Redbudlover
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2005
love WDW and go four or five times a year flying in from Texas and staying usually a week to 10 days. When I am there I do NOT want to waste a bunch of time getting from one place to another. I want this trip to be magical. That said my best tip on transport for people who don't have a car there is to think "TAXI" and "private limo". All over these boards you hear how long it takes to get from resort to resort. you have to travel to one of the parks and then transfer to another bus or boat or monorail to get to your desired resort. No you don't!
You do NOT have to use Disney transportation to travel within the parks. It is the only free transportation, but no where else in your life do you travel free. At home you pay for your car and gasoline or you pay for subways, buses, taxis or trains. At Disney I find the least expensive way to travel when Disney transport does not provide direct routes to my destination is to grab a taxi. It might cost me $20 one way to get from one resort to another - or to get from a resort to a park I want to reach in a hurry, but that is cheap compared to what I pay at home for car payments and gas and maintenance.
Here at Disney I have a very limited - very expensive - vacation to enjoy. Spending an extra $100 or $200 to have more time to enjoy my resort and the parks is worth every penny. I think of it this way. If my total vacation for resort, airfare, and food costs me $5000 and I have 18 hours a day for 7 days to enjoy it, that means I have 126 hours of fun time available. Divide $5000 by 126 hours to get the cost per hour and that results in every hour at Disney costing me $39.68. So if I use Disney's buses and it takes me an hour to get to dinner and an hour to get back to my resort those two hours cost me 79.36 just to get back and forth to dinner! One the other hand I can spend $40 round trip and it will only take me 20 minutes per way or a total of 40 minutes giving me an extra one hour and 20 minutes to enjoy Disney! If I do that 3 times during a 7 day trip, my total cost will be $120 saving me 4 hours of travel time.
Four hours in the MK or in EP? Are you kidding? that is a lot of time!
and $120 compared to the $5000 I have paid out of pocket for the vacation is only about 2% of my total cost. Plus then I don't have to run around from resort to park to bus stand to resort just to eat dinner. Instead I climb into a nice quiet cab and arrive at dinner in a calm leisurely manner. Now that is pixie dust! 
The same goes for limos back and forth from the airport to WDW. It costs me $104 for a round trip in a nice new leather seated limo. The limo driver picks me up as I arrive in the baggage area and carries our luggage to the waiting limo. No lines no hassle. He stops at the grocery store for me to pick up wine and water and yoghurt and cereal and snacks, delivers me to the hotel and repeats all this when I want to return. I don't wait in lines with tired kids, drive all over to everyone's resort before getting to mine and spend an extra hour each way for the trip. My total transport cost? $450. Not bad.
Obviously if I am going on a quick cheap trip and trying to cut corners everywhere just to be able to go - and I do that sometimes just to get a quick fix - I leave out the limo... but I NEVER take buses all over to get to another resort for dinner!
You do NOT have to use Disney transportation to travel within the parks. It is the only free transportation, but no where else in your life do you travel free. At home you pay for your car and gasoline or you pay for subways, buses, taxis or trains. At Disney I find the least expensive way to travel when Disney transport does not provide direct routes to my destination is to grab a taxi. It might cost me $20 one way to get from one resort to another - or to get from a resort to a park I want to reach in a hurry, but that is cheap compared to what I pay at home for car payments and gas and maintenance.
Here at Disney I have a very limited - very expensive - vacation to enjoy. Spending an extra $100 or $200 to have more time to enjoy my resort and the parks is worth every penny. I think of it this way. If my total vacation for resort, airfare, and food costs me $5000 and I have 18 hours a day for 7 days to enjoy it, that means I have 126 hours of fun time available. Divide $5000 by 126 hours to get the cost per hour and that results in every hour at Disney costing me $39.68. So if I use Disney's buses and it takes me an hour to get to dinner and an hour to get back to my resort those two hours cost me 79.36 just to get back and forth to dinner! One the other hand I can spend $40 round trip and it will only take me 20 minutes per way or a total of 40 minutes giving me an extra one hour and 20 minutes to enjoy Disney! If I do that 3 times during a 7 day trip, my total cost will be $120 saving me 4 hours of travel time.
Four hours in the MK or in EP? Are you kidding? that is a lot of time!
and $120 compared to the $5000 I have paid out of pocket for the vacation is only about 2% of my total cost. Plus then I don't have to run around from resort to park to bus stand to resort just to eat dinner. Instead I climb into a nice quiet cab and arrive at dinner in a calm leisurely manner. Now that is pixie dust! The same goes for limos back and forth from the airport to WDW. It costs me $104 for a round trip in a nice new leather seated limo. The limo driver picks me up as I arrive in the baggage area and carries our luggage to the waiting limo. No lines no hassle. He stops at the grocery store for me to pick up wine and water and yoghurt and cereal and snacks, delivers me to the hotel and repeats all this when I want to return. I don't wait in lines with tired kids, drive all over to everyone's resort before getting to mine and spend an extra hour each way for the trip. My total transport cost? $450. Not bad.
Obviously if I am going on a quick cheap trip and trying to cut corners everywhere just to be able to go - and I do that sometimes just to get a quick fix - I leave out the limo... but I NEVER take buses all over to get to another resort for dinner!
339 days to go.
