We are flying to MCO in June on a Sunday. The flight lands at 3:10pm. How realistic is it to get to POP on Magical Express, check in, and then get to Ohana for dinner at 6:50pm? I’m seeing mixed wait and travel times online.
It could happen but you can never know how long the Magical Express ride will take. If you have to wait a while for the bus to leave and they decide to finish the run with your resort, you could easily not make it. To be certain, I would ditch the Magical Express and use Lyft/Uber.
You could make it, but I would not want the stress. In order to manage this when flying in and using DME everything needs to proceed without any glitches. One delay and it's over. I never make an ADR less than 5 hours after our arrival time. Most people agree that 3 hours is the minimum time to have as a buffer, but I don't want to start a vacation running to make an appointment.
You should be fine. But if your flight is late, you have to wait a while for a bus at the Magical Express spot, your resort ends up the 3rd or 4th spot, then it will be close.
I think you'll be fine. As PP indicated, if you flight is delayed or ME takes longer, just uber or lyft and you should make it in time.
Couldn’t agree more about not making reservations less than 5 hours and our October trip provided support for this. First, the plane that was to take us Orlando was delayed 1.5hrs at its originating airport due to weather. When it arrived, we were then delayed a further 45minutes while they fixed a minor problem with the toilets. So we arrived 2hrs 15minutes late at MCO only to have another 20minute wait on the ground awaiting a gate to become free. Our 3pm arrival was now 5:35pm and we didn’t get to the hotel until a little after 7:00pm. We couldn’t get to MK in time to use the FPS we made so lost them for the day. Okay, so we didn’t lose anything important so no big deal. But it goes to show that you just can’t count on things going smoothly and having an ADR would have been very stressful. Its always best to leave more time than you think is necessary.
The other way to look at this situation is the $35 you'd spend on a Lyft to much? That does assume you don't have kids, but just something to think about.
We've never had issues making those types of times work. We landed last month at 11:15 am and were checked into our room by 12:30-ish. But you can't necessarily count on your flight making it in on time, how a minimal time to wait for a bus to arrive and/or fill up before leaving, having good traffic, etc. Plus you then have the time from your hotel to the restaurant which can take up to an hour unless you're staying there. It's definitely do-able, and is possible more often than not, but be aware that everything can and may go wrong.
This is what I'm thinking. There are just too many variables when flying, things that are out of your control.
