Saratoga Springs Resort..

[Luvmyfam3]

We stayed at SSR the week between Christmas and New Years...infamous for it's crowds. We were always pleasantly surprised by how quick the buses came....except for one night. NYE night, we were at MGM and we saw buses for every single resort many times over come and go. Our little waiting area was quite full. They finally switched one of the bus signs to SSR. YEAH!!! All in all, though, we were very pleased with the whole experience.

Kim

 

[married@wdw]

I totally disagree. We always have a car at OKW, and NEVER use it to get to the parks unless we are leaving for somewhere else directly from a park. It takes far longer to drive to a park, park in the lot, take the tram to the front gate......etc.....etc. It takes far less to time to take the bus from the resort to the parks unless you are talking about Animal Kingdom, and then it can be a bit faster to drive because of the stop the bus makes at the water park.

I must say, I totally disagree with you. We use our car constantly -- I think the buses are just too unreliable!!! Driving to MGM, Epcot and AK all make much more sense to us. For Epcot, we usually valet at BWV or BCV and go through the International Gateway (we made it from OKW to Nine Dragons in February in under 20 minutes -- was sure we'd be late!). For MGM and AK, we rarely take the tram -- hoofing it is usually only a 5-minute walk at MOST and I'd rather walk than sit at a bus stop.

We took my niece and nephews for a day in February and therefore, the car was too small for all six of us, so we used Disney buses. Waited 25 minutes for a bus at OKW to MGM -- we were at the bus stop at 7:30 a.m. for an 8 a.m. opening. At noon, we wanted to go to DisneyQuest. Well, that took two buses and -- no joke here -- 65 minutes!!! They no longer do buses between parks and Downtown Disney. So we took the first resort bus that made sense -- CB -- then waited about 30 minutes for a DD bus. If I'd known it was going to take that long, I'd have paid for a cab. We took the boat back to OKW when we were done, but even that was a 15-minute wait (not to mention an 8-minute walk to the room) where I could have gotten to the car and driven back in about 5-minutes. In the end, we always find that overall, using a car is much faster, even if the bus timing sometimes works out.

 

[jarestel]

We always rent a car but use it only for off-site activities. After dozens of trips to WDW, we still find the WDW transportation options very efficient and much preferable to hauling ourselves around. Granted, I could search my memory and find a few longer than normal waits for transportation, but since this is the exception and not the rule, I'm perfectly happy to continue using Disney transportation.

Of course, for those who just like the feeling of being able to hop in their car and go when they want to go rather than wait for busses/boats/monorails, it's certainly a nice option as well. But using a car just to save a few minutes isn't worth it to me. As they say, YMMV.