Resort "Convenience Factor" Analysis

[lowlight]

Plus with the Riviera skyliner station being mid-route, you're kind of at the mercy of traffic from the end stations. Will they send an empty car sometimes? Where is a party you can be squeezed in with?
Personally, I'd much rather be at a Boardwalk area resort and able to walk to both parks.

To be fair, if you're at VGF, you may hit a full monorail in the morning on the way to MK, also. These once in awhile things are hard to account for in a comparison like this.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

Plus with the Riviera skyliner station being mid-route, you're kind of at the mercy of traffic from the end stations. Will they send an empty car sometimes? Where is a party you can be squeezed in with?

That isn't really a concern. Even if 100% of the cars inbound to Riviera were full, some percentage of guests would be disembarking AT Riviera. The only time you might have a line at the Riviera station would be if you were trying to get to Hollywood Studios right after Epcot closes, which I can't imagine why you'd be trying to do.

 

[Moliphino]

That isn't really a concern. Even if 100% of the cars inbound to Riviera were full, some percentage of guests would be disembarking AT Riviera. The only time you might have a line at the Riviera station would be if you were trying to get to Hollywood Studios right after Epcot closes, which I can't imagine why you'd be trying to do.

Or going to Epcot in the morning. Not a whole lot of people getting off then, unless they have breakfast reservations.

 

[TheSouthernBelle]

So I had some downtime at work and I decided to attempt to to answer the age-old Walt Disney World debate, "which on-property resorts are the most and least convenient?" I wanted to take as much bias as possible out of the process, and decided to focus strictly on numbers rather than qualitative factors. This analysis doesn't care whether you think the monorail is cooler than a bus, it only cares which one will get you to your destination faster.

The first step was to gather data from a third-party transportation calculator that estimates the transit time from Point A to Point B across Walt Disney World using various modes of transportation. The following assumptions were used when I gathered these times:

• All times are for Disney transportation or walking only. No driving, no Uber, no Lyft, and no taxi.
• If a resort offers a "special" mode of transportation, that transportation must be used. Contemporary to Epcot by bus is faster than Contemporary to Epcot by monorail, but monorail must be used in this analysis.
• If a resort offers multiple special modes of transportation, I chose the faster of the two, e.g. Saratoga Springs boat to Disney Springs versus Saratoga Springs walking to Disney Springs.
• Polynesian Village was calculated twice. Most people who stay there walk to the TTC to take the monorail to Epcot rather than riding the Magic Kingdom Resort Monorail around the loop and transferring trains.
• I did not give any mode of transportation preference over another. Sometimes buses are late, sometimes monorails break down, and sometimes lightning shuts down the Skyliner. I ignored all of that and went with the estimates that came out of the tool.
• I did not make any distinction for different sections of resorts or between hotels and DVC villas that share the same transportation systems. Bay Lake Tower is no different than the Contemporary tower, which is no different than the Contemporary garden wing.

Once I had the list of times from every Point A to every Point B, I had to come up with some way to weight them. For example, being close to Magic Kingdom is much more valuable than being close to Disney Springs, since most people visit Magic Kingdom multiple times in their trip, but Disney Springs only once or not at all. My weighting assumes the following:

• 7-night trip, including Park Hopper.
• Whether park hopping on a given day or not, the hypothetical guest takes a midday break at their resort every afternoon.
• Each day includes four one-way transportation legs. Resort to Park 1, Park 1 to Resort, Resort to Park 2, and Park 2 to Resort.
• 14 "half-days" are broken down as follows:
  • 4 Magic Kingdom
  • 3 Epcot
  • 3 Hollywood Studios
  • 2 Animal Kingdom
  • 1 Disney Springs
  • 1 Off/Resort/Pool
• I also calculated one round-trip to and from Orlando International Airport for each resort.

Finally, I added what I'm calling a "Sprawl Penalty." This is to account for the fact that larger resorts often have multiple bus stops or a long way to walk back to your room after getting off the bus. The penalty was applied to every leg of the trip. For example, if I gave a resort a 5-minute penalty, it means I added 5 minutes to the trip to the morning park, home from the morning park, to the afternoon park, and home from the afternoon park. This is by far the most subjective part of the analysis.

