This afternoon, Monorail Teal broke down and required a tow back to the station. A reader sent in photos of the monorail being towed back to the Transportation & Ticket Center. It also looks like several windows were removed, likely by guests seeking some relief from hot cabin temperatures.
Monorail Teal Breaks Down, Guests Remove Windows at Walt Disney World
Taking a closer look, we can see maintenance Cast Members on the monorail tow as the vehicle is pulled back to the Transportation & Ticket Center hub.
A number of windows are missing, likely removed by guests. Windows on the monorail are removable in emergency situations. It’s likely that whatever caused the monorail to break down also led to a loss of power to air conditioning. Even if the air conditioning was running, it’s not uncommon for the A/C in the monorails to be less than ideal.
The breakdown caused a ripple effect, causing the entire EPCOT monorail line to be shut down. Whenever there is a breakdown in either watercraft or the monorail system, Disney is usually pretty quick to respond by deploying dedicated bus routes to whatever final destination the broken transportation system would’ve taken guests. In this case, Disney deployed buses to transport guests between the Transportation & Ticket Center and EPCOT.
The Walt Disney World Monorails are Mark VI monorails. While the Mark IV train was designed in 1971 for Walt Disney World, Mark VI trains began replacing the Mark IV in 1989, and the changeover was completed in 1991.
Back in 2018, Disney Legend Bob Gurr seemed to confirm that new monorails were coming to Walt Disney World, but that never happened. Gurr was quite candid, calling the current fleet of Mark VI vehicles the “duct tape monorail”.
Walt Disney World has been in the process of extensively refurbishing the entire monorail fleet over recent years, with each vehicle seeming to undergo a two-phase refurbishment. Disney World did not detail the work that they did on the monorails, but it seemed to be quite extensive, with each monorail worked on for multiple months before returning to service.
In July 2025, Walt Disney World announced that they were updating the fleet with glow-in-the-dark logos.
Most recently, Walt Disney World closed the monorail system in November 2025 briefly after Monorail Silver appeared to experience a fire.