Question: *Westworld* premiered on HBO two weeks ago (as of the writing of this question, we've only seen Season 1, Episodes 1 and 2).

One of the things they haven't shown us yet (I hope will be revealed soon) is how objects in the physical world (host robots, guest humans, even inanimate items like cowboy hats and guns) get "transported" into the park ("Westworld").

I know the guests ride trains and then somehow they're magically "in" the park, but that's obviously not how they *really* get transported (it wouldn't be believable or even remotely realistic).

There was a Michael Crichton book as well as a movie in 1973 surrounding the same story line. Anybody know how you actually travel or get transported in/out of the parks?

Answer: 
Based on the maps available on the [Westworld Website](https://discoverwestworld.com/), guests arrive by high-speed subterranean monorail, disembark at the Mesa Gold facility's "*Arrivals Monorail Terminal*" (situated a few miles from the centre of the park), then catch the olde-fashioned steam train which takes them the last few miles from the facility to the town of Sweetwater.

[![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gIs2u.gif)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gIs2u.gif)

I've highlighted the *probable* route of the monorail, but obviously if it's underground it could literally come from any direction, including directly below the conventional train track.

[![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SQ5pL.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SQ5pL.png)
Based on the first two episodes, we know:

* Regional travel appears to be via a vast high-speed underground train, possibly an evacuated tube. If the tunnel air is evacuated, this could be a long-distance transportation network of the future, invisible to the surface.
* The above explains what we know about the park headquarters complex, described as a 100-story skyscraper buried underground, also mostly invisible (and deliberately hard to find; the Man in Black appears to be killing people to search for the hidden entrance where Hopkins' character emerges "at the end of the Blood Arroyo where the snake lays its eggs", cut to Hopkins mesmerizing said (artificial) snake).
* It appears to be buried within a mesa, with Grand Canyon Skywalk-style balconies (for executive living quarters). At one point the camera pans out of the escalator complex and up from the top of the mesa.
* The underground (modern) train explains why its so deep. Parts of the complex (cold storage) appear abandoned, and reminiscent of a space horror film. These appear to be former train terminal entrances, perhaps from an earlier era when the park was more affordable, given the Jurassic Park-style entry-hall accommodations in these abandoned levels.
* The steam train leaves the mesa complex in a tunnel high up on the ridge line, is entered by a visitor tunnel, and appears to be an ordinary mechanical replica steam train. The hosts (we see) that are programmed as town residents board the same train, and are programmed to wake up when the steam train leaves the tunnel.
* The steam train travels through a (real) desert landscape until it reaches the main town. The park area appears to be exceedingly vast -- judging from the holomap in the command center, perhaps over a hundred miles of mostly desert range land.
* As with Jurassic Park, at least half the park area beyond a certain river is wilderness or off-limits to "family" guests and reserved for more "dangerous" excursions.
* If the shadowy execs imagine, say, military or other applications for their robots, this could explain the source of the land being abandoned government or military range land.
* It does not explain, however, why those other applications of the technology have not been pursued until now (at least 30 years into the park's history), or even why the park appears to be unique. Given the way the staff and guests talk about it, other parks with different themes do not appear to be contemplated.
* Even the oldest robots appear to be fairly lifelike, and we know of no instruction or ordinance against lifelike robots in the real world. However it could be that the park is so exceedingly expensive to maintain that it is a category-killer, in the fashion of Disney World.