• 5 minute penalty applied to all Value resorts for their size, plus Animal Kingdom Lodge, for having two bus stops
• 10 minute penalty added to all Moderate resorts except POFQ, plus Saratoga Springs and Old Key West
• 15 minute penalty added to Fort Wilderness

Adding all of this up gave me a Total Transit Time for each resort, which I then scaled from 0 to 100 to come up with what I'm calling a "Resort Convenience Factor."

S-tier: Riviera
A-tier: Yacht Club, Beach Club, Boardwalk
B-tier: Wilderness Lodge, Polynesian (walking to TTC), French Quarter, Contemporary, Animal Kingdom Lodge
C-tier: Caribbean Beach, Grand Floridian, Saratoga Springs, Polynesian (monorail to TTC)
D-tier: Art of Animation, Pop Century, All Star Movies, Coronado Springs, All Star Music
F-tier: All Star Sports, Old Key West, Riverside, Fort Wilderness

Key takeaways:

• It's much more important for a resort to have "no bad trips" than it is to have one especially great trip. Contemporary and Grand Floridian have great times to Magic Kingdom, but their trips to Epcot are bad enough to cancel them out, so these resorts end up in the mid-tiers.
• Size matters, a lot. Without the "Sprawl Penalty" (which I acknowledge is totally made up by me and subject to all sorts of valid criticism), Caribbean Beach and Saratoga Springs would come out ahead of all other resorts. But because they're so big, getting through the guard shack onto resort property and getting to your room are significantly different prospects.
• "Cooler" transportation doesn't mean "faster" transportation. I know everyone hates buses, but buses are faster than monorails. They're faster than boats. And, unless you're at Caribbean Beach or Riviera, they're faster than the Skyliner.
• The gap in total transit time between the fastest resort (Riviera) and the slowest resort (Fort Wilderness) is almost 9 hours over the length of the itinerary.

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Discuss.

My systems analyst, excel loving heart adores all of what you did but my disney heart doesn't love the top choice or how high CBR ranked. I know it's all hypotheticals but I despise the transportation at CBR. When the skyliner is working, it's great but if you have to catch a bus for inclement weather, time is not on your side.

I appreciate all the factors you took into account to get some hard data. Would be interested to see the numbers sans MCO since we drive to WDW. Also would be interested to see park only data and how each resort ranks for each of the parks. Also very surprised about POFQ and CBR. Just my real world experience, I'd pick GF every time over those resorts. Appreciate all of what you did!

 

[TheSouthernBelle]

It would be interesting to add in a weather downtime factor for the skyliner. If the weather is great it’s awesome. But in the summer you can expect the skyliner to be down for some portion of the afternoon most days which would affect afternoon hotel breaks and possibly bump down the efficiency of the skyliner resorts.

100% agree with this esp as much as the skyliner goes down in the summer months. A winter skyliner runs more hours than a summer skyliner for sure and the buses called to fill the transport gap are SLOW.....

 

[CaptainAmerica]

My systems analyst, excel loving heart adores all of what you did but my disney heart doesn't love the top choice or how high CBR ranked. I know it's all hypotheticals but I despise the transportation at CBR. When the skyliner is working, it's great but if you have to catch a bus for inclement weather, time is not on your side.

I appreciate all the factors you took into account to get some hard data. Would be interested to see the numbers sans MCO since we drive to WDW. Also would be interested to see park only data and how each resort ranks for each of the parks. Also very surprised about POFQ and CBR. Just my real world experience, I'd pick GF every time over those resorts. Appreciate all of what you did!

100% agree with this esp as much as the skyliner goes down in the summer months. A winter skyliner runs more hours than a summer skyliner for sure and the buses called to fill the transport gap are SLOW.....

But this is only one side of the equation. If you're going to factor in the idea that a Caribbean Beach bus can be VERY bad if the Skyliner goes down, you'd also have to factor in the idea that any resort could be prone to a bad bus anytime.

The way I look at it, Skyliner is much more reliable and consistent than a bus in good weather, and much less reliable and consistent in bad weather. I don't think it should be penalized for the latter.

 

[TheSouthernBelle]

So I'm bored at work too...I'm having trouble understanding how Riv beats Boardwalk area resorts for convenience. It can literally take 3 minutes to walk to Epcot from Beach. And 20 minutes (if you walk like us) to walk to DHS. Or boat to either park.

How is being able to walk to two parks less convenient than having to use the Skyliner to same two parks? I think it's hard to say skyliner time would beat walking time. It all depends on what part of hotel you get (one entrance is soooo close to Epcot), how fast you walk, etc.

All resorts above have to use bus for MK and AK.

All totally valid points and proven as evidenced by what guests will pay to stay at those resorts vs CBR, etc. Which leads me to why do people pa

But this is only one side of the equation. If you're going to factor in the idea that a Caribbean Beach bus can be VERY bad if the Skyliner goes down, you'd also have to factor in the idea that any resort could be prone to a bad bus anytime.

The way I look at it, Skyliner is much more reliable and consistent than a bus in good weather, and much less reliable and consistent in bad weather. I don't think it should be penalized for the latter.

Valid point, bad bus rides are abound at Disney all the time- yet my family keeps going back, they've got to be doing something right. LOL

 

[robinb]

I'm not sure why you would give a penalty to the values... they only have 1 bus stop and are generally smaller in size than many of the other resorts. It shocks me that anyone would think AKL is more convenient in terms of transportation than any values. We've stayed at both and hands down values are more convenient and have faster transportation time than AKL.

The All Stars will often have their own bus in the morning, but will share with the other All Stars in the afternoon. When I stayed there (of course, it's been a few years) we would usually have our own bus on the way to the park and then the bus would stop at every All Star on the way home and then again on our way back to the parks. When we stayed at AKL the last time we would also occasionally have our own (empty) bus on the way out so we knew it didn't come from Kidani.

 

[brockash]

Weather is very easy to predict and pivot for if needed. An hour long wait for a bus from or to AKL is not something you can do anything for expect wait.

You know what happens when there is weather issues for RIV? They send busses.



Riviera is entirely dependent how often you will got to Epcot and HS as well. If you find yourself rarely in those parks then it won't be as great for you.

Lol...well we've been in the summer when it rains almost every day and while you'd think it'd be good practice for a company to have a fast efficient way to Pivot around that...you know what we've experienced? Yep, the opposite. Yes, they eventually send buses, eventually... have you ever had to deal with returning to the Riv (not that I mentioned the Riviera, but that's what you brought up) from Epcot when it's not even raining and walking all the way to IG only to find out it's down...that's fun. CMs " ummm walk back through Epcot to the front and they should start buses" Next CM " no, actually walk to the Boardwalk and they'll start sending buses there for you....ummm...ummm."

I agree that in general CBR or Riv has better transportation than AKL, however during rainy season I'd only give that to Riv simply because at least it's smaller than CBR and only 1 bus stop.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

Lol...well we've been in the summer when it rains almost every day and while you'd think it'd be good practice for a company to have a fast efficient way to Pivot around that...you know what we've experienced? Yep, the opposite. Yes, they eventually send buses, eventually... have you ever had to deal with returning to the Riv from Epcot when it's not even raining and walking all the way to IG only to find out it's down...that's fun. CMs " ummm walk back through Epcot to the front and they should start buses" Next CM " no, actually walk to the Boardwalk and they'll start sending buses there for you....ummm...ummm."

I agree that in general CBR or Riv has better transportation than AKL, however during rainy season I'd only give that to Riv simply because at least it's smaller than CBR and only 1 bus stop.

Skyliner status absolutely needs to be on the app so people know which way to exit Epcot. Thankfully the only weather related Skyliner disruptions I've had have been Studios, not Epcot.

 

[sponica]

I feel like this has justified my decision to stay at AKL once I get out of stroller land (I really don't want to be exclusively bus while in stroller land).

 

[CaptainAmerica]

I feel like this has justified my decision to stay at AKL once I get out of stroller land (I really don't want to be exclusively bus while in stroller land).

AKL rules. Fear not the buses.

Part of the reason I decided to do this was to defend AKL. Everyone always says "AKL takes too long to get anywhere." As a former local who used to drive all over property regularly, I knew that wasn't true and that it was just anti-bus bias. But I wanted to prove it.

 

[brockash]

But this is only one side of the equation. If you're going to factor in the idea that a Caribbean Beach bus can be VERY bad if the Skyliner goes down, you'd also have to factor in the idea that any resort could be prone to a bad bus anytime.

The way I look at it, Skyliner is much more reliable and consistent than a bus in good weather, and much less reliable and consistent in bad weather. I don't think it should be penalized for the latter.

I'm just curious as to how often and how many times you've stayed at these resorts. Your statements seem to be pretty opposite of many real life experiences. Buses are 100% more reliable. Don't get me wrong they're not as fun (although you weren't rating on fun,) but as ppl. who have done both keep explaining the skyliner going down in the summer happens often and Disney does not do a good job of answering for that. Buses on the other hand are pretty consistent no matter the weather. Obviously you personally don't have to penalize the skyliners inconvenience during downtime, but for many others...it's a pretty big negative.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

I'm just curious as to how often and how many times you've stayed at these resorts. Your statements seem to be pretty opposite of many real life experiences. Buses are 100% more reliable. Don't get me wrong they're not as fun (although you weren't rating on fun,) but as ppl. who have done both keep explaining the skyliner going down in the summer happens often and Disney does not do a good job of answering for that. Buses on the other hand are pretty consistent no matter the weather. Obviously you personally don't have to penalize the skyliners inconvenience during downtime, but for many others...it's a pretty big negative.

Maybe I wasn't clear what I meant.

I don't actually know the methodology behind the transit times that I used to source this information. But I don't think they factor in "waiting for the bus", only how long it takes to get from A to B once you're actually on the bus. Having stayed at both Riviera and Caribbean Beach since the Skyliner opened and at bus-only resorts dozens and dozens of times, I'd say the time waiting for a bus due to weather-induced Skyliner closures is HORRIBLE, but it's roughly balanced out by the fact that, when weather is good, there's almost zero wait for the Skyliner itself.

 

[sethschroeder]

you know what we've experienced? Yep, the opposite.

You understand that summer 2021 was the first summer the Skyliner was operational?

Hope is long term they take the training wheels off and run it through lightning and such since those systems are designed for it typically for Doppelmayr (I would expect these are as well).

 

[_19disnA]

^^ Other amusement parks I have been at ALWAYS shutdown their cable car type transportation during electrical storms. Doubt that Disney will be any different.

 

[SteveAZee]

It does seem like the sprawl factor has a big influence on ranking. I'm not too familiar with the transportation of resorts other than OKW, but there are some locales at OKW that are better than others... to pick a villa between HH and Peninsular Rd so you can pick the bus stop that's last on the way out in the morning or first on the way back in the evening. Granted, there are other issues there, but it's certainly something that can be arranged if 'sprawl' and 'convenience factor' is an issue. Just saying that if one is picking a resort based on convenience factor, then also picking a location within that resort will have it's impact as well.

Again, I honestly don't know if you were to pick a resort and then optimize for 'convenience factor' within that resort and then compare those optimizations between resorts how things would look.

 

[RedHead77429]

Impressive data gathering, thanks for sharing!

 

[TheDailyMoo]

I like the gumption you had to try something like this but why leave out Swan and Dolphin if you're crunching that many numbers anyway? Wondering if there was a reason you left them out on purpose or just going straight Disney properties.

 

[modavi]

Sorry, might have missed it but do these times include the time spent waiting for the transport to arrive? (Bus, monorail, boat…) or just raw transport time assuming the bus is sitting there at the station as soon as you walk out to it? Would that change anything?
Thanks for putting this all together! Very interesting.