Port Canaveral to WDW

[sab53085]

Is there any advantage to taking an Uber from the port vs taking the DCL bus to WDW property (2 people)? We’d ideally like to get on property as soon as possible. Wasn’t sure when the buses typically leave.

 

[Kwami]

The bus leaves pretty early. Early enough that I didn't have time for a second-seating breakfast, anyway. I'm annoyed that I can't find the document with the exact time, though!

Anyway, if you can find a Uber driver willing to take you, then you can get to WDW earlier. But that's not always possible. It's along drive out to Port Canaveral and if they don't already have someone going that way, it's not worth their time. There are other shuttle companies that will guarantee you transportation, though, if you don't want to go through Disney.

EDIT: I found it! Here's the text.

Guests continuing their vacation with transfers to the Walt Disney World Resort hotels should disembark the ship no later than 8:15 am. The motorcoach departs promptly at 9:00 am.

 

[Marc D]

The scheduled departure is 9 AM. If you are assigned a popular route, with multiple busses, you could depart as soon as 30 minutes past the moment disembarkation starts, but you won’t know until then. The busses are not direct as they cover multiple resorts, so you could be riding for an hour on WDW property before arriving at your resort.

If you get off promptly at the first available moment and grab a Uber, you could save 2h over the worst possible scenario with the DCL bus.

 

[daedelus]

Keep in mind that in this case, you might have to do the walk off mode and take your own luggage. On our Fantasy trip that ended on 1/15, they had all of the luggage off and we were all cleared to disembark at the same time. Trick there was the line to get through Customs. There were 5 cruise ships that docked that morning, so we only got 2 agents. It took almost 30 minutes to get through the Customs line alone once we'd claimed our bags.

Not saying that will happen to you, but something to be aware of.

 

[soniam]

Once, we had to wait until like 9:15 or 9:30am to leave, because "that family" was taking forever to get off. Seriously, we saw this family multiple times on the cruise and were glad that our family wasn't so messed up. We had been sitting on the bus for over an hour, because we had early breakfast. The first cruise, we left the port before 9am. Then, we were the last to be dropped off. We didn't make it to the hotel until well after noon. We will take a town car, rental car, or Uber from here on out back to WDW from the PC. However, it could go great. There's no way to tell.

 

[MomOTwins]

The scheduled departure is 9 AM. If you are assigned a popular route, with multiple busses, you could depart as soon as 30 minutes past the moment disembarkation starts, but you won’t know until then. The busses are not direct as they cover multiple resorts, so you could be riding for an hour on WDW property before arriving at your resort.

If you get off promptly at the first available moment and grab a Uber, you could save 2h over the worst possible scenario with the DCL bus.

I miss the minnie vans. When we cruised in 2019, we booked one from ship to WDW. Pickup at 8am, driven straight to Yacht club, dropped off bags and was walking through the Epcot international gateway at 9:20am.

In 2021, took the DCL bus, bus left late (was supposed to be 9:00, didn't leave till closer to 9:30) then we had to wait several resorts for others to get dropped off, by the time we arrived at beach club, dropped off bags, and I didn't check the exact time, but I know it was well after 11am when we got to Epcot because we had time for one ride before our 12:30 lunch reservation. I imagine it'd be even worse if you are going to a resort that only has bus transportation to the parks--for us, Epcot was literally a 5 min walk from BC/YC both trips.

I haven't done an uber, because with that kind of distance, I know it can be iffy whether an uber will even accept the fare and I'd be too nervous about being stranded for ages. If there are plenty of ubers available at the port, or if you book another kind of private transportation, I can speak for personal experience that is definitely the way to go if you are trying to get a park day. If you're just checking into a WDW resort, or you're an AP and don't need to buy a park ticket, you're probably fine to take the DCL bus--but for us we just had the one day in the parks before our flight home the next day and I sure wish I had booked private transportation.