Expect a long, crowded bus ride and no seat
Plane landed at 3pm. Was told luggage would arrive within 3 hours at Pop Century. First 3 bags arrived after 10pm. It is close to midnight and we still do not have the last bag. No reason provided for the delay and no phone calls from the resort letting us know what is going on. Disappointing to say the least.
Upon arrival, baggage arrived at the hotel 5 hours after we did. When we were coming back home,we checked our bags at our hotel's magical express check-in service.Everyone else who did the same arrived at our home airport waiting for their checked items to arrive, but they never got loaded the plane. We were told that they would arrive in about three hours on the next flight in from Orlando.
We have made 3 trips to Disney and used DME each time. The first two trips it went well. This time airport to Disney was very good. Disney to airport is another story. We were supposed to be on the 4:30 bus from Port Orleans Riverside. We arrived at 4:15 and found out that the 4:00 bus had arrived full. Supposedly another one was on the way to take those passengers. But at 4:30 the bus came and picked up the 4:00 passengers. We waited and waited. We had three drop off buses come and tell us that another bus was on the way. Finally at almost 5:30 a bus arrived for us. Now these people know how many people are scheduled. There is no excuse for not having enough space for everybody.
I would not pay for this service!!!! My family got on the bus at the Contemporary 3hours and 15 minutes prior to our flight time and the bus then stopped at Wilderness Lodge, Polynesian and Grand Floridian that put us at the airport 40 minutes before our plane took off. After going thru security and getting to our concourse they were announcing FINAL CALL TO BOARD our flight. I would never use that service again!
Just returned from five days at Disney. Stayed at Riverside. Bus service was frustrating during the entire stay. Schedule says busses every twenty minutes....don't believe it. You may wait up to an hour for your bus and what makes it more frustrating is for the resort you are NOT going two there will be ten busses stopping in front of you during that time. Didn't matter time of day. Express bus service from hotel to airport was not a satisfactory experience. Scheduled bus for our ride just drove through the loading area and never stopped. Driver was supposed to sign in at each resort...he ignored this. Had to wait for the next bus that luckily had space for our party. Busses need to have GPS trackers and two way radio communication that is used by Supervisor to manage routes and busses efficiently. There is no reason that if four busses to the same area are running bumper to bumper that one or two of them could not be switched to a route where passengers have waiting an excessively long period. The problem is not having enough busses, the problem is efficient management of the fleet to meet current load factors. Bus service seems to ignore this common sense business practice.
Stayed at the Boardwalk Inn from May 24th until May 31st of 2014 and I have to say the bus transportation was bad. The Boardwalk, Swan and Dolphin share bus service and to get to the Magic Kingdom it would take 25-35 minutes. The bus was always standing room only and I have to say if I had stayed at the Swan I would have never gotten a seat. Getting to and from Downtown Disney was worse as this bus is shared by one of the water parks. Leaving Downtown Disney it took my family one hour to get to the Boardwalk Inn. You pay a higher price to stay at the Boardwalk because you want good service but you do not get that service from the bus.I have been to WDW 25 times and stayed at most of the hotels form the budget to the five star and have never had worse bus service
I visited the resort staying with my family at the Art of Animation. It is a half hour trip from the Art of Animation to the Magic Kingdom. Thats is if the bus just arrived and their was room on the bus for you. It could take up to an hour to get there. Bus arrivals at this resort were not regular enough that you didn't feel penalized for staying at this resort. If you visited more that one resort you spent 3 to 4 hours of your day traveling and not enjoying the parks. Worst was closing time. You could wait over and hour to get a bus back to your resort and be forced to stand the entire time do to overcrowding the buses.I will not go back until WDW improves transportation between all areas of the parks. They spend so much improving the parks without improving how to get around to each of them.
2 hour bus ride from marketplace in downtown Disney to beach club resort ,packed with way more people than it should have. The driver kept saying "everyone move further back for more people"