From Fun-Train to Brightline: The 25-year journey to Miami-Orlando service

When Brightline's service to Orlando begins rolling sometime this summer, the privately run rail line will aspire to make reality a dream that has spanned at least a quarter-century.

Namely, train service between populous South Florida and Central Florida's theme park mecca — arguably the most sought-after transportation infrastructure since a basket of Florida oranges lured railroad baron Henry Flagler to run his iron horses the length of the state's east coast.

It's so desired that in 2000, close to 3 million Floridians voted for it. And before that, the short-lived Florida Fun-Train rode the rails, too.

The Fun-Train and the high-speed bullet train constitutional amendment proved to be swampland-in-the-Everglades dreams, but they were colorful sagas on the Sunshine State's business and political path to a Miami-to-Orlando choo-choo train.

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The Florida Fun-Train: 'It doesn't matter if we have two or 200 on board. Because we have fun regardless.'

At 60 miles per hour, the Florida Fun-Train wasn't high-speed, but it did feature a clown, a magician, a video arcade, a Tiki bar and a dance floor.

The Fun-Train embarked on Hollywood-to-Orlando service in 1998. The four-hour trip cost $69.95 per adult, and $49.95 for children ages kids 2-11, one-way.

The train pulled four guest cars with a decidedly cheery decor, brightly colored seats and glass roofs for all-around views. Breakfast, lunch and dinner menus were served, and for those who find train horns annoying, the engineer was set to blow the engine' horn four times through each of the 252 crossings from Broward County to Central Florida.

Owned by First American Railways Inc., which traded on the Nasdaq exchange, the Fun-Train drew some investor attention when it told a Palm Beach Post reporter that then-Wall Street superstar H. Wayne Huizenga had been a passenger.

Huizenga, who died in 2018, was busy rolling out his AutoNation car dealership chain at the time, and any start-up enterprise he showed interest in during the late 1990s stock market boom seemingly turned to gold.

There's no record Huizenga plunked any of his war chest loot in the Fun-Train, magicians or not, but it was evident the Fun-Train didn't draw ridership. The day the Post reporter sampled the ride, just 50 passengers were aboard.

"But it doesn't matter if we have two or 200 on board," said a waitress working the dining car. "Because we have fun regardless."

But the fun didn't last long. After its inaugural ride in September 1998, the Florida Fun-Train folded two months later.

The bullet train constitutional amendment: 'We have no mandate. But we still have a good idea.'

In the fall of 2000, the political center of attention in Florida, and the rest of the country, was the presidential contest between Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore.

That focus became a singular one when Gore contested Florida's election results, a 537-vote margin giving Bush the state's 25 electoral votes to surpass the 270 requirement by an extra point. Today, butterfly ballots and hanging chads remain part of the country's election lexicon even a quarter-century later.

Lost in all the legal fighting ballot-counting was voter approval of a seemingly obscure ballot item giving Floridians a constitutional right to high-speed train travel. The amendment called for "linking Florida's five largest urban areas" with "a high-speed monorail" to "reduce traffic and increase travel alternatives."

The amendment was the brainchild of millionaire C.C. "Doc" Dockery, a retired Lakeland businessman. Dockery organized and funded a successful $1.5 million, 624,000-signature petition drive to place the concept on the ballot. It won approval with 53% of the vote — we'll come back to that later.

Dockery hailed the amendment's passage that November in an interview with The Palm Beach Post.

"I'm feeling very good," Dockery said at the time. "I would like to be the first one to hop on board, but I'm going to defer to an 83-year-old lady in Pinellas County who sent me $5 and said she wants to be the first to ride the train from Tampa Bay to Orlando, take a taxi to Disney World and ride the new roller-coaster there."

Then reality hit. And by that, we mean money. Lots of it.

Florida's Department of Transportation estimated the cost to build the rail line at between $5.6 billion and $11.2 billion. A Tallahassee-based conservative think tank, the James Madison Institute, put the range at between $8.2 billion and $21.9 billion. Then state economists upped the figures, substantially, guesstimating the venture would cost $20 billion to $25 billion.

Still, the Florida High Speed Rail Authority was created to oversee the project. Construction had not begun, but a contractor was selected to build the first leg from Orlando to Tampa at a cost of $2.3 billion.

All the while, the big-dollar price tag figures, inflated or not, fueled surging opposition to the monorail, which soon became known as the "bullet train."

Gov. Jeb Bush was the bullet train's top critic and said the project was "a $25 billion boondoggle that will damage our state." Then-Palm Beach County Commissioner Burt Aaronson founded a bipartisan political action committee, Derail the Bullet Train, to seek the repeal of the 2000 amendment.

In a November 2004 do-over, Florida voters repealed the original 2000 bullet train amendment, bringing an end to the high-speed monorail.

"We have no mandate," Fred Dudley, the authority's chairman, said after losing the repeal vote. "But we still have a good idea."

The mandate, however, was for raising the threshold for voter approval of constitutional amendments. The bullet train ballot item was among those cited as a reason to support a successful, subsequent change to Florida's Constitution to raise the threshold to 60%.

Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at the Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at afins@pbpost.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.     

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Brightline service to Orlando aims to succeed where prior efforts failed