Just returned: Not enough resort buses

[bhurley]

We just spent a week at the Yacht club. It was a great week and the resort was fantastic. My only complaint was the amount of buses that Disney has available for the resorts. We have been to Disney many times over the years, but the buses seemed to have gotten worse this time. As many of you know they only use one bus to cover the Swan / dolphin, Yacht club, beach club and boardwalk. That is just way too many people to be covered by one bus. Disney needs to split up the resorts. All week the buses were overcrowded.

It was a great week other than that. I hope Disney make adjustments to their bus schedules.

Thanks for listening Bill

 

[txsoccermom]

Great.......I just cancelled my reservation @ POR b/c I thought the bus situation would be better @ BC since we wouldn't have to use that many. Maybe I should see if POR is still available?!?!

 

[WB1971]

Thanks for the report. We have 48 days until our Yacht Club arrival! Re-affirms my decision to rent a car. Will rely on bus to MK, but hoof it or drive everywhere else. Did you have any experiences at any of the YC/BC eateries?

 

[redrosesix]

Wow. We didn't have any problems at ASMusic in Feb. and that was a busy time.

I agree with you -- they really need to re-think that route.

 

[Tiffany]

Great.......I just cancelled my reservation @ POR b/c I thought the bus situation would be better @ BC since we wouldn't have to use that many. Maybe I should see if POR is still available?!?!

Keep in mind that you are only using the buses to get to the MK and the AK from the BC. You can walk to EC is is a very short walk from the BC or take the boat. To DHS you could also walk but it is about a 15min to 20min walk so we usually take the boat.

From POR you are taking the bus to all of the parks.

 

[pooh2001]

Maybe because of cut backs and the economy - there are less buses.
I guess just leave extra time and trsnport wisely.

Such as...
Walk to EPCOT, then take the monorial to MK, then monorail back to ECPOT and walk back to BC/YC, BW or S/D.

 

[txsoccermom]

Good point re: walk thru Epcot and take monorail to MK....but we'll have to deal w/the bus in the am to get there for rope drop. You would think they would have a GPS system/CMs monitoring how crowded they are, how often they come, etc.

It's a shame that folks are renting cars when there is "free" transportation.

Oh well, I'm just soooooo excited to be in the house of mouse Can't come soon enough!

 

[lmgaddis]

We stayed at the Poly and only took the buses one day to DHS. It was fine and we didn't have a problem getting back. Our other days to AK we took our car. We moved our last day to BWI. From there we took the boat to DHS. We got there and it was packed (thanks cheerleaders!!) so we didn't bother to even to go into the park. We decided to go and shop at DTD. Obviously there are no direct bus routes from DHS to DTD. We decided we didn't want to go back to BWI and get our car (stupid mistake). Instead we took a bus to PORR and tried to take a boat to DTD. I have never been so frustrated or foul in my life!!!! We wanted to see PORR so that made our decision to go there.

Ok, so we get in line for the bus to PO. We waited and we waited and waited some more. I swear, every other bus came through twice before the PO bus came! We finally get on the standing room only bus. We had to stand up front by the driver which would normally be no problem, except for my 5 yr old that went flying every time he stepped on the brakes. The driver would look back whenever he stopped to make sure he was still standing. I did move in front of him to make sure I could catch him if he fell. We decided to get off at POFQ and catch the bus from there to DTD instead of the boat. We waited about 20 minutes and nothing! No bus. Another family asked us how long we had been waiting and we told them. We all (our family and the other) decided to try the boats instead, they had been waiting a smidge longer than us. We got there and waited another 20 minutes. When the boat finally came, the driver said they only had room for 10 and the rest of us would have to wait another 20 minutes for the next boat. Dh lost it then!! We of course did not make the first boat and the boat driver was just RUDE to us!!! We gave up and took a cab from POFQ to DTD. It took us an hour and a half to get there. I will NEVER not have my car again!!!! It took some food and a strong drink to calm us down. At least it was our last day and not our first!

 

[redrosesix]

We stayed at the Poly and only took the buses one day to DHS. It was fine and we didn't have a problem getting back. Our other days to AK we took our car. We moved our last day to BWI. From there we took the boat to DHS. We got there and it was packed (thanks cheerleaders!!) so we didn't bother to even to go into the park. We decided to go and shop at DTD. Obviously there are no direct bus routes from DHS to DTD. We decided we didn't want to go back to BWI and get our car (stupid mistake). Instead we took a bus to PORR and tried to take a boat to DTD. I have never been so frustrated or foul in my life!!!! We wanted to see PORR so that made our decision to go there.

