Awesome thread
My delema, we are taking an overnight flight (redeye) and will arrive at 6:45am does Magical Express work that early?
If so, i understand our room won't be ready that early, but can we still check in so we can get our room# etc., and then just leave for the parks?
Since we are arriving super early on day 1, we plan on adding a character breakfest then hitting one of the parks but want to see if i can be all checked in so we can head straight to our room without having to stop at the front desk.
If your flight lands, ontime, at 6:45, you will arrive at your resort around 8-8:15ish. You can check in and get everything going. If your room isn't ready yet, you can just head out to a park, or breakfast, and then you will be notified via a text, when your room is ready. That notification will include the room number. So you can just return to the resort and go directly to the room!!
Me too! My flight gets in at 6:20am. I plan on using the ME tags for the first time (in the past I have always arrived around 9-11pm and grabbed my own bags), going to POR, checking in, storing my carry on luggage at Bell services, grabbing some breakfast (probably at POR) and hitting the parks.
Absolutely!!! You will get to POR around 8ish. You can get checked in, maybe even get your room, but if not, leave your bags with Luggage Assistence, and head off to a park!!! That's exactly what I do.
We have stayed at Pop Century and some of the other value resorts several times. Our luggage has always arrived with 2 hours of our check in. I stayed at the Contemporary once for work. I got to the resort by noon my luggage never showed up till almost 1 in the morning(and it was a direct flight so I know my luggage made it to the airport with me). I would think staying at a deluxe resort your luggage would get there first but I guess not.
The reason the value resorts tend to have slower bag delivery is that they don't just bring the bags to rooms when they get them. They make periodic runs. Now, deluxe resorts have more automatic delivery.
As far as you knowing your bag made it to the airport with you? Nope. It could have easily been misdirected by the airline. Happens all the time. 9 times out of 10, when a bag is delivered to a room many, many hours after the guest checks in, it's because the airline misdirected it. Usually, neither the resort nor DME has had anything to do with it.
I have a question that someone in this thread might be able to answer!
We are arriving on a Friday morning and plan to use ME to get to Disney. At the end of our Disney trip, we are renting a car and taking a few additional days to visit family in Daytona.
Can we also use the ME to get back to the Orlando airport at the end of our Disney stay, directing them that we want to take possession of our bags upon exiting the shuttle, and then use the rental car agency at the airport?
No problem at all. You can either book your return trip the usual way, but giving false flight info (giving flight info for a flight that departs about 2.5 hrs after the time you want to be there), or you can just call DME and explain that you need to be at the airport to pick up a car at a specific time, and they will give you the correct pickup time for the bus.
I would highly recommend using the Yellow DME tags. On our last trip we each had 2 checked bags (flying Southwest with no bag fees) and I had to call DME and request a second set of tags because they only send you one tag per person.
We used the tags and after we got off the plane we didn't immediately go to the hotel we tooted around the airport, did some shopping and ate there and didn't even get to our resort until 2 hours after our plane landed and by the time we got there our bags were already in our room.
Then when it is time for you to leave you take your bags back down to the front of the resort to the airline resort check in desk and have your bags tagged and taken from you and sent back to the airport for your flight. Just make sure you take the bags down there at least 3 or 4 hours before your plane is scheduled to leave.
Our flight was leaving at 12:50 and we were down there checking in our bags at the RAC desk at 8 am. I tipped the guys $10 because we had so many bags. Everybody else had just 2 or 3 bags and we had 8. I was embarrassed.
Also the guy at the RAC desk printed our boarding passes for us. I didn't know they could do that but it saved us from having to check in once we got to the airport. We just went straight through security and to the gate.
It would be somewhat unusual for your bags to be waiting in your room when you first got there. If you checked in, got your room key and then headed off to a park for a few hours, then sure, you could easily expect your bags to be in the room. But, if you haven't checked in yet? If you have just arrived at the resort, checked in and gone right to the room? Very unusual. Why? Because that room isn't technically yours until you accept the room keys. That's why Disney will tell you that you can't arrange for something to be delivered to the room as a surprise for someone just entering the room. It isn't their room until they are standing there, at the front desk, signing stuff, and then walk away with room keys in hand.
That would be very unusual to have happen. This is why DME tells us to expect the bags in the rooms up to 3 hrs after RESORT checkin, not checkin at the airport.
