Trying to understand Disney Monorail.....

[Queen of the WDW Scene]

Literally thousands of people use off-site shuttles to go to and from Disney World on a daily basis. If they are on time and the schedule works for your party, they are a perfectly fine way to travel. You just need to look at it as mass transportation, which always comes with some negatives.

People value different things differently. Some people will accept the fact that it takes extra time to reach their destination (most likely with transfers) if it means not spending hundreds of dollars to rent a car and pay for parking. Other folks feel differently.

OP sill have their on vehicle so the parking fed is the only additional cost in this situation. Also doesn't seem like their shuttle service really meets their needs.

 

[sponica]

Plan A would be to take the free shuttle.

Plan B would be to drive yourself.

My first stay was at some hotel with a shuttle (I think it was an econolodge), we made it work. Granted we arrived after the last shuttle departure for the day so we had to take a cab to the TTC. We always had a backup of taking a cab if for some reason the shuttle didn't work. This was back in the days before cell phones and whatnot, we literally walked to a payphone from some ihop to get a quote on a rental car before we called the cab.

 

[writerguyfl]

OP sill have their on vehicle so the parking fed is the only additional cost in this situation. Also doesn't seem like their shuttle service really meets their needs.

Some people were making general comments about the value of shuttles. That's exactly what I did.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Thanks for everyone's input. It looks like many are not fans of the shuttles. The ones from my resort are free, and I was looking at ways to save $$. We are actually driving to Orlando, arriving the afternoon before our first park visit, so we will have a car.

Back in 2011 we did the same thing you were looking to do.

We stayed at a Hampton Inn and took the free shuttles to Disney and to Universal. I would personally not recommend it.

The shuttles at that Hampton were all very nice and had Disney movies going to help the ride go by. But we just spent so much time worrying about their schedule which sometimes didn't even cover park closing for when the last bus left. Now we had a rental car but a free shuttle sounded better than paying for a parking fee at Disney's theme parks. Nope paying for parking was much better. We ended up taking our rental car several days total to WDW including at least 1 or 2 days to Universal.

I had thought the schedule would work out but in practicality it didn't. Yours sounds even more restricting because it doesn't go to MK until later on. Maybe doublecheck on that because personally being that MK is the main park people tend to go to I can't imagine why they would have a shuttle later on in the day and not in the morning.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Literally thousands of people use off-site shuttles to go to and from Disney World on a daily basis. If they are on time and the schedule works for your party, they are a perfectly fine way to travel. You just need to look at it as mass transportation, which always comes with some negatives.

People value different things differently. Some people will accept the fact that it takes extra time to reach their destination (most likely with transfers) if it means not spending hundreds of dollars to rent a car and pay for parking. Other folks feel differently.

For us the time wasn't as big of an issue with exception to Universal. Despite advertising they didn't share with other resorts for at least Universal they did. The pick up time was 7am for a 9am park opening and wouldn't you believe it we actually made it just after park opening after having to go pick up guests at another resort. The last bus was also at 7pm which was before Universal closed for the night.

For Disney it wasn't sooo bad but we just found ourselves worried so much about making it back in time for a specific pick up time and to ensure we were downstairs outside for the time we wanted.

We thought it would be nice because it saved us money on parking fees but it just didn't work out that way. I'd like to think all I'm doing is giving the OP a viewpoint of someone who was in the same mindset as them. The OP is ahead in this sense because they are looking at parking fees only rather than the cost of the rental car+parking fees since they will be driving down (unless they are driving down in a rental car rather than their own personal vehicle).

We have zero issues with mass transit in places like NYC and D.C. But the free shuttles don't necessarily operate the same as those at least in my opinion.

 

[DisneyinApril2019]

We are actually staying at Vacation Village at Parkway. We've never stayed there before, but have read some decent reviews. Anyone else had any experiences with this resort?

 

[nkereina]

So if you have, say, a 9:45AM FastPass that means you have until 10:45 to use it. Make sure you get to Epcot no later than 9:45 and you'll make it.

If it were me, I would want to get to Epcot no later than 9:15. Figure you get to TTC by 9:40, transfer to MK monorail which will be busy at that time, and its 10. Get through the tap styles at the park at that time of day and its now 10:15. Walk to whatever ride you're going to, 10:30. Also add in bag check - I can't think of where that falls in this timeline, I think at Epcot before getting on the monorail? Wherever it is, it will be busy at park opening and could easily take another 10-15 minutes.

 

[Moliphino]

Have they added bus service from Epcot to the Monorail resorts?

Not that I'm aware of. I think it's just the monorail unless the monorail goes down.