DEBATE: Busses

[Peter Pirate]

Landbaron. Take the Mears shuttle to Orlando's McCoy Airport. Take US AIR flight 535 at 2:15pm connecting in Philadelphia to Rome, Italy, arriving at 12:30 AM.

Just isn't that hard...

 

[DVC-Landbaron]

Peter,

You bust me up!!!

But now, how about a real answer!?!?!

 

[Eeyore2U]

I have one problem with the busses. Sometimes you can't there from here at night. It bothers me that you have to go to a DTD to get anywhere.

We usually have one long wait a trip. If I only had that happen once every eight or nine days in the real world, mass transit would be a preferred mode.

 

[undertheradar]

The biggest problem with the bus syatem at WDW is the lack of consistent information. Bus runs get discontinued and the drivers are not told, leaving guests trying to find out what is going on.
Durind a Jolly Holidays trip 7years ago(?), went o the Empress Lily for breakfast and then waited 2+ hours for a bus, as none were runiing the route to the MarketPlace. Went into the Character shop and had to get them to call security to get people moving. After two seatings at the breakfast, over 200 people wer witing for a bus that didn't run. Tried to board other bus, this is the ONLY time I was ever asked to show a resort ID. The driver attempted to deny the group the ride, but changed his mind when he learned how long and how many had been waiting.

 

[ohanafamily]

I was at the BW last April, and there was a CM with a modified Palm Pilot doimg a survey. She told DW and I that they were thinking about doing a version of the GPS thing. She was able to tell us about when the next bus would be there. Mind you, this was only during peak times, and the survey was running most of the week. I do not know what became of the proposed GPS system.

As far as the bust system goes, we all have stories. I think it would be a good idea to have a board on the bus-stop that would give you the aprox time until the next bus.

2 weeks ago we were at the Poly, we had already checked out and had 4 hours to kill. We waited for almost an hour for a DD bus, and decided to play on the monorail; we didn't want to miss our flight.

It seems that I agree... a consistent schedule would be great, and some way to keep the busses from "Bunching Up" especially on the long runs would be helpful.

 

[Planogirl]

I can sympathize with LandBaron's TL dilemna since we dealt with something similar during our last trip. Has anyone tried to get to breakfast at Boma while staying at the Allstars? I decided to take a bus to either Animal Kingdom or MGM since the waiting lines are together but neither bus would show up! So I finally did the only logical thing after 25 minutes; take a taxi. I fully intend to take taxis from now on when these difficult transportation problems come up. This costs extra but it's worth it to not deal with the aggravation IMO.

 

[Cricket2]

Originally posted by ohanafamily
I was at the BW last April, and there was a CM with a modified Palm Pilot doimg a survey. She told DW and I that they were thinking about doing a version of the GPS thing. She was able to tell us about when the next bus would be there. Mind you, this was only during peak times, and the survey was running most of the week. I do not know what became of the proposed GPS system.

This timing fits right in with what I what I saw.

Think about it. You’re going to Italy for Dinner at 7:00 pm. It is 3:00 pm and you’re at Typhoon Lagoon. What time do you pack up and head back to the room in order to take a shower, dress and make it all the way across EPCOT by 7:00? With kids in tow!

I guess you don't want the actual answer, but the method of calculation:

I don't know a few things such as

1) your hotel (distance vs. time) (hey you could have wasted your points at a non-DVC hotel right)
2) how long it takes you to get ready for dinner with the "tots"
3) do you dawdle at all, such as the wife/husband dragging you into a store on the way to the bus stop for a half-hour gawking event?
4) should we include for incidental detours such as "tot #1" forgetting his/her autographed "Mouse" sticker at the water slide entrance and forcing a retreat back into TL to get it?

If you assume the worst for all of these........it's 3:00????? You're late buddy!

Seriously, only you can figure these things out, but assume you just call this stuff the vacation time factor x or "vtfx".


Your "vtfx" + estimated time on clock in view at TL entrance for the bus to your hotel + bus travel time (you should know this already from your prior experience or a fairly decent guess)

After that, it comes down to planning ahead. If your room TV says busses are currently running in 25 min. intervals to EPCOT and gives a next bus time at your stop, you may need to do a little math, but calculating your future bus of choice should be fairly easy.

It's the "vtfx" that will get you every time. If your particular "vtfx" is in flux all of the time, rent a car, skip the bus for time sensitive events. Our "vtfx" is dead on 95% of the time, so we have few problems with being ready when it's time to be ready.

added: You would have to assume the time of the EPCOT bus while you are at TL, which could burn you pretty bad if they are at 40 min intervals when you get to the hotel instead of your assumption of 20 mins. or whatever. That's part of the "vtfx" too. Unfortunate, but true.


JC

 

[Cricket2]

Originally posted by Planogirl
I decided to take a bus to either Animal Kingdom or MGM since the waiting lines are together but neither bus would show up!

This system would eliminate these things from happening in theory. If the clock said "50 minutes", you may have taken the cab without waiting at all and saved those 25 minutes of waiting ahead of time. Not only that, but you would have known this from your room without taking a trip to the bus stop. The software would (again in theory) remove the fear of a full bus too, forcing you to wait for another if you did choose to wait the 50 mins.

JC

 

[Cricket2]

Originally posted by thedscoop
The biggest problem is that they basically use only one size bus at all times for all locations.

