DME and late arrival

Luvdisney

DIS Veteran
Joined
Feb 2, 2000
My flight arrives,if on time,to orlando at 9:53 PM. What' DME like at this time of night. I see in the booklet they gave me my bags could take 3 hrs to arrive. I figure most likely I would be at my resort around 11:30 PM to check in. Then it could be well after midnight before the bags arrive. :rolleyes: Has anyone arrived this late and had there bags delivered well after midnight? How does this work?
 
Hi,

We are not arriving as late but I had the same question about luggage and one suggestion was not to put the yellow tags on your luggage and claim your bags yourself and then head to the bus. The driver will store them under the bus for you.

The only thing that you may need to keep in mind is that if your plane uses a terminal on the A side, you will need to go to second floor A side to get your luggage and then back up to the third floor to get to the B side and then down to the first floor to board the bus. I think that is what I read... It is really not a big deal unless you have little ones and/or lots of bags...
 
Luvdisney said:
My flight arrives,if on time,to orlando at 9:53 PM. What' DME like at this time of night. I see in the booklet they gave me my bags could take 3 hrs to arrive. I figure most likely I would be at my resort around 11:30 PM to check in. Then it could be well after midnight before the bags arrive. :rolleyes: Has anyone arrived this late and had there bags delivered well after midnight? How does this work?
My flight arrived right around when yours did. DME was great! The DME Center was almost totally empty -- there was one party in line in front of me, but since there were numerous CMs working, I was in line for about 5 seconds.

Check-in took less than one minute, we were ushered to our empty bus queue, and then ushered immediately to our bus. There were about a dozen people on there already, we sat for exactly 15 minutes while a few other people got on, and then we left.

Before we left, I had a grand plan, but I TOTALLY forgot about it! We'd packed our carry-ons with everything we needed for that night and the next morning (which you should ALWAYS do, anyway, just in case the AIRLINE delays your luggage), and at my resort I was going to ask at both the front desk AND Bell Services to please hold our luggage until morning. Well, I TOTALLY forgot about it.

At 1:16 a.m., our phone rang. They asked us if we wanted our bags delivered then or wait 'til morning, and, of course, we chose to wait and were back asleep within a minute or so -- our 6 year old and 4 year old didn't wake up to the sound of the phone.

I love the convenience of DME. Because of the way I pack a carry-on no matter where I fly, the lag in getting my luggage didn't affect anything I did. If only I'd remembered to ask in advance to have the luggage held 'til morning .... :goodvibes
 
jeanie said:
Hi,

We are not arriving as late but I had the same question about luggage and one suggestion was not to put the yellow tags on your luggage and claim your bags yourself and then head to the bus. The driver will store them under the bus for you.

The only thing that you may need to keep in mind is that if your plane uses a terminal on the A side, you will need to go to second floor A side to get your luggage and then back up to the third floor to get to the B side and then down to the first floor to board the bus. I think that is what I read... It is really not a big deal unless you have little ones and/or lots of bags...
The one thing to keep in mind if you do this is that you will get to your resort later than if you DID use the yellow tags. This is because you will have to wait at baggage claim. By the time you get to the DME Welcome Center, it's likely that the bus you would have been on already left, so you'll have to wait for another one. [But don't worry -- on this leg of the trip, you're not assigned to a specific bus, so it's not like you can miss your bus or cause other people to be delayed while waiting for you.]

As far as the walking distance from the A side to the B side, all I can say is that I timed it. I wasn't at baggage claim at A -- I timed it from where you get off the tram and have to go left to the B side or slightly right to the A baggage claim area. From that split, with my 6 year old and 4 year old around 10 PM (so there were NO crowds to walk through or around), it took exactly 10 MINUTES to make that walk. I was very happy not to be carting luggage for that long (except for our little carry-ons, which for 3 out of the 4 of us were backpacks). That late at night, I was happy to get to our resort when we did rather than another 30 or 40 or more minutes later.
 


Good point...

We arrive around 7:00PM so I think we will forget about getting the luggage and just go to the resort.
 
I have done both and didn't think getting my own luggage was that bad. We arrived at MCO about 9:30 and I knew I wanted to get the bags myself so I didn't use the yellow tags. I was traveling asthe solo adult with two young kids and didn't want middle of the night luggage delivery, nor did I want to wait until morning - personal preference.

Despite picking up our luggage we did end up on the same bus with the others from our flight so you won't always miss the next bus. Even if we had IMHO the short amount of extra travel time is worth it to have my bags for an evening arrival. Since I never pack more than I can manage myself it was not an issue for us to walk from the baggage claim to the DME with our bags.

I have also arrived earlier in the day and used the luggage delivery feature of DME ~ yep that is a terrific service!

Personally, I plan on using the DME luggage delivery feature anytime we arrive prior to say 6pm. For a flight after 7pm ish I imagine I will opt to get my own bags.

TJ
 
We had a late flight last Christmas day and our checked bags arrived after we were asleep -- they knocked on the door and I just let them drag the luggage in. I thought it was fine, but you definitely would want to pick up your luggage yourself if it would bother you to have them delivered well after midnight.
 


bellelinus said:
We had a late flight last Christmas day and our checked bags arrived after we were asleep -- they knocked on the door and I just let them drag the luggage in. I thought it was fine, but you definitely would want to pick up your luggage yourself if it would bother you to have them delivered well after midnight.
OR ...

... like I had planned to do but was obviosuly too excited to recall, you can ask at your resort's front desk and Bell Services to have your bags held 'til morning. Best of both worlds -- don't get woken up in the middle of the night AND don't have to delay yourself by unnecessarily waiting at baggage claim.
 

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