ORLANDO, Fla. – Newly-released images from the Florida Department of Transportation show engineers conducting the state’s first-ever inspection of the Walt Disney World monorail system shortly after FDOT was granted oversight authority last year.
News 6 requested public records related to the monorail inspection in late 2023, weeks after the state began on-site evaluations at Disney.
FDOT officials withheld those public records for nearly a year until an attorney representing News 6 intervened. The agency attributed the delay to state laws and national security protocols governing records containing structural information.
In May 2023, as Gov. Ron DeSantis was engaged in a public feud with the Walt Disney Company over its criticism of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by critics, the governor signed a bill authorizing FDOT to regulate Disney’s privately-owned monorail system.
Three months later, records show FDOT officials made their first site visit to Walt Disney World and met with Disney personnel near the monorail maintenance shop behind the Magic Kingdom theme park.
[EXCLUSIVE: Become a News 6 Insider (it’s FREE) | PINIT! Share your photos]
A schedule for that meeting indicates FDOT District 5 Secretary John Tyler and four state engineers were to be joined by several Disney Parks employees including Vice President Greg Hale, who serves as the company’s chief safety officer, and Disney government relations lobbyist Leticia Adams.
In October 2023, a Disney facilities manager met with FDOT officials at the agency’s district office in Deland and later delivered detailed records about the monorail system. Those documents included engineering reports created when the company’s Central Florida monorail was designed and built in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Members of FDOT’s Structures Maintenance Office, which inspects hundreds of bridges and other structures across the state, conducted the first phase of its on-site monorail inspection over several days in late October 2023.
(STORY CONTINUES BELOW)
Photographs taken that week show state engineers measuring small cracks in the monorail’s vertical concrete columns and examining electrical conduit running alongside the structure, among other tasks.
A bridge inspection supervisor later noted in an email that FDOT found “no issues” after completing the columns.
FDOT engineers returned to Disney in November with scuba divers to examine the monorail tracks’ footers that are partially submerged in the resort’s lakes. Members of Disney World’s facilities team took the divers to the locations on a pontoon boat, records show.
A third phase of the monorail inspection occurred in Dec. 2023, when engineers examined the horizontal beams on which the monorail trains travel.
Records show FDOT personnel coordinated with Disney officials to schedule the beam inspection in the early morning hours when the theme parks were closed and when the inspection would not interfere with Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, held at night at the Magic Kingdom.
Prior to that beam inspection, Disney officials required FDOT personnel to undergo specific training to avoid falls while working on a tractor used for monorail maintenance, records show.
It is unclear whether FDOT engineers found anything of significance during their visits to Disney. Due to a Florida law that deems information related to the physical security of structures confidential, FDOT redacted large portions of the final monorail inspection report provided to News 6.
An FDOT spokesperson previously said that structural inspections of the monorail would occur every two years.
The agency is also authorized to conduct separate, “risk-based” inspections of Disney’s monorail at any time, records show.
Earlier this year, FDOT revised existing documentation that outlined how the agency regulated nine government-funded “fixed guideway transportation systems” in Florida, including trams at Orlando International Airport, the SunRail commuter rail system, the Jacksonville Skyway and Tampa’s TECO Line Streetcar.
The revised manual, which went into effect in September, now notes that Disney’s privately-owned monorail also falls under FDOT oversight because it is “located within an independent special district created by local act which (has) boundaries within two contiguous counties.”
According to the manual, fixed-guideway operators must submit safety plans to FDOT annually and are subject to scheduled and unscheduled onsite safety inspections.
Operators are required to notify FDOT within two hours of fatalities, injuries requiring hospitalization or property damage that exceeds $25,000.
FDOT is authorized to conduct independent investigations of any incidents and require the operators to comply with a corrective action plan prescribed by the state agency.
Those corrective actions could include shutting down the system, according to Nick DiCeglie, the Republican state senator who introduced the legislation expanding FDOT oversight to Disney’s monorail.
“That is going to be a last-resort action,” DiCeglie said last year. “There would have to be some significant safety concerns in order for that monorail to be shut down.”
There is no indication from records obtained by News 6 that FDOT has conducted any additional inspections at Disney other than the initial structural inspection that began in late 2023.
The next structural inspection will be completed in 2026, FDOT officials confirmed.
Get today’s headlines in minutes with Your Florida Daily: