Questions about the Magical Express

[HolliePoppins]

lukenick1
What is Disney's Magical Express Service?


Complimentary motorcoach transportation and luggage transfer services from Orlando International Airport to select Walt Disney World Resort hotels and back for passengers of all Orlando air carriers.

Travel time is approximately 45 to 75 minutes. Motorcoaches may make multiple stops before arriving at your Disney Resort hotel.

Luggage delivery service is available for flights arriving between 5:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. daily. For airport arrivals after 10:00 p.m., Guests must collect their luggage at Baggage Claim and transport it with them on the motorcoach.

Reserve the service when you make your Disney Resort reservation prior to arrival at Orlando International Airport.

Please note: The service does not provide luggage-only transfer.
U.S. and Canada Reservations: (407) WDW-MAGIC or (407) 939-6244.

United Kingdom Reservations: 0800 16 90 730 or online www.disneyworld.co.uk for Walt Disney Travel Company bookings - or contact your travel agent or tour operator. International Guests make your reservation through the same travel agent or tour operator used to book your trip. Guests under age 18 must have parent or guardian permission to call.

Disney is giving you your answer right there as has been pointed out already.

 

[lukenick1]

lukenick1
What is Disney's Magical Express Service?


Complimentary motorcoach transportation and luggage transfer services from Orlando International Airport to select Walt Disney World Resort hotels and back for passengers of all Orlando air carriers.

Travel time is approximately 45 to 75 minutes. Motorcoaches may make multiple stops before arriving at your Disney Resort hotel.

Luggage delivery service is available for flights arriving between 5:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. daily. For airport arrivals after 10:00 p.m., Guests must collect their luggage at Baggage Claim and transport it with them on the motorcoach.

Reserve the service when you make your Disney Resort reservation prior to arrival at Orlando International Airport.

Please note: The service does not provide luggage-only transfer.
U.S. and Canada Reservations: (407) WDW-MAGIC or (407) 939-6244.

United Kingdom Reservations: 0800 16 90 730 or online www.disneyworld.co.uk for Walt Disney Travel Company bookings - or contact your travel agent or tour operator. International Guests make your reservation through the same travel agent or tour operator used to book your trip. Guests under age 18 must have parent or guardian permission to call.

Disney is giving you your answer right there as has been pointed out already.

Yet they will provide luggage only transfer back to the airport? Hmmmm doesn't make sense. Not sure what the big deal is. It should be my choice whether I ride the bus or not. The DME perk of staying on Disney property really isn't a perk if you need a rental car. Thanks for letting me vent!

 

[HolliePoppins]

Actually its not your choice. You go to Disney you need to play by their rules. Which are you need to ride the bus to use the luggage service.
You could have the rest of your family ride DME while you go get the rental. Just an idea.

 

[Liza111577]

Yet they will provide luggage only transfer back to the airport? Hmmmm doesn't make sense. Not sure what the big deal is. It should be my choice whether I ride the bus or not. The DME perk of staying on Disney property really isn't a perk if you need a rental car. Thanks for letting me vent!

They will not provide luggage service only back to MCO, where did you get that info from?

The perks of USING Magical Express is having your luggage taken care of, if you're not using ME, you get no luggage perks. End of story.

It absolutely is your choice whether or not you want to ride the bus, you can take a cab for all Disney cares, but ME will not take your luggage, plain and simple.

 

[maiapapaya]

Yet they will provide luggage only transfer back to the airport? Hmmmm doesn't make sense. Not sure what the big deal is. It should be my choice whether I ride the bus or not. The DME perk of staying on Disney property really isn't a perk if you need a rental car. Thanks for letting me vent!

Actually you don't have to take ME if you use the resort check-in/baggage check. But I think it's because the service that delivers your baggage back to the airport is a contracted company not DME (although you still ride the ME buses to the airport). You have to call an outside number to pay your baggage fees, the luggage has to be weighed and airline baggage check tags go on your luggage (and the handlers are not wearing DME uniforms).

I believe they have the rule re: ME bringing baggage coming from the airport to the resorts because this service is supposed to be a courtesy for guests riding their bus. The intent is not to be a luggage delivery service for everyone coming through MCO to WDW (the volume of bags they would have to handle would be tremendous if everyone did what you are planning on doing). The "payoff" for WDW obviously is that if you take the ME you are essentially a captive audience wrt where you are spending your money. If you have your own vehicle and come & go as you please why would/should Disney deliver your baggage for free?

There are other perks to staying at a Disney resort besides DME, like EMH and just the convenience of being onsite.

 

[sissy_ib]

Yet they will provide luggage only transfer back to the airport? Hmmmm doesn't make sense. Not sure what the big deal is. It should be my choice whether I ride the bus or not. The DME perk of staying on Disney property really isn't a perk if you need a rental car. Thanks for letting me vent!

Yes it is your choice if you want to ride the bus or not. If you ride the bus they take your luggage. If you don't ride the bus they don't take it. It is a perk not a right. You don't have to use EVERY perk Disney offers. And you don't NEED a rental car. That is the point of Disney having ME and excellent onsite transportation.

 

[DebbieB]

Yet they will provide luggage only transfer back to the airport? Hmmmm doesn't make sense. Not sure what the big deal is. It should be my choice whether I ride the bus or not. The DME perk of staying on Disney property really isn't a perk if you need a rental car. Thanks for letting me vent!

Because Disney doesn't want you to rent a car. They want you to stay exclusively on property, not be able to go off property easily to eat, shop, etc.

 

[jmkjr72]

Yet they will provide luggage only transfer back to the airport? Hmmmm doesn't make sense. Not sure what the big deal is. It should be my choice whether I ride the bus or not. The DME perk of staying on Disney property really isn't a perk if you need a rental car. Thanks for letting me vent!

resort check in is not dme and not all airlines are part of resort check in
so if you are on a non participating airline you have to take your bags with you
and if you dont prepay your bag fees thru resort check in you have to take your bags with you

and yes it still is a perk who says you have to pick up a rental car at the airport you can rent a car after you get on the bus and get to your resort some of the rental palces come and pick you up

 

[bumbershoot]

If I'm not riding the ME (renting a car instead) will my luggage still be taken care of? We are staying at AKV and have luggage tags and ME vouchers.

I would probably just read through the Transportation forum sticky and make your decision. That sticky is sort of the "final answer" when this question is asked on the Transportation forum; I'd treat it as such here, too, rather than go back and forth.



OP, your situation is totally fine. For a reservation, those on the reservation are allowed to go to their WDW resort from the airport and to the airport from their WDW resort once each. We tend to do split stays, and during planning for our last trip, we thought that we would surprise DS with another couple days at WDW...we were going to drive our rental car to the airport from Universal, the adults knowing full well that we had a couples days at ASsports booked, then say "oh hey, there's a bus, let's just take it and not catch our plane home today" to DS. We had the bus booked, of course. And it would have been perfectly fine, even though NONE of us had come in on a plane that day (or that week).

 

[maxiesmom]

Yet they will provide luggage only transfer back to the airport? Hmmmm doesn't make sense. Not sure what the big deal is. It should be my choice whether I ride the bus or not. The DME perk of staying on Disney property really isn't a perk if you need a rental car. Thanks for letting me vent!

But it isn't your choice at all. Disney flat out tells you you need to ride the bus in order to take advantage of the luggage delivery part of DME. Can you get away without riding the bus? Maybe.

But to be completely honest, every time I see a post about someone trying to cheat, or do what they know is wrong, I hope it comes back to bite them. Becasue if people keep ignoring what Disney tells them they should do, and keep using loopholes, Disney will find a way to close those loopholes. And whatever way they choose will probably have a negative affect on all of us.

As another poster pointed out, if the airlines misdirect your luggage (which has been known to happen), you won't know. And once your luggage doesn't show up at your resort, you won't know what the heck happened to it. Did DME put it in the wrong room, or is it lost somewhere? That can take you hours to figure out. What a waste of vacation time.

 

[seashoreCM]

Resort Airline Check in of baggage going home (not part of Magical Express) is open to all guests at that resort taking specific airlines within the U.S. In the event of a baggage mishap, you file your claim at your destination, which is independent of and far removed from Disney.

