As a follow up to what happened that Sunday morning:
1. Went to the Contemporary desk the night before. They said there is an early morning bus.
2. Got to the bus station at 7am. Saw on the board that there was a DHS and AK bus, but no Epcot bus.
3. At 7:15am, I asked the DHS bus driver where the Epcot bus was? He got on to his radio. They told him there would be no Epcot bus, and the monorail was running.
4. At 7:20, the monorail was NOT running. We got to the non-running escalator and were blocked by a sign that said the monorail was closed.
5. Went to the first floor transportation desk outside the Contemporary. Explained my problem. They suggested Uber or a taxi. At the same moment, a Contemporary manager walked by. She told me to get a receipt and bring the receipt and her card to the front desk and they'd reimburse me for the cab.
6. As I was about to hail an Uber on my phone (literally my finger was about to push "Hail"), the monorail appears headed towards the Contemporary. We race to the elevator, and then up the now-un-blocked escalator and catch the monorail.
7. I arrive at the TTC. It's around 7:30. We race over to the Epcot line, only to find it "closed". Another family (also from the Contemporary), who was going to Akershus for a Princess Breakfast ADR at 8am falls in behind us. I corral a local CM (he was 30 feet away and walking away, but my screaming stopped him in his tracks) and explained our collective plight (and the problems we had at the Contemporary). He speaks on his walkie, opens the "closed" rope, and we race up the ramp.
8. We get to the top of the ramp and there is NO ONE there. It was completely deserted. A very stressful few minutes go by and a transportation cast member appears and tells us that the monorail was dispatched and will be here in a few minutes. He says the cast member we spoke to at the bottom of the ramp alerted transportation that they had screwed up the buses and there were six people who needed to be in Epcot before 8am. He added that the Epcot line doesn't start running until 8am, but they've started early for the six of us.
9. 7:45am. The monorail arrives. All 6 of us pile into the lead car. The monorail doors close and we're off to Epcot. The monorail wasn't even in the station for a minute.
10. About 8am. We arrive in Epcot, find the lines empty, get through security, wave our magic bands at the reader, and start towards our destination. About half way there, we realize that it's now well after 8am and the Fountainview has many doors. I see a guest relations CM walking in that direction and I ask her where we need to go in the Fountainview building as we over-take her (we're almost running at this point). She runs with us from Spaceship Earth to the door we need to go to.
11. After 8:15. We're the last ones to arrive for the tour and we're out of breath. The person running the tour said that it's their policy to wait until 8:30 for stragglers. She gives us about 10 minutes to rest before beginning the tour with the 14 other people who arrived on time.
Next time, I'm going to use Uber. Using Disney's early morning transportation was WAY TOO STRESSFUL.