Ok, so we get in line for the bus to PO. We waited and we waited and waited some more. I swear, every other bus came through twice before the PO bus came! We finally get on the standing room only bus. We had to stand up front by the driver which would normally be no problem, except for my 5 yr old that went flying every time he stepped on the brakes. The driver would look back whenever he stopped to make sure he was still standing. I did move in front of him to make sure I could catch him if he fell. We decided to get off at POFQ and catch the bus from there to DTD instead of the boat. We waited about 20 minutes and nothing! No bus. Another family asked us how long we had been waiting and we told them. We all (our family and the other) decided to try the boats instead, they had been waiting a smidge longer than us. We got there and waited another 20 minutes. When the boat finally came, the driver said they only had room for 10 and the rest of us would have to wait another 20 minutes for the next boat. Dh lost it then!! We of course did not make the first boat and the boat driver was just RUDE to us!!! We gave up and took a cab from POFQ to DTD. It took us an hour and a half to get there. I will NEVER not have my car again!!!! It took some food and a strong drink to calm us down. At least it was our last day and not our first!

What a horrible day you had!

Like a PP said, there should be some kind of GPS or something to put more buses, etc. on when it is so crowded. Inexcusable.

 

[Disney_Dreams]

Hey Brother in Law,
Glad your trip was good besides the bus thing. As you know im driving down so I won't be using them. We are going in 3 and a half weeks. It should be interesting going during school vacation week i have never done this not sure what it's going to be like with larger crowds. I usually go during less crowed times of the year. I didn't know you posted on the boards. Take care and have a great week!

 

[lainie]

After reading so many negative things about the bus transportation, I was really nervous about having to depend on it to get around WDW last week during our Spring Break. But I have to say - shouldn't have wasted any time worrying about it. It worked perfectly for us. Don't think we ever spent more than 10 minutes waiting for a bus to take us to the park (and often less than that), and getting back to the resort was easy, too, with the exception of one time where we did have to wait a full 20 minutes at EPCOT. We stayed at Saratoga Springs.

 

[CoolPool]

Bhurley,
When you were there did anyone mention a refurbishment of the YC? Just curious. Thanks!

 

[lacrosse_lady72]

We use those buses a lot. To either eat at YC/BC or BW or if we prefer to enter the IG through BC and we're coming from another park or DTD... which happens often when going during the F&W Festival.

Even in Sept 2008, we never noticed anything about over crowded buses. One would think it would be an issue with 5 resorts using the same bus, but it never has been for us.

With the exception of closing time, I have never found the buses packed and they came often, at most within 15 minutes but usually more often... oh well, maybe I just got lucky.

 

[DWFan4Life]

We just spent a week at the Yacht club. It was a great week and the resort was fantastic. My only complaint was the amount of buses that Disney has available for the resorts. We have been to Disney many times over the years, but the buses seemed to have gotten worse this time. As many of you know they only use one bus to cover the Swan / dolphin, Yacht club, beach club and boardwalk. That is just way too many people to be covered by one bus. Disney needs to split up the resorts. All week the buses were overcrowded.

It was a great week other than that. I hope Disney make adjustments to their bus schedules.

Thanks for listening Bill

Great start. Glad that you really had a great time but not including the bus. Looking forward in hearing more from you.

Have a nice day.

 

[bhurley]

Ok, let me see if I can tackle a few of the questions and comments.

We love to walk and we walked to Epcot and Hollywood studios. We even walked thru Epcot at one point to catch the Monorail to go to the Poly to rent the Sea racers. You need the buses to get to Downtown Disney as well. We had a reservation at the house of Blues for 7:00 on Sunday night. We got to the bus station before 6:00 and we didn't make our reservation.

I didn't hear anything about updates at the YC.

We had the breakfast buffet at Captain Corners and it was great. We got muffins or bagels at the area next to Captains corner (I am not sure what the name is) we got Sundays at beaches and Cream. Other than that we ate diner at ESPN, Big River on the boardwalk, Le Cellier, and Boma. They were all very good.