Going to Disney, the norm (default) is that any baggage claim involving the airlines is also done at your final destination, which for Disney guests is generally MCO. To reduce the number of guests deliberately hand carrying baggage to the bus, Disney has added a little kludge whereby Magical Express bus behaves as a connecting flight and the final destination is the resort for guests on that bus.

Should you yelllow-tag your baggage and at the very last minute need to not ride the DME bus from MCO to Disney, go to the DME welcoming area and explain that so they can give you a special procedure to follow (that varies with time of day and how busy they are). This can impact the OP since she is not absolutely positively sure her boss will not want to drive them from the airport to Disney; she may prefer to not use the yellow tags and to fetch her bags from the carousel herself.

At the welcoming area they may correlate you with your room reservation but not with any flight information unless you had issues with no yellow baggage tags or unless they did some random spot checks of baggage claim checks. Airline boarding passes or other proof of flight are not required.

Magical Express hints: http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2015788

 

[stargazertechie]

Are you sure about that? The luggage tags are separate and you get them well before your trip. I see no reason why you couldn't tag your luggage and just take our own car

What you're suggesting is technically against Disney policy.

 

[miprender]

There's no check-in. You get in the line for your resort and they scan your ticket when you get on the bus. SO you'd have to wait in the whole line, get to the door of the bus, have your ticket scanned and then get out of line and get your rental car

Actually we had our tickets scanned before we get in line. The driver only looked at our tickets to make sure we were on the correct bus.

 

[miprender]

.

As noted, however, if a bag is lost or misdirected by the airline and you haven't taken the bus, Disney will have no way of knowing that they should start looking for your bags and you will be on your own as far as filing a claim. And that may require going back to the airport after you figure out that the airline lost or misdirected the luggage, which could be several hours after you arrive at your resort.

But Disney will have no way of knowing until you see your luggage in the room if anything is missing. Taking the bus or not does not change this fact

 

[bpesch]

There's no check-in. You get in the line for your resort and they scan your ticket when you get on the bus. SO you'd have to wait in the whole line, get to the door of the bus, have your ticket scanned and then get out of line and get your rental car

Not entirely true when I used DME last January. There was a podium that we checked in. She asked about our luggage, scanned our tickets and then sent us to the bus.

 

[seashoreCM]

Not entirely true when I used DME last January. There was a podium that we checked in. She asked about our luggage, scanned our tickets and then sent us to the bus.

Sometimes a pre-welcoming CM greets you and sends you to the bus line, skipping the podium. If there are extenuating circumstances why you can't ride the bus and you have yellow tagged bags in the system, then you must go to the podium and explain, not sim;ly "surreptitiously" escape from the bus line and quietly leave the area.

 

[sissy_ib]

But Disney will have no way of knowing until you see your luggage in the room if anything is missing. Taking the bus or not does not change this fact

They will know if you take the bus because you tell them how many bags your party has. So it you have 4 bags and they only collect three they can start the process of finding that fourth bag. This is part of the reason they ask for your flight info. They can contact the airline and have them look for the bag whether it is another city or the ME tag fell off or was missed somehow.

 

[jmkjr72]

last time we went we had to check in at dme

they asked us if we had taged our bags which we had and they also asked how many bags we had and they asked for our claims tickets i cant remebr if they just wanted to see them or if they took them

 

[miprender]

They will know if you take the bus because you tell them how many bags your party has. So it you have 4 bags and they only collect three they can start the process of finding that fourth bag. This is part of the reason they ask for your flight info. They can contact the airline and have them look for the bag whether it is another city or the ME tag fell off or was missed somehow.

When we went in July the CM did not ask us how many bags. I asked her if she needed the amount and said they did not ask that anymore as people always forgot how many they had

But I never understood why they asked because I doubt there was that much communication between the Line CM and the ME bag handlers.

 

[sissy_ib]

When we went in July the CM did not ask us how many bags. I asked her if she needed the amount and said they did not ask that anymore as people always forgot how many they had

But I never understood why they asked because I doubt there was that much communication between the Line CM and the ME bag handlers.

I don't know why she wouldn't ask you how many bags you had. But as far as communication, no they don't actually talk to each other but all your bags are put into the computer system. That is how they would know how many you have, where they are going and who they belong to. If they didn't use computers it would take much longer to get them sorted an to your room on time.