is this new or have i just been in lalaland?

[collegejunkie]

i have no idea what's going on, but the wait for buses returning to wilderness lodge seem be outrageously long this year. today from hollywood studios and yesterday from epcot both involved a wait at the park of about 40 minutes, then of course travel time and blah blah. i was not in long lines. i made the first bus that showed up since my wait started both times. everyone was commenting that about how the whole "a bus every 20 minutes" thing seems to have disappeared or is a huge lie. what?? we were here in march/april for 10 days and stayed at the boardwalk, no issues with buses or boats there. we always come the last 2-3 weeks of the year and stay at various places on or off property and this has never happened. is this what's to be expected now? are budget cuts hitting the transportation systems too? this "perk" of staying on property isn't much of one, then

 

[bumbershoot]

I've never experience da bus every 20 minutes, unless they mean a bus to *somewhere* every 20 minutes. Might not be the bus you want. And there are plenty of non-you buses! If I'm waiting for a MK bus, there'll be Epcot, DHS, DTD, and AK first. And then a new round of those. Some bus is coming every 20 minutes...just not MY bus. Same goes for going back to the resort.

That's why we tend to drive.

 

[goofy4tink]

I have found the wait times for buses to be a bit longer than in the past, but not in the 40 min area! I seldom waited more than 10-15 mins for a bus in the past, but more recently the waits have been closer to 20 mins. But those wait times have been when I have arrived at the bus stop very soon after the bus I wanted had left!!

 

[Allison]

I had very short waits a few weeks ago.

 

[Princess Disney Mom]

The waits are long. I get a rental car now. Even my stays at the GF the waits were long with the monorail breaking down and the boat wait so long and the busses took forever .

 

[I M Fearless]

With this in mind, there is no clear way of people really knowing what the norm is, either now or compared to the past.

It would be great if there was some way of us DISers getting accurate data on a decent enough scale to get a true picture of what is going on.

Almost like a table, which shows the departure point, the destination, the time of the person getting to the stop, the time the next bus came, journey time etc.

I suspect that the buses do not always run every 20 minutes. I believe Disney have around 300 buses in their fleet.

As far as I know, the buses tend to run out of these five key hubs.. MK, EP, HS, AK, DTD out to a resort hotel route and then usually back to the same hub again.

With buses running from the 5 hubs to the various routes:
Poly/GF
SSR
Swan/Dolphin/BC/YC/BW
CSR
AKL/AKLV
ASMu/ASMo/ASSp
POR
POFQ
WL/CR
AoA
CBR
POP
SoG
FW

Obviously there are a few exceptions, such as no MK buses for CR, no EP buses for BC etc. But then you also have buses tied up with the camp ground routes, going between treehouse villas and SSR.

I may have missed some routes or got confused with which routes are shared, but if you say that each route has 3 buses assigned to it, with a point to point journey time of 20 minutes, Disney would need around 210 buses on the road at all times just to service these routes.

This is without cast member transportation, drivers going for breaks, vehicles breaking down, extra vehicles being called away to ferry guests between the TTC and MK if the monorail goes down etc. Having to load ECV's and delays caused by traffic or other variables.

Obviously there are likely to always be some vehicles off the road being serviced.

It's a massive undertaking and I'm sure those working in the system are doing their best to make it work. I hope MM+ is developed to a point where the transport network can be further improved for guests. As people have said it is a major incentive to stay on site when it does work well.

 

[I M Fearless]

I also forgot about the park to park buses, of which there must be a fair few.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

It's been a while--but I have noticed this for several trips over the past several years:

The average is every 20 minutes (per Disney's expectations they allow us to have)...

But, if there Are 2 busses looping the route (as a basic example), sometimes Bus B catches up to Bus A for whatever reason. It could be that Bus A has passengers took longer to load or unload, got stuck in traffic or whatever and Bus B has pixie dust with efficient stops and no traffic. Because, there seems to be no other explanation for back to back busses during a slow period of the day. (Busy times may have back to back by design, so I can't be sure.)

Anyway--that has been my guess of explain the very large gaps. Even if the best of circumstances, busses won't have priority in traffic and sometimes it just takes longer to load/unload passengers than is in the algorithm they use to dispatch busses.

I remember one trip that it would seem that our bus for Park A seemed to take forever to show up when we would see multiple busses for Park B and C and maybe one for Park D before our desired park would show up. And of course everyone was waiting for Park A and no one boarded the other busses.

