When most guests enter Disneyland Resort, one of the first rides they ever embark on is the
Disneyland Parking Tram, in service since 1955. What many don’t know is that Disneyland Resort
had the world’s first parking tram, the kind we know today as essentially a road
train with rubber wheels. Now I know many of my foreign audience will say, these aren’t trams,
these are shuttles, well Disneyland officially calls these trams, so for the sake of continuity
I will maintain that word. But now let’s go back in time to learn about the origins and
history of this once unique transport service. As Disneyland Park was under construction in early
1955, Walt Disney was busy thinking of the fine details of the guest experience. Inside the park,
all the walkways and landmarks were carefully laid out in such a way that navigating the
areas on your own was quick and convenient. But outside the park, convenience might have suffered.
The Disneyland parking lot was nearly 100 acres in size, with the farthest parking spaces being
nearly 2,000 feet away. The Disneyland Hotel was almost half that distance from the park’s main
entrance, so expecting people to walk these distances was not an option in Walt’s mind.
Traditionally, if a major venue needed to shuttle its guests around the parking facilities,
they might use busses, but they were slow to load and unload, taking up valuable time and clogging
up traffic in the lot. Walt needed a more unique solution, so he turned to his youngest Imagineer,
Bob Gurr. He had hired Bob to design several of Disneyland’s vehicles and knew that he could
come up with a useful design, and indeed Bob’s idea was to use tractors to pull bench wagons.
The first tractors were basically the same kind used to transport airport luggage across
the tarmac, but the wagons they pulled were uniquely designed and could easily
be linked together to form a small train. And there wasn’t just a parking lot tram service,
but also a tram that took hotel guests to and from the park’s main gates.
By the 1960’s they purchased larger tractors because now they needed to pull up to 5 wagons at a time!
In 1968, Bob Gurr had designed much larger wagons, this time with forward-facing bench seats.
These were of a notable design because since each car required 4 wheels, the forward and rear axles
of each car needed to be able to steer in the same path that the tractor would take.
Once again, the idea came in the form of the luggage carts that airport tractors towed.
Each cart’s axles were linked with the cart in front and behind it, so wherever the
tractor went, each car would follow suit. The late 1968 version of the parking tram
was maintained very well over the years, it saw very little in terms of upgrades,
but in 1996 when the plans were in place to expand Disneyland into a resort with a second theme park.
Disney began upgrading their tram system to what we see today. But if you’ve ever wondered how
the new tractors received this strange design I must take you back to Walt Disney World in 1971.
For the opening of the Florida resort, Bob Gurr was asked to design a new tractor for the trams,
they would need to be custom-built because the trams would need to be able to haul much larger
trains of cars than the ones currently in use at Disneyland. And the added challenge was a steep
grade that takes the tram route through the lagoon underpass. There was no off-the-shelf tractor that
was strong enough to pull these trams, yet small enough to fit on the road and pass through low
clearances. It turned out the design that Bob came up with was too expensive for the company
and they decided to hire a third-party company called United Tractor. They would construct 23
new units from several of their own manufactured parts, but when the vehicles were delivered,
Bob and several company officials were startled to see that they constantly broke down and couldn’t
pull a fully loaded tram up the grades. Bob was tasked with modifying the new units so they
could function long enough that his team could build out the tractors he originally designed.
These custom-built tractors would be powered by compressed natural gas as opposed to diesel or
gasoline, and the awkward size of their fuel tanks and engines required the shape of the vehicle to
be designed around the functionality. Since there was no room to include a side door for the driver,
Bob fashioned the front windshield into its own door. The end result was a tractor that some
people call ugly, but has been one of the most reliable vehicle designs Disney ever constructed.
When Disneyland was gearing up to start its expansion into a two-park resort in 1996,
they realized the old Disneyland trams would have to be beefed up like the ones at Walt Disney World.
Imagineers duplicated the design of the Walt Disney World ones, and all they really did
was install a new aerodynamic body over the same vehicle. Bob Gurr’s design has been so reliable,
that nobody really saw a need to alter the design. Disneyland Resort split its tram service into the
Mickey and Friends Parking tram which serviced the new structure at the north of the property,
and the Lion King tram which serviced the remaining lots at the south of the property.
The Disneyland trams have 7 wagons and can transport upwards of 200 guests at a time.
In the year 2009, the Lion King Tram was discontinued since the final portion of the
original parking lot, called the Timon lot, was being constructed into the new Carsland.
That’s also the same time Disney was preparing its new Toy Story parking lot adjacent to the resort.
Retired OCTA busses were purchased, along with hiring several recently laid-off transit
authority drivers, the OCTA busses were given decorative wraps and would act as shuttles
that brought guests from the new parking lot straight to the Disneyland esplanade,
stopping at the former Lion King tram stop to unload passengers.
While the Mickey and Friends tram stop has been re-aligned a few times over the last few years
in preparation for the new Pixar Pals Parking structure, their most notable change came in 2014,
when doors were added to the trams. You see, for 5 decades up to this point, common sense had
prevented injuries on the trams, most people knew you should never jump out of a moving vehicle.
However now that common sense is gradually becoming a thing of the past, we can rest
assured that those who are without it, will be safe and sound thanks to these new safety doors.
To this day, Disney parking trams are the most unique in the world and are part of that early
morning and late-night experience that frames your day at the resort.
Most people don’t really think about the design of these monstrous machines,
ask anyone, and they would naturally assume these are some kind of off-the-shelf standard parking
trams but have no idea that they are custom-built vehicles, nor do they know that it was essentially
Bob Gurr who designed the modern parking tram, all because a man named Walt Disney intended for
people to have a more convenient experience outside the gates of this magic kingdom.