I hope I answered all of those questions.

I wrote the comments about the buses hoping that if enough people say something it might change by the time we go back. In the past Disney has been good about making changes.

Take care Bill

 

[maxiesmom]

Wow, lots of different things going on here that I need to comment on.

First, the bus situation at the Yacht & Beach Club. In my experience, it sucks. Sure you only have to take a bus to 2 places. But those 2 bus rides are horrible! The busses are always packed, and the ride to both AK and MK ends up being over a half an hour long after you make all of the resort stops. I would never stay at the Y&B again without having my own car.

Second, the busses from POR. Yes you do have to bus to all 4 parks. But the bus rides are all pretty short. For me the main selling point of the Beach Club was being able to walk into Epcot. But from POR Epcot is only a 5 minute bus ride away. The Magic Kingdom is 15 minutes away. I have stayed at POR 3 times, and the Beach Club once. I never rent a car staying at POR, it has much better bus service than the Beach Club.

Third, transportation to/from Downtown Disney. Taking a bus to/from DTD is an exercize in patience, no matter which resort you are staying at. DTD is not a good place to use as a switching point, and I think Disney does it on purpose to keep people from parking there and using Disney transportation. they want the parking lot full of the cars of people shopping, not of people switching to busses or boats.

I love using the boats at POR to get to DTD, but yeah, the boats are not very big.

If I want to get anywhere at Disney in a hurry I take a cab. Disney transportation is great if you take it for what it is. A free way to get around. But in most cases it is not fast.

 

[madalex]

We just spent a week at the Yacht club. It was a great week and the resort was fantastic. My only complaint was the amount of buses that Disney has available for the resorts. We have been to Disney many times over the years, but the buses seemed to have gotten worse this time. As many of you know they only use one bus to cover the Swan / dolphin, Yacht club, beach club and boardwalk. That is just way too many people to be covered by one bus. Disney needs to split up the resorts. All week the buses were overcrowded.

This would be a change from past practice. I have stayed at the YC many times and am very familiar with the bus service. In the morning, when bus traffic is at its highest, the YC buses to the parks (MK and AK) are shared with BC and sometimes, but not always, with BW. The return buses during the day (when bus traffic is lower) sometimes stop at all five resorts, but that is not usually the case. I would be surprised to learn that all buses at all times are shared among the five Epcot resorts.

On a related note, I was at AKL for 10 days in February. As you know, AKL has access to all the parks only by bus, so we went on lots of bus rides. The bus service was fantastic!! There were just a few somewhat lengthy waits (10+ minutes), but nothing extreme and even those slightly long waits were few and far between

 

[CPer'sMom]

We just spent a week at the Yacht club. It was a great week and the resort was fantastic. My only complaint was the amount of buses that Disney has available for the resorts. We have been to Disney many times over the years, but the buses seemed to have gotten worse this time. As many of you know they only use one bus to cover the Swan / dolphin, Yacht club, beach club and boardwalk. That is just way too many people to be covered by one bus. Disney needs to split up the resorts. All week the buses were overcrowded.

My experience with the buses was completely the opposite a few weeks ago. We stayed at the BC and did have a car. But 2 of the days I was on my own in the morning so I decided to take the bus the MK one day and AK the next. To and from the MK the bus was only for YC/BC - BW, Swan/Dolphin had their own bus. The bus to AK was quite empty - same on the return trip although we did stop at the other resorts too. I never waited more than 10 minutes for a bus.

 

[disnut8]

We almost always end up at Epcot during the day and use the Epcot resort buses to get there (mainly because I think the front entrance to Epcot is the absolute worst for getting through security and then the turnstiles). We always anticipate the bus going to all five resorts but so far, we've never encountered one that has. If we use the Swan bus, it'll do the Swan, the Dolphin and maybe the Boardwalk. If we don't feel like walking that much and use the Beach Club one, we haven't yet stopped at the Swan first. And that's in the afternoons, not at rope drop or when the parks are closing.

 

[iakot]

Is it worth starting a bus thread for each resort? Should it be in this forum, or the trip report forum? We are planning a stay at the end of the summer at POR or POFQ. I was thinking about upgrading to an Epcot Resort so we could walk to Epcot/Hollywood. We like to eat dinner at Epcot and watch the fireworks. Seems like the bus problem is worst at the Epcot Resorts.