happybratpack ~ Spring '05 Report ~ Magical Express

[happybratpack]

Hi Everyone!

I am just starting to write my trip reports from our May 6th - 15th trip so bear with me. I wanted to go ahead and write a quick .02 about Magical Express since there are a lot of posts asking for reports.

Our flight arrived on the 6th at 6:40 pm. We did not have luggage tags, but for the others we talked to who did the results with the baggage were not different. We were told to follow the cast members through the airport to check in...we probably talked to 4-5 CM's on the way through, I would say that at least 3 seemed confused as to what to tell us to do. We stood in line for about 15 minutes then were sent to the queues to wait for the bus...we waited maybe another 20 minutes for the bus. It was actually a cruise line bus...my SO had a lengthy conversation w/ the driver who said Mears had purchased 38-40 buses for Magical Express but it wasn't nearly enough. We were headed for AKL and stopped at the All-Stars first, we were the last people on the bus and we arrived at AKL about 9 or a little later...I was still a little loopy from my flying meds so I'm relying on SO for the facts.

We were told our luggage would arrive within an hour....one out of the four bags arrived about 2 hours after we did at the resort. The next one arrived at 10:45 pm, then another at midnight...come 2 am there was knock on the door with our last bag. Not an ideal situation IMO.

We took a car service back which I will review in my regular reports, just wanted to get this posted for those wondering. Would I do it again? Only if I had no schedule to stick to and had carry-on bags only and really needed to save the car service money.

Hope this helps.

 

[blueskies9999]

We had a very similar experience with Magical Express. Our plane arrived at 2:30 p.m. and we didn't get our luggage until 10:00 p.m., which really messed up our day. We had planned to swim and lounge at the pool. We stayed at All Star Movies. Total time from arriving at the airport to arriving at the hotel was probably an hour and 1/2, so I think we would have been better off renting our car from the airport instead of the next day from Car Care Center. Also, the driver of the bus we were on was not very nice and the video/dv player was broken so the trip was pretty boring.

We decided not to do the Magical Express on departure since we had rented a car (which I 'm so glad we did) because we were apprehensive about the whole system. It really isn't that good yet.

Everytime we inquired about our luggage and told them we thought our luggage would be in our room when we arrived, their response was "who told you that?" "We tell everyone that it will be at least 5 hours before they receive their luggage."

Other than the Magical Express, the rest of our trip was great.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

Melanie