Hopping Around the Water Parks & Downtown Disney?

[Elias1901]

Hey there,

I just wanted some advice on some plans I was making for our upcoming trip to WDW this July. I'm more experienced with planning trips to DLR, so at times I can underestimate the time it takes to get around places at WDW. Okay, so, basically I've planned out the entire trip and everything seems fine except that we kind of didn't leave any time for the Disney Water Parks or Downtown Disney... and we really would like to visit them at some point during our stay.

Essentially from glancing at our plans, I can only really see that we could sacrifice the earlier portion of our 8th day, which was to be spent entirely at the Magic Kingdom. I bumped up our 3 FP+ reservations till later in the day with our first one running from 4:05 PM - 5:05 PM. The water parks open at 9 AM that morning and the way I see it, we have 7 hours before 4 PM rolls around and that is when we would need to be headed over to MK via the bus. I'm thinking we could bus to either BB or TL an hour before they open and spend approximately 2 hours there, hop to the other water park and stay for another 2 hours, and then hop over to Downtown Disney for 2 hours for lunch and a quick shopping/browse before heading back on the bus to make it up to MK by 4 PM-ish since we do have until 5:05 PM for our first FP+.

Is this doable? I'm not sure how the bus system works... is it even possible to hop from BB to TL or vise versa via the busses? Or do you have to stop somewhere else? Can you get to DTD from the water parks using the busses? What about to MK? Can you get to MK from the water parks or DTD's bus stops? A little information on the bus system routes and schedules would be most appreciated!

Am I over-stuffing this? Can this be accomplished or should we just do one water park for a bit longer of time and then do DTD for lunch? I would really like to squeeze both water parks in if possible as it has been ages since I've seen them and they're both open when we're there! We're staying at the Pop Century Resort, it that makes any difference.

Thanks for any tips or suggestions ya'll can provide!

 

[Alesia]

I guess it's technically doable, but it doesn't sound like much fun. There's not direct transportation between any of them, so you'll need to transfer at a resort each time. Plan on spending 2-1/2 to 3 extra hours just on transportation. I recommend either picking 1 of them or looking at your schedule and see if you can fit the others in on other days.

 

[Elias1901]

I guess it's technically doable, but it doesn't sound like much fun. There's not direct transportation between any of them, so you'll need to transfer at a resort each time. Plan on spending 2-1/2 to 3 extra hours just on transportation. I recommend either picking 1 of them or looking at your schedule and see if you can fit the others in on other days.

Thanks for the suggestions! I hadn't thought of all the extra transport time due to non-direct service. I'll see what we can do about potentially doing one of the other water parks on another day.

However, I also had a question more so about the bus service itself. When you're park hopping from say DHS to MK, is there a bus that goes from park to park? Or do you have to go to a resort first?

If that's the case, should you just board the first resort bus you see? Or in this case, perhaps wait for a bus that is headed to one of the MK monorail resorts and then hop the monorail to shorten the time spent on transportation?

What is the bus schedule like? How often do busses show up? What general information and tips would be good to know about using their service? It will be our first trip relying on the WDW busses... so I am a complete newbie at all this.

Thanks!

 

[Alesia]

I should also add that you really shouldn't plan to spend less than about 4 hours at each water park.

 

[Alesia]

However, I also had a question more so about the bus service itself. When you're park hopping from say DHS to MK, is there a bus that goes from park to park? Or do you have to go to a resort first?

There is direct transportation between the parks.

There is not direct transportation between any of the parks and DTD

What is the bus schedule like? How often do busses show up? What general information and tips would be good to know about using their service? It will be our first trip relying on the WDW busses... so I am a complete newbie at all this.

Thanks!

Buses usually come about every 20 minutes. More often if needed.

 

[Hopefully]

There is a whole Transporation board here on the DIS with lots of experts. Try asking your transporation questions there, rather than here. YOu will get great advice

 

[Elias1901]

Awesome. Thanks to the both of you.