Has anyone taken the DCL shuttle recently from a Disney World resort hotel to Port Canaveral for a Disney Cruise lately? How early do they pick you up & get you to Port Canaveral? I know it’s about an hour ride. I am planning on securing an early arrival/embarkation time, as I’d like to get on the ship as early as possible. I’ve seen a few videos from pre-Covid that did not pick you up until like noon or 1pm, so you didn’t get to the port and on the ship until after 2pm. If this is still the case, would it be faster to just take a Lyft or is there another shuttle van that would arrive earlier in the morning?
Also, if you are taking the DCL shuttle to Port Canaveral, do they transfer your luggage from the resort to the ship or is it placed under the bus, then you check it when you arrive?
Our experience was about a 9:30am pickup at the resort and we were at the terminal before boarding starts. Not sure if that was related to how early we booked the transfer or not, though.
When arriving at the port, all we had to take with us getting off the bus were our carry-ons. Checked luggage was transferred from the bus to our state room by DCL.
Those guests transferring from a Disney hotel to the cruises have the earliest boarding times. You won’t need to choose one as it gets assigned automatically if you are taking the DCL transportation. We’ve been assigned groups 2 or 3 each time. I think they come to get luggage the morning of around 7:30am-ish. The luggage then shows up outside your stateroom. We only get on the ship with a carry on that has swimsuits and the bottles of wine we bring on.
It seems like we left POFQ each time around 9-9:30am. We are typically on the ship by 11:30AM.
We’ve only taken the shuttle from MCO so haven’t had experienced it from the WDW resorts, but we did take the DCL shuttle from MCO last year to Port Canaveral for the Wish.
When we arrived on our shuttle from MCO it was about 11:25am and we arrived just ahead of a group of at least 4-5 other shuttles that I am assuming were from the WDW resorts. I never confirmed with any of the people on them but that’s and the MCO Hyatt are the only other places that have shuttles to Port Canaveral so at least a few of them had to be from WDW. Regardless, everyone on those shuttles was at the port before they called any of our boarding groups. Also, my favorite part of using the shuttles was that before we boarded the busses, we did the port check-in process so everything at the port was so efficient for us & our passports didn’t need to be re-checked there because they had already done that before boarding the bus. We just had to go through security and had a less than 5 min. wait for our boarding group to be called and then we were on the ship with our name being announced! I loved that about taking the shuttle.
As for luggage, at MCO when we checked-in at the DCL desk to be assigned a shuttle they took our luggage and next we saw it was outside our stateroom door on the ship. With the resorts they’ll transport your luggage and you should have a letter with instructions in your room on where/when the luggage needs to be and what time you need to meet in the lobby. If for whatever reason you don’t get a letter, talk to the front desk and they’ll get you that information.
I stayed at POFQ and used the DCL shuttle to the port last week. Luggage was picked up around 7:45am (it needs to be ready by 7:30am). Bus left around 9:30am. Our luggage went to the port on a separate truck that left before the shuttle did. Coming back, our luggage was in the underneath storage area of the bus. The trip is about an hour unless traffic backs up.
Thank you everyone for your responses!!! Just booked a WDW Resort reservation for a few days prior to the cruise to help get into vacation mode. When I called to change the pickup from MCO to the resort to go to Port Canaveral, the cast member did not ask me for my resort confirmation number, just the name of the resort. I thought that was odd, as the last cast member I spoke with told me to call back with the resort confirmation number. She also said she had no idea when the bus would arrive at the resort to go to the port, but that it would be sometime between 9am-1pm. That made me a bit nervous, as I don’t want to wait that long to get to the port & on the ship. She said to call back 10 days prior & they “may” have a pickup time, but that I would need to decide if I will keep the reservation to the port or cancel it and take an Uber/Lyft instead.
I recently watched several videos of folks taking the DCL bus from WDW resorts. In each case, luggage was picked up early (7 am or so) and the bus left for the port around 9:45ish, although it can depend on the resort and such.