Our last trip was off site. One of the days we were driving in to go to MK or EPCOT. Passed the exit for AK and just pass the overpass at the exit for that side of the road (pardon my lack of ordinals), an Animal Kingdom bus sat at the exit broken down. Not sure how long it has been sitting there, but many guests were on cell phones. I felt so bad for them. First broken down bus I had ever see. On Disney property, but that certainly messed some routes up a bit.

Then one night, leaving---I think it was the DTD exit, not sure--but coming on to the main road heading towards MK/MK resorts---a line of busses and other traffic dead stopped on the ramp. Several cop cars with lights. No sign of wreck. Would Have guessed something was wrong on the first bus. Not sure what was going on, but as we passed, there was a tussle of some kind and the last ting I saw was an arm to up and begin taking a swing (or apply a handcuff, so odd!). Anyway--a good 5 busses were on that ramp and who knows how long they sat there. They were there for at least enough time for he first bus to stop and several cop cars to arrive.

So just a few anecdotes of what we witnessed the week we were there as well as observations from prior trips.

But from all our stays, I have always understood the intent to be a bus to your destination every 20 minutes. I can't personally give an opinion that it is a budget cut problem because we have had if happen on a variety of trips where waits exceeded 20 minutes. Typically it was a fluke. I last used busses in May and they were only to DTD and AK (to transfer to AKL)--our wait times weren't that bad (less than 15 minutes at the most). We stayed at Pop century

 

[Aquatic]

I've never experience da bus every 20 minutes, unless they mean a bus to *somewhere* every 20 minutes. Might not be the bus you want. And there are plenty of non-you buses! If I'm waiting for a MK bus, there'll be Epcot, DHS, DTD, and AK first. And then a new round of those. Some bus is coming every 20 minutes...just not MY bus. Same goes for going back to the resort.

This was our experience some 18 months ago when we stayed at Coronado. Although the wait from the parks where within the 20 minute range more or less (unless you have to wait for a second bus).
This time we will be staying at the BLT so we have the option of at least walking to and from MK.

 

[charmed59]

I stayed at AKL two years ago, and the only time the buses were convenient was the middle of the day. Morning or late there were always more people than room on the buses. When we stayed for Illuminations one night, the wait for buses was over an hour. And this was not a crowded time of year.

The buses themselves also take a long time to load, so that is a bit frustrating too.

After that experience we rent a car, and stay either on the monorail or walking distance to Epcot and Hollywood Studios.

 

[North of Mouse]

I have found the wait times for buses to be a bit longer than in the past, but not in the 40 min area! I seldom waited more than 10-15 mins for a bus in the past, but more recently the waits have been closer to 20 mins. But those wait times have been when I have arrived at the bus stop very soon after the bus I wanted had left!!

I had very short waits a few weeks ago.

The buses themselves also take a long time to load, so that is a bit frustrating too.

We have used 'only' Disney transportation for many, many years and have had very few issues in all that time. There are so many situations that can make buses a little off schedule - traffic, whether there are multiple scooters at each stop, etc. They 'do' try to keep to the 20min. schedule, but it definitely can vary. Lots of times we wait 0-10 min. so the few times it's over 20min. we do not complain - even Disney can't make that work any more efficient!

We love relaxing, and leaving the transportation/traffic issues/headaches to Disney! We don't cut our time so short that a few min. either way will impact our day.

 

[collegejunkie]

it's disappointing regardless. it's not a perk if it's more stressful than not. yes, we may need to consider driving ourselves to parks now even when staying on property.. shame. actually, we've had mostly good luck when staying at the boardwalk area hotels. perhaps we should stick to those

 

[Shelly F - Ohio]

Given the fact that this week is very crowded that several days this past week buses were taking different routes because of traffic jams on World Dr.

 

[NEV2OLD4DIS]

We just arrived back home yesterday after an 11 night stay at CSR. The bus drivers were taking what they call the "scenic route" during the last few days of our trip due to horrendous amounts of traffic on normal routes. Disney authorities would not let bus drivers take their normal routes, so it is not in the hands of the bus drivers. I was surprised when we went past the entrance to Fort Wilderness Campground the 1st time, but we did many times after that. A long ride around, especially for those standing. Our buses did well at picking up at the resort and parks though, so many buses must have been added.