Buses by resort

I only have one trip to compare it too, we stayed at deluxe and crowds were manageable. Are the buses consistent from resort to resort, or did we just luck out? Do they come as often at value/moderate as deluxe, or are those waits longer during the same time period?

I can only speak to offsite buses (which sucked) and POP buses that were AWESOME…but you do have to wait in a queued line. If a bus was too full, another was usually only 2 min behind. If we waited 10 min, that was a long wait… I waited longer at GF one evening for a bus to go to DS.

I was told they now have cameras at most bus queues on property and they use them to gauge where to send buses and when.

Every 20 minutes is the “standard” the buses are suppose to run, no matter which resort. We’ve only done POP and have been extremely pleased with the busing and we have also hopped on an AOA bus if one comes sooner.

Read an article about a bus icon being added to MDE and being able to see estimated arrivals to parks and resorts on the app, so that will be helpful in letting me know if my kids should get a move on or we can hit the bathroom, etc.

I am so excited about the MDE Bus times being added!!!

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I saw that this was coming to MDE. Is it live now? 20 days until our trip, hope to use this then.

The blogger who wrote the article I read, felt it would be out in a couple weeks? He posted the article last week. So maybe?

I’ve heard that the buses at deluxes are actually the worst.

Interesting. We were there 4/7 - 4/13 and had no issues. Actually smoother than I was expecting. Was trying to figure out if that was more for when we were there, deluxe, or any other factor.

I don’t know but there are so many complaints on chat about buses at monorail resorts in particular.

I’ve stayed at both Deluxes and Values and I’ve noticed little, if any, difference between the two.

Most deluxe resorts share bus service with another resort so the rides can be a little longer but I do not think they have bad service. I had a really bad time at POR resort once but that was more about the in-chaperoned high schoolers that kept on arriving at the West Depot. They smoked, swore, and joined their friends. Families were left waiting more than 90 minutes for a bus to the MK since they ended up blocking everyone else from loading.

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I waited longer for a bus from Wilderness Lodge to DHS than I ever waited at POP going to any park. And after they picked us up at WL, we had to pick up at Contemporary. Took almost an hour. However, you can beat the boat back from MK to WL.

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It’s hard to gage by anecdotal evidence. If I had to guess, part of what contributes to overweighted complaints from Deluxe Resort patrons is the expense, and connected increased expectations.

For myself, on my last trip where I stayed at POFQ, I had both the worst and second worst experiences I’ve ever had with bus service. On separate days, I missed rope drop for MK and TL, respectively. Nothing like watching bus after empty bus come and go for AK, while what should have been a 30 minute early start for MK turns into 30 minutes late.

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That’s true, but generally people like to talk about the bad rather than the good - isn’t there a statistic that someone getting good service will tell one person but someone getting bad service will tell ten?

Personally I’ve only ever stayed at POFQ and buses have been fantastic. But getting a bus to and from AKL (from AK) was horrendous, we were so late to our ADR and I’d allowed an hour for travel.

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In my experience bus service can be a bit hit and miss no matter where you are staying. Granted, we only ever stay at DVC resorts, so I can’t compare it to the Value and Moderate ones. In the last three trips (so in the last 12 months) I think the longest we waited was just under 30 minutes. That was from SSR to HS I think. Shortest wait was none - the bus literally pulled up as we arrived at the bus stop. That happened more than once at SSR during the trip where we also had the long wait. On average I’d say we wait around 10 minutes at any given resort.

AKV often gets a bad rep when it comes to bus waits, but I can honestly say we’ve never had a really long wait there. By contrast, we once had a horrendous wait at BCV, and several longer than average ones at BWV and Poly. Doesn’t deter us from staying there though; we’ll be back at BWV in a week’s time, and at BCV in September… :slight_smile:

One year, we started our day at Disney Springs. Since we were already there, we thought why bother paying to park when we could take the Disney Transportation to the park we were going to. But, there is no direct bus from Disney Springs to the parks. Instead, we had to take a bus from Disney Springs to a resort, then get off and wait for a bus to the parks. We chose Port Orleans since that’s where my wife and I had stayed on our honeymoon and wanted our kids to see it.

This ended up being a HUGE mistake, and in the end we should have just hopped in our car and paid the $20 to park.

It took us about 1.5 hours to get to the park. And then, at the end of the day, it took another 1.5 hours to get back to our car at Disney Springs.

In hindsight, I’m sure Disney does this on purpose because they don’t want people to just park at Disney Springs and go to the parks. I can say we definitely learned from experience NOT to do that again! :slight_smile:

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