According to a Disney World spokeswoman Jacquee Wahler, dozens of people had to be evacuated from one of the park’s monorails after a power outage on Sunday, July 13.
Apparently the weather surrounding the Florida amusement park was getting unpredictable when the monorail halted. However, Wahler says that they do not think lightning was the cause of the outage.
“When we sat there, we heard a lot of thunder and saw a few bolts of lightning,” 15-year-old Lily Mock, who attends the park on a regular basis, said. Lily went on to explain that, while they were 30 feet in the air, the train suddenly stopped. “It wasn’t a jolting stop, but it did stop really fast — the monorail glided to a stop,” Lily said.
When the power shorted, so did the air conditioner, leaving the approximately 120 passengers in a heat trap. Despite the rising temperatures, Lily said no one seemed to panic and she and the other passengers passed the time, as they waited for the firefighters to rescue them, by creating small talk with one another.
Although the firefighters were able to open the top hatch of the monorail, they were able to get each passenger out safely through the main doors with the help of a mechanized lift. “I kind of wanted to go through the top, I thought it’d be fun,” Lily said.
“Due to weather, there was a power outage on the monorail. There’s currently one train on the system without power and all the guests are now off the train,” Wahler said in a statement.
No passengers were hurt during the incident, and they were all given free passes for the inconvenience.
Image via Wikimedia Commons