Just returned from a trip to WDW the first week of December, with my Dad using an
ECV & wheelchair. Our arrival day, the EPCOT monorail was down for a while, so we were directed to wait for an EPCOT bus from the TTC. There was a bus loading in the station when we got there, but could not board that one as there were already three ECVs/wheelcahirs ahead of us in line. Waited c. an hour for the next EPCOT bus to finally arrive. The driver was very kind and patiently loaded my Father in his ECV, then helped him transfer into a regular seat. We had no issues with the CMs. Our problem was with the rude, 'able bodied' guests! There was definite, audible grumbling about having to wait while the ECV was loaded first. Then an extremely rude and senseless woman allowed her kids to sit on and climb all over my Dad's ECV while in transit, even allowing them to handle and mess with his personal belongings that were in the basket. When I said something to her about how innapropriate and unsafe this was (the driver had not secured the ECV to accomidate a passenger during transit, since my Dad was able to transfer to a seat)... she argued back that it was not safe for her kids to have to stand on a moving bus, and she was not going to remove them from the ECV no matter what. My feeling was that it was her personal responsibility to choose whether or not to knowingly board a 'standing room only' bus with her children, and there was no excuse for allowing them to ride on & abuse my Father's personal property. If she felt it was an unsafe situation for them to stand, she could and should have simply waited for the next bus. Allowing them to sit on my Dad's ECV was not a reasonable option. I ended up throwing out the food items we had stored in the ECV's basket (my Mom is diabetic, and needs to keep snacks handy at all times, in case her blood sugar begins to drop), because the kids had handled it all with their grubby little fingers (and possibly sampled some too--I had heard the Mom telling them to put that food back where they found it). The experience really left us all with a bad feeling about using the buses.