Disney evacuates 120 guests from monorail after power failure

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – Passengers had to be evacuated from a Disney World monorail Sunday night after a power failure on the train.

Guests at the park were initially posting on social media lightning struck the track, which caused the train to stop on the Epcot monorail line, not far from the Transportation And Ticket Center.

Disney spokesperson Andrea Finger tells Local 6 the train stopped because of a "weather incident" but says the train was not struck by lightning.

Firefighters were called to the track and had to use their ladder trucks to evacuate approximately 120 passengers off the train after attempts to power it back up failed.

There did not appear to be any injuries.

Officials said some passengers were stuck on the train for up to an hour and a half before being evacuated with the train about 30 feet in the air, with the last one being removed around 8 p.m.

Local 6 spoke to a passenger who said she was able to walk off stairs attached to a scissor lift truck. Other passengers said they had to climb through an exit on the roof of the train to get to safety.

"Where we were there was never really a storm,  there was that one bolt of lightning," said passenger Melissa Mock. "There was a large bolt of lightning. You could tell it was very close to where we were at and when the thunder hit you could tell it was so close."

Officials said the train was stuck on a track switch, making it difficult for a tow truck to get there.

Disney officials say the train was moved and service should be running as normal on Monday morning.

The last major power problem on the monorails occurred in December 2012 when an outage stopped the trains for hours. Officials said that outage was caused by a worker who accidentally cut a cable line.

In 2009, a monorail driver was killed after two trains collided, which officials say was the result of series of mistakes and prompted major safety changes.