Smaller shuttle busses might increase labor costs but would certainly be more efficient (and I'd guess energy efficient than driving 40 seaters around property at non-peak times).

Use 10 seater shuttles after dark and during non-peak times.

Are you hoping that "smaller busses"="more frequent on time busses"?

Do the current busses use propane? How much energy would this really save? 1 big bus may = 2 smaller busses as far as the energy goes if I'm reading you right.

I'm probably not though

JC

 

[ohanafamily]

One more note about busses, A CM Bus driver told us that they had already ordered the new busses for the Pop Century hotel. it should be opening next year.....this was 2 weeks ago...

 

[Cricket2]

Originally posted by ohanafamily
One more note about busses, A CM Bus driver told us that they had already ordered the new busses for the Pop Century hotel. it should be opening next year.....this was 2 weeks ago...

New busses or new-to-them-used busses? The reason Tokyo has cool design busses is because they were built for them custom (probably, I've never seen them). Many WDW busses are refurbs from cities all over the US.

At least that's what I heard.

JC

 

[jennymouse]

We just returned from a 9 night stay at AKL and found the buses to be excellent...no problems at all. It would be nice to know exactly when a particular bus was coming. On TV in our rooms would be good as well as a board at the resort stops.

For the parks, however, I'd like to see a board inside the park as well as at the stops. This way, if a bus isn't going to be arriving for 40 minutes, we'd know before we walked all the way to the bus stop....we could spend 30 minutes shopping on Main St. then head to the bus stop.

 

[Cricket2]

Originally posted by jennymouse
For the parks, however, I'd like to see a board inside the park as well as at the stops. This way, if a bus isn't going to be arriving for 40 minutes, we'd know before we walked all the way to the bus stop....we could spend 30 minutes shopping on Main St. then head to the bus stop.

I'm pretty sure this would be one of the selling points that could make this a possibility. They (Disney) would want you shopping instead of waiting in line-----thus the FastPass system.

JC

 

[ohanafamily]

Originally posted by Mr. J. Cricket
New busses or new-to-them-used busses? The reason Tokyo has cool design busses is because they were built for them custom (probably, I've never seen them). Many WDW busses are refurbs from cities all over the US.

I was told brand new busses

 

[Cricket2]

Originally posted by ohanafamily
I was told brand new busses

Did they mention the design type? I know there has been some prototype (new) busses tested in the past with 2 parts for huge loads (cab/trailer) that looked worthwhile, but I don't know what happened to them after the tests.

JC

 

[Lesley]

Landbaron, just a bit of a note on our Epcot bus issue....this was not in the afternoon. It was before 9pm, before Illuminations started. We didn't get a bus until after Illuminations was over and everyone who had stayed to watch had arrived at the bus stop. It was the most crowded bus I have ever seen at WDW! Luckily we got a seat because we were near the front of the line. There would have been plenty of time for a bus to pick us up, take us back to AKL, come back, pick up the first batch of Illuminations watchers, take them back to AKL, and then come back again in the time we waited. There were also people who didn't make it onto that bus. If there was ever a time I had wished we had taken the car, it was then. To add insult to injury, there was a whole slew of taxis just sitting there waiting for people to hire them....seemed to me that Disney was encouraging guests to use transportation they had to pay for themselves (and I wouldn't doubt the cab company pays a fee to be allowed to have their cabs there....) We didn't take one, both out of stubborness and the conviction that a bus surely would be along at any second.

But anyway....the new idea sounds very cool....if it actually works the way its supposed to. But I have to say I tend to stay at BWV most often right now because at least we can be somewhat in control of getting to 2 parks! And I hate driving.....and trams!

 

[Dodie]

Not enough buses devoted to each resort.

When we were there in October, it felt like there was ONE bus running from each park to each resort. The turnaround time was horrible. We waited over 30 minutes for a ride from AK and even longer than that for a bus from Downtown Disney.

 

[mkandk]

Only real problem I have is the crowds after Illuminations or the fireworks at MK. They could/should have enough busses lined up, since they can anticipate the back-up.

But wouldn't it be cool to do something imaginative with the busses?! I love the description of the Tokyo busses! What about putting some of those twinkly lights on the ceilings...I don't want televisions or anything like that, but something that keeps you in the mood. Maybe the floor could be pressure sensitive so that you would see your footprints as you walked.

Sorry, I'm pretty clueless as to cost and technical implementation. But I would like to see the busses become more "magical".

 

[ohanafamily]

Originally posted by Mr. J. Cricket
Did they mention the design type?

Not specifically, but I got the impression they were off-the shelf models...

 

[ohanafamily]

Also, 2 years ago we had problems at OKW; they were testing a new schedule. I think it was with 1 or 2 less busses. One person waited an hour and a half to go to DD, and missed most of a Cirque Du Soleil show. The next few times we had no problem. Starting this year, it seemed that there were not enough busses... (due to cutbacks?) Specifically DD busses. As far as keeping to a schedule, if you look back a couple of years, I think you will find that there weren't any schedule problems. The difference was 1 or two more busses to a route. I think that this is another place where the cut backs are making us blame other things than what they really are. Ei$ner wanted a 10% cut, took it in the bus service, and we are all looking for the reason it has never worked.

I blame cutbacks....