When you arrive at the Orlando International Airport (MCO as I will call it for the rest of the blog and part 2 of this blog) Disney offers free transportation to your Walt Disney Resort Hotel. This free service does need to be booked in advance. The service also includes free baggage pickup and delivery straight to your hotel room. The way that the Disney's Magical Express is set up in the airport is by resort, or sometimes a couple resorts. You stand on line and await your turn to board the bus. For me it is the peak of the hype on my way to Walt Disney World. The buses themselves are pretty nice looking on the outside and on the inside definitely give you that Disney feel. While waiting for the bus to depart a bunch of Disney trivia about popular characters as well as the parks themselves will play on the TV screens. It's a fun way to pass the time and learn a thing or two before departing. Once the motorcoach leaves it takes in my experience 40-50 minutes to get to your resort the real fun begins.
I've had a different experience each time I've taken the Magical Express. I've had a bus driver tell terrible jokes, I've had one say nothing, I've had one give a bit of a tour/history of the area as we drove, and I've had one do some trivia. I'm the type of person that likes to tip so I definitely tipped the drivers not only for the ride, but for the entertainment as well. Also on board the bus is a 20ish minute video that acts as an all out hype video for Walt Disney World. The video talks about the different parks, some food options, Disney Springs, and other things to get your mind going with all the things there is to do. After the video the TVs run some classic and not so classic Mickey Mouse cartoons to keep you entertained while you ride.
Your magical journey ends with the arrival at your resort. Here is where I was caught off guard with one thing regarding this service on my first time using the service. This is advertised on the Magical Express section of the Walt Disney World website, so it was totally my fault that this happened. While Disney does pick up and deliver your luggage, they are doing the same with pretty much everyone else. This means that your luggage is NOT loaded onto your Magical Express bus. Your bags will normally arrive a few hours after you arrive. Keep that in mind if you plan on going into the parks or are arriving later in the evening. You may want to pack some stuff in your carry on to get through that layover, otherwise you'll be like me wandering around your resort in a sweatshirt and jeans. Also important to note is that the baggage service does not operate from 10pm to 5am so you will need to get your luggage when you land.
The day before you head back to MCO you will get a letter on your door. It is officially the saddest letter on Earth. It is the Magical Express letter detailing what you need to do before departing your resort. Disney offers complementary airline check in with participating airlines, so it is highly suggested that you take advantage of that. The morning of, they also offer bag check for certain airlines right at the resort. This makes getting your check bags out of the way super easy. If you have a later flight, still get to baggage check as early as possible the day you leave because it is only open in the morning for checking bags. Once you board the Magical Express to MCO you will watch the saddest video on Earth which encourages you to return and features Mickey and the gang wishing you a fond farewell.
After the Magical Express drops you off at your resort, the world of the Disney Transportation System is at your disposal largely free of charge. The buses, monorails, skyliner, and ferry boats are all free of charge. The minnie-van service however acts as an taxi around Walt Disney World. It's a nice private way to get around compared to the other modes of transportation, but it does come at a price per ride. Personally I have zero experience with this service so I cannot speak to whether or not it is worth it. As with any transportation pretty much anywhere I've heard both good and bad things.
My most frequented mode of travel at Walt Disney World is the buses. Boy oh boy do I have some stories from these buses. Some are good, some are bad. At the end of the day remember this. You are in Walt Disney World with a ton of other people coming and going to and from the same places. The buses will be crowded at times, sometimes jam packed even, but you are in Disney and not at home. Up until pretty much two days ago, buses ran from all resorts to all parks every 20 minutes. The changes to this are now the resorts that feature a Disney Skyliner station. Buses now depart from those resorts to EPCOT and Hollywood Studios every hour. Other parks are still every 20 minutes.
There is no direct resort to resort bus line. In order to go from one resort to another via bus, you will need to stop at a park or Disney Springs. That is something to really keep in mind if you have dining reservations at another resort. I also suggest leaving ample time to get from one place to another. While the buses are slated to depart every 20 minutes delays do happen. Traffic, breakdowns, and other factors can cause a bus to run late. If I am going from one resort to another I try to leave as much time as possible to get from one resort to the other just in case that 20 minute wait becomes a 40 minute wait for some reason. I've only had that happen a couple of times out of the many that I've used the buses. One final note of the scheduling is that normally buses will run 1 hour before and 1 hour after a park has closed (no they will not leave you stranded in a bus line after the park closes)
These buses are very different than the ones of the Magical Express. There is much less seating, but there is a lot of standing room. They are actually quite reminiscent of a small bus that you would see in a city. The buses are also handicap accessible with a fold down ramp allowing wheel chairs and guest who cannot easily step onto the bus an easy access point.There are a few different designs to the buses. One is a visibly older model, the other is pretty much the same bus, but with some additional seating. The other two though are pretty cool. The first of these is the double bus. No it's not a double decker, but it is double long. It allows for a super large amount of people to get on. It's always a sigh of relief when one of these pull up because it's normally a pretty safe bet that you'll get on it or at least one of the next buses if by some chance it fills before you get on. The final bus is the newest and I call them the wrapped buses. These buses started showing up last year and are wrapped with different characters ranging from Mickey Mouse to Figment to characters from Avatar. The inside of these buses feature sparkling floors and seats have USB charging ports on the back of them. I got to ride one of these a couple times and it felt pretty cool to ride in and just looked more Disney than the other buses.
None of the bus rides are overly long. The longest I believe would be for guests staying at the All-Star Movies Resort heading to or from the Magic Kingdom. That ride is usually a solid 15-20 minute ride without traffic and hitting traffic lights. Other rides like Pop Century to Hollywood Studios are super short. You may want to keep distance in mind if your feet or back are really hurting. Standing on a full bus is not the best experience. The good news is you can always let the driver know you want to wait for the next one. This can be a good tactic after firework shows as normally a bus will show up every few minutes due to the very large amount of people trying to get back to their resort. If you were just looking for some information on the bus system, this is where you can stop reading as it is now officially story time!
The first story was on a ride from the All-Star Movies Resort to the Magic Kingdom (yep the long one). It was super early in the morning as I was going for one of the early morning tours so it was me and a couple other families. Strangely enough all but one were also from New Jersey. The bus driver had all kinds of fun with us. We did trivia the whole way, when we got an answer right he'd flash the lights as if it were a cash cab.He also told us to go harass his wife who worked in the Christmas shop in Liberty Square. Since there was only a few of us he started asking where we were all from. He was from Scotland and insisted that all of us from New Jersey were from the Death Star. It was a real fun ride, and honestly one of the most memorable and certainly fastest from All-Star Movies to Magic Kingdom.
Next we take you on a trip back to Disney's Art of Animation Resort from the Magic Kingdom following Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party. To set the scene here keep in mind that the party ended at midnight and I stayed in the park close to an hour after that as the mass crowd exited. The bus was pretty full and chock full of kids that were super super hyped up on all kinds of Not So Scary Halloween Party sugar. The entire ride was filled with basically the whole bus singing Baby Shