Disneyland Encyclopedia Third Edition, Chris Strodder, 2017, Santa Monica Press
The Disneyland Story, Sam Gennawey, 2014, Keen Communications

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