Disney Transportation - is there an app for that?

[belleincanada]

Is there an iPhone app where you can choose your resort or park, and then wait times come up for how long it is until the next bus/monorail/ferry? That would be super helpful.

 

[jesse8931]

Is there an iPhone app where you can choose your resort or park, and then wait times come up for how long it is until the next bus/monorail/ferry? That would be super helpful.

The buses run every 20 mins.

 

[wdwrich]

The buses run every 20 mins.

To/from the parks that is mostly the case. Early mornings (0630) they run less frequently. Leaving a park at closing, they can run more frequently. Buses from the resorts to/from DTD are less frequent almost any time of day.

 

[Mickey'sApprentice]

I saw a rumor that Disney was going to add that to MDE but I haven't seen it yet.

 

[brandikorte]

I saw a rumor that Disney was going to add that to MDE but I haven't seen it yet.

that would be really nice.

 

[goofy4tink]

Many of the resort bus stops have a time board that lists the arrival time of the next bus to particular parks. They are pretty accurate. But, you have to leave your room in order to see them.
Disney could put the expected arrival times on MDE, but that could open a whole can of worms. Bus arrivals and departures tend to be somewhat fluid....things can, and do, change. I can imagine the distress when guests saw an arrival time of, say, 5:45, for the bus to MK. So, the guest heads down to the bus stop. But the bus is just leaving. There is some variable. I guess that they could say the buses have to be there at the listed time...even if they arrive early.

I figure it's just better to just leave enough time to get where you're going.....and not cut it so closely that if a bus takes awhile to get to you that you are late for an ADR.

 

[Missytara]

Many of the resort bus stops have a time board that lists the arrival time of the next bus to particular parks. They are pretty accurate. But, you have to leave your room in order to see them.
Disney could put the expected arrival times on MDE, but that could open a whole can of worms. Bus arrivals and departures tend to be somewhat fluid....things can, and do, change. I can imagine the distress when guests saw an arrival time of, say, 5:45, for the bus to MK. So, the guest heads down to the bus stop. But the bus is just leaving. There is some variable. I guess that they could say the buses have to be there at the listed time...even if they arrive early.

I figure it's just better to just leave enough time to get where you're going.....and not cut it so closely that if a bus takes awhile to get to you that you are late for an ADR.

Ditto, the logistics would be unreal....while it might be seen as convenient for guests, it would be too difficult to get it to the minute accurately all the time for so many buses, which is unfortunately what people would expect all the time. I can hear the complaints now - nothing would ever be good enough.

It is best just to not sweat it and enjoy the travel time and not sweat over the bus arriving at XX resort at an exact time, like 5:49 pm or something to that effect.

 

[MillauFr]

When I was going to grad school at University of Washington a couple of students wrote an app to display arrival times for all of the buses in the Puget Sound region. Not sure why Disney couldn't do the same. It worked great. I could time my departure from my office so I never had to wait more than 2 minutes for the bus to show up.

 

[joelkfla]

When I was going to grad school at University of Washington a couple of students wrote an app to display arrival times for all of the buses in the Puget Sound region. Not sure why Disney couldn't do the same.

• Disney buses don't run on a schedule
• The number of buses running at any given time varies based on park hours and projected attendance
• The time spent loading at a stop varies due to wheelchairs, tour groups, etc.
• Traffic conditions vary greatly (and largely unpredictably) due to park hours, holidays, attendance, etc.
• Buses often have to be reallocated or rerouted due to unexpected events (monorail down times, traffic blockages, etc.)

In a nutshell, Disney Transport is not your typical public transit system running the same schedule 5 or 7 days a week.

 

[bookwormde]

There has been indication that WDW is working on this.

With GPS tracked busses and sending current route and destination assignments, it is actually quite easy to write and algorithm that predicts when they will arrive at a location. Of course you would want establish a range of uncertainty and offer a time band not a specific minute for arrivals.

The app to request and transmit the information to a mobile device already exists in different form so would just need adapted to the data fields

 

[MillauFr]

• Disney buses don't run on a schedule
• The number of buses running at any given time varies based on park hours and projected attendance
• The time spent loading at a stop varies due to wheelchairs, tour groups, etc.
• Traffic conditions vary greatly (and largely unpredictably) due to park hours, holidays, attendance, etc.
• Buses often have to be reallocated or rerouted due to unexpected events (monorail down times, traffic blockages, etc.)

In a nutshell, Disney Transport is not your typical public transit system running the same schedule 5 or 7 days a week.

I agree. Even more reason to have a pretty sophisticated system dispatching and scheduling all of the buses. I can't imagine they have some person doing it by hand. That would be crazy. I'm sure they know where all the buses are at any given time. There is no reason why they couldn't display the arrival times on an app or at the bus depots.

 

[seashoreCM]

The first step in making an app for transportation be useful is to schedule the buses for at least the upcoming two hours and not having any missed trips.

 

[cranbiz]

It could be done as MIMs has that info, however, It would have to be a guideline only. I don't see guests using it in that way and becoming upset when a bus time deviated from what was posted.

There are constant adjustments being made to bus routes throughout the day based on conditions and load factors.

The OPs Center knows approximately where a particular bus is, the dispatchers don't.

 

[DonnaL]

So much varies with Disney buses....as another poster stated it depends how many scooters/wheelchairs need to be unloaded/loaded, also if there are many families with strollers, etc. While it would be ideal if all buses could be expected to run from resorts to parks every 20 minutes, we never seem to have that luck! I do have to say on our last trip to F & W this past October (2014) the buses were running pretty well.....most times/days it seemed we didn't wait overly long. However, our trip last August (2014) was another matter entirely. We never waited less than 30 minutes and one day in particular was very bad......so much so we needed to change up our plans for the entire day because the buses were running so poorly. We had pretty much decided to go back to renting a car on future trips. The only reason we decided against renting the car for the October trip was the fact that it was a F & W trip, just DH and I, and we knew we didn't want to be driving at all since we would be imbibing both food and wine!