Hi all.
We’re just back from a week at Caribbean Beach Resort. (August 6-14). Instead of a lengthy, day-by-day trip report, I’ll be breaking this out into some categories and impressions that you may find more helpful.
We’ll start today with transportation. Like most Disney guests, we flew from northern climes. Our flight took us from Providence, RI (KPVD) to Orlando International (KMCO). We live in Waltham, Massachusetts, much closer to Boston’s Logan Airport, but meticulous price checking found me a flight about $400 less from the secondary airport, about an hours’ drive away. Well worth the effort, IMHO.
We chose not to use Disney’s luggage service, so upon arriving at MCO we retrieved our bags and marched to the Magical Express pickup. It was easy to find, and check-in was done in a snap. I’d say it was only about 10 minutes and we were on the bus to our resort. We were the first drop-off, and they were headed on to the Boardwalk area after that.
We did online check-in, so I got my text while we were at the airport and we went straight to the room. It wasn’t exactly the one we requested, but it was in the same building a few doors away, so no big deal.
Throughout the week, Disney’s bus service astounded and amazed me. My point of reference is Boston’s MBTA. Anyone else out there can stop laughing. Throughout the entire week, we waited no more than 10 minutes for any bus going anywhere, with one exception. On our Animal Kingdom day, the time said about 15 minutes, but every time we looked, it was delayed further. Finally, after about a half hour, TWO Animal Kingdom busses arrived at the same time. Despite this, we still made it to rope drop and everything went just fine.
Heading home, our DME pickup was listed at 11:25 am, slightly less than 3 hours before our flight. Not that it mattered - the plane was late and we didn’t depart until pretty close to our scheduled Arrival time back home. We should have gone in the park for the morning!
One takeaway - it would be helpful for the Guide to send out a survey team and locate the bus pickup locations at all the theme parks. CBR seemed to be the furthest away from the gates at every park. TMK was particularly ridiculous, as the stop was closer to the Contemporary than Main Street. It didn’t make much difference for our party, but this information could be important for folks with small children or mobility issues.
We also parkhopped once from TMK to EPCOT (my first time ever on this beam!) and made use of the railroad as transportation instead of an attraction. We wanted to try for a Main Street vehicle, but we never could make that work out.
