Water Park Transportation

[Neon Cactus]

Hi, I just got back from my first WDW trip in 2 1/2 years and was surprised to see that Disney buses no longer go straight from the resorts to the water parks. Does anyone know why they changed this? Not only does it seem like it will take longer than it should to go past Blizzard Beach to Animal Kingdom, then change buses to go back to BB, but for those who have taken the buses, does it get crowded with guests from all of the resorts getting onto one bus to the water park? I opted to use Lyft instead and it worked fine, but we were joking that Disney wants to make it a pain to get to the water parks so fewer guests will go and they can justify closing the parks and building more tall eyesore DVC towers instead. This was my first time at Disney World since they've changed this, so I was curious.

 

[joelkfla]

There was a fair amount of grumbling by passengers stopping at the water parks on the way to or from AK or DTD, especially when no one or just a couple of people got on or off at the water park.

But it was probably mostly just cost cutting. It's cheaper to have a few buses shuttle back and forth than to have every bus make the stop. It saves fuel and shortens the run time, so they need fewer buses on the road. They probably calculated that most people wanting to visit a water park would go regardless of whether it was easy or difficult to get there.

 

[brockash]

Hi, I just got back from my first WDW trip in 2 1/2 years and was surprised to see that Disney buses no longer go straight from the resorts to the water parks. Does anyone know why they changed this? Not only does it seem like it will take longer than it should to go past Blizzard Beach to Animal Kingdom, then change buses to go back to BB, but for those who have taken the buses, does it get crowded with guests from all of the resorts getting onto one bus to the water park? I opted to use Lyft instead and it worked fine, but we were joking that Disney wants to make it a pain to get to the water parks so fewer guests will go and they can justify closing the parks and building more tall eyesore DVC towers instead. This was my first time at Disney World since they've changed this, so I was curious.

Money....that's the only real reason 99% of things are done. Any grumbling that was done by dtd guests is no more than grumbling by water park guests now. Not to mention the most customer friendly way to have fixed that was to add a real direct to/from route to/from water parks and dtd.

They changed it to save money, and their cost/benefit calculations worked in that favor.

 

[Wild4Walt]

The last time I took the bus to the water parks it still had a direct bus ( yes, it was that long ago ).

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

Hi, I just got back from my first WDW trip in 2 1/2 years and was surprised to see that Disney buses no longer go straight from the resorts to the water parks. Does anyone know why they changed this? Not only does it seem like it will take longer than it should to go past Blizzard Beach to Animal Kingdom, then change buses to go back to BB, but for those who have taken the buses, does it get crowded with guests from all of the resorts getting onto one bus to the water park? I opted to use Lyft instead and it worked fine, but we were joking that Disney wants to make it a pain to get to the water parks so fewer guests will go and they can justify closing the parks and building more tall eyesore DVC towers instead. This was my first time at Disney World since they've changed this, so I was curious.

How did this work out with having wet bathing suits? I can't imagine the WP allowing guests to take the towels back to the resort with them.
We just started planning a little 2 nt water park escape for a weekend in Sept since we have a lot of old non-exp water park tickets. I was thinking it would be better to just stay offsite and rent a car since the bus service to WPs is crappy and I wouldn't want to sit on a taxi/Uber driver's seats while in a wet bathing suit. Since we don't have to worry about getting FPs, offsite would not be such a negative.

 

[bigbabyblues]

They probably think if is enough of a hassle to get there by bus, more people will pay for a Minnie Van.