Minnie Van service

I don’t know if this will be useful to anyone, but this popped up in My Disney Experience app for me this morning. I think I got it as an option because we are staying at Beach Club at the end of August, and that’s one of the participating test resorts.

I followed the instructions to activate it. All I needed to do was to enter my cell phone number. I already have the Lyft app on my phone. After activating, I now see the Minnie Van service listed under “promos” when I open the menus on the Lyft app. (Tap the profile photo circle at the top, then select promos.) It sounds like it will be on the main screen when you open the app while actually on Disney property.

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If you use, please report back. I am curious if there are any advantages over Uber and Lyft, which we were planning on using during our stay in Dec. It has a higher price point, so I am wondering if you get any magical perks.

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With this, they may see an upswing in Park Hopper sales, as it might now be more feasible to do two parks in one day.

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Is there also a time frame for operation for these (I looked around but didn’t see one, might’ve missed it)? This would be great for super early ADRs or after closing down the boardwalk.

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So if it is really just a regular Lyft ride in a red and white van, then I think the only magical perk is the availability of car seats. Otherwise, I think you will be much better off paying the regular Lyft price for a normal car.

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We use Uber/Lyft all the time in our regular life, so I think it will be interesting to pull up the apps to compare car availability and pricing once the new service really gets really going. Maybe the regular services will stay competitive, but I suspect Disney will make driving for Disney very appealing, which might affect the competition.

One additional benefit is that these vans have permission to go to the bus area at Magic Kingdom. I’m pretty sure the other services have to go to the TTC. That’s a huge time saver!

I’ll let you all know how it goes if we use it. I’m thinking we will try it for a trip from BC to Poly for an 'Ohana breakfast. We might also use it for an early (7am) ride to MK on the day we have Early Morning Magic, but only if there isn’t a bus within a reasonable wait.

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Interesting - that was the one advantage I could think of…access to the actual entrance at MK rather than just TTC.

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There is also a bus service that will take you from within one park to inside the gates of another park, by passing another line to get into the other park and having to go through security again. We are planning on using this for our trip in December. I read a blogger write about using this system to go to all four parks in one day. We are not planning on being that aggressive in our approach.

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There is, I think it’s $29 or something like that for 7 consecutive days (per person). Or $19 for a single day. It doesn’t help with going to/from resorts, but if you’re planning on a lot of park hopping it will save time. We tend to go back to the resort in the afternoon so it won’t help us. Though im thinking about a 4parks 1day next time we go - of course it’s 2 years off so who knows if the bus will be available!

Thank you for posting this and for the screenshots too. I was just going to create a post on this very subject when I saw yours because I wanted to see if there were any perks that make it worth using over Uber. (“Over Uber” – that’s kind of redundant, isn’t it? Sorry – German joke.)

We’d probably just be using it to resort-hop rather than park hop. I like the idea, though, of of the Minnie Vans because that means I wouldn’t have to leave the Disney bubble even for a few minutes.

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Haaaaaa…Over Uber. :laughing:

We are considering using the service in November when we are there. 4 adults plus 2 kids that need car seats. Uber only offers one car seat.

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I’m so excited for this! We’re staying at YC at the end of August and I received the notification to sign up this morning. I’d been contemplating canceling a dinner reservation for Ohana because I didn’t want the hassle of getting there from YC with DD1. Now it’s so much easier and faster!

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Good review! Now I’m curious what they have to do to “activate” the service! I guess this does mean that only resort guests may use it.

We used the Minnie Van Service about 10 times on our recent August trip at Boardwalk/Beach Club. (Yes, I know it’s expensive compared to Uber but it kept the family happy and we elected to do this instead of renting a car which I’d seriously considered.)

I had made the hotel reservations so they were in my name … my service was set up automatically the minute I installed Lyft and was super easy. My husband had to have the front desk (someone with an iPad) send him a code in order to get the Minnie van option working within Lyft. We had to talk to about 4 different people before someone could help do this. Concierge had no clue, sent us to bell services, they had no idea. Finally tried a different time and found someone to help us so keep asking if it’s not working.

Sorry for digging up an old thread but we just used the Minnie Van service tonight. It met every expectation I had. I really hope Disney decides to keep and expand the service. On that note I learned a few things I wanted to share.

  1. Go to Bell services to get the service activated. They must link your cell number to the service in order for it to show up.
  2. Lyft credits can be applied to the service
  3. The drivers are Disney cast members on a temporary reassignment.
  4. There are less than 30 vans on property.
  5. The service links you to the next available driver not the closest one, that means that pickup can sometimes be up to 20 minutes if the driver is across property. Tonight mine only took 3 minutes for the driver to get to us.
  6. Apparently the service is already overwhelmed and they have a hard time getting to all requests in a timely manner, this is why they are trying to limit access to the service.
  7. The service is by far the fastest way to get around property
  8. Having the car seat available was a godsend for my sleeping 4 year old tonight.
  9. It’s worth every penny on a busy night.
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Since this was resurrected, I’ll chime in as we tried to use this on our last 3 trips (September, October and last week). Our experience has been the same each time - when you can find one, it works great. Great drivers who get you to exactly where you need to be the most efficient route possible. When you can’t find one, it is very frustrating. We had several instances where the app kept timing out and we gave up after about 20 minutes. Even the valet folks at Beach Club told us just to cancel and get a regular Lyft since the Minnie Vans were in short supply. And we froze Saturday night trying to get one from Disney Springs. Gave up and headed to the bus area (a pretty good walk from where you catch the Minnie Vans).

The other issue is that they are still trying to find the best location for pickups and this tripped us up at Animal Kingdom. I was able to get one as we were leaving the park and I asked 2 different CMs where the pickup location was. They both pointed to the same area. We shortly thereafter received a call from the Minnie Van driver who informed us we were in the wrong spot. When we finally connected and I told him we asked 2 different people, the answer I got was ‘Well, we can’t educate everyone’.

Seriously! That’s not an acceptable answer. They can and should educate every CM. That’s their job. I would definitely let guest relations know.

We used the service 3 times, out of the 3 time only one night did we have an issue with the app timing out. I was told by the driver that the best thing to do when this happens is to cancel and to re-request. He said this is an issue with the way the Lyft queues the request and you’'ll get a much better chance of canceling and trying again, it took 6 cancels but on the 7th it located a driver and we were picked up in about 10 minutes. It was still better that the bus transfer option we were going to need to do.

As for pickup location, the vehicles always came to the spot that you define as your pickup location. you can drag your pin around the map to define the location(as long as it’s next to a road), We even did this at Fort Wilderness and the Minnie Van was allowed down roads that are off limits to most vehicles.