A power outage at Disney’s Epcot center in Florida forced the evacuation of dozens of passengers from the theme park’s monorail Sunday.
Weather caused the power outage, but it did not appear a lightning strike was responsible, Disney spokeswoman Jacquee Wahler said.
Wahler said about 120 people were on the monorail, and all were safely evacuated.
Lily Mock said the sky was filled with dark clouds when she boarded the monorail from Magic Kingdom to Epcot.
“When we sat there, we heard a lot of thunder and saw a few bolts of lightning,” the 15-year-old said.
Suddenly, the train came to a stop. Without the air conditioner running, the train car got pretty hot pretty quickly.
Over the next 90 minutes, Mock, her family and the other stranded visitors passed the time by chatting with each other and messaging friends. No one seemed to panic, she said.
Firefighters later managed to pop open the top hatch of the car train and then escorted passengers out through the doors, using a lift.
“I kind of wanted to go through the top, I thought it’d be fun,” Mock said.
Her mother, Melissa Mock, has been visiting Disney World since she was 8 years old. She didn’t mind the surprise at all.
“It was the single most exciting thing that’s happened to us since we’ve been visiting in 30 years,” she said.
