There's good and bad with SS and with the
Disneyland Resort Express bus. Upsides and downsides.
The situation with the Odyssey...I had the opposite situation happen, and from dealing wtih my situation I would bet a million dollars that the SS people had a shuttle there for someone else, and it got confused. The fact that the Odyssey was there 5 minutes later, when the SS shuttle was there 10 minute early, just tells me that it wasn't a bait and switch, but just confusion. In my situation the driver wasn't letting me on, stating that it was NOT my shuttle, and it turned out it was because she thought I was with a family (up the stairs near the checkin building at HoJo) and she was looking for a solo person. The confirmation email printout was helpful then, too, because she could look up the number, and not the mystifyingly mangled NAME that they had (mystifying b/c I made the reservation online, and one wouldn't think there would be any changes, any hands my name would go through to mix it up).
asianway, how early were you there? I once got to the hotel (after playing in the parks) an hour before pickup, and they got there 30 minutes ahead of time. Thank goodness I was there so early!
Joybelles, it's not that the disney hotels are a priority, they just use the DLH as a place for people to pay, and a point where other buses are dispatched from. Plenty of people have reported weird situations of getting to the Grand last, etc etc. The bus is run by Grayline, not Disney...they are refering to the entirety of Disneyland Resort, not THE resorts at Disneyland, IMO.
I've done reservations coming in twice that I remember on SS...both times I pre-reserved. Both times I was just about the only one on the shuttle. First time was at Ontario airport (ugh), and the guy drove around the airport two full times hoping to get another passenger, but ultimately just took me and DS with no one else. Second time was from SNA, I got on the shuttle first then we waited a bit as the guy hoped to get another passenger. He did, waited just a bit longer, then took us. I don't really mind...they are somewhere in between sole owners of their vans vs employees, and it's better for them to take multiple people all at once. If I'm paying the money for a *limo*, I expect them to be prompt and immediate; but if I'm paying a nice low rate, I can deal with them wanting someone else to share the gas, because I'm certainly not paying the upkeep on the shuttle AND the gas AND for his time, even with 3 of us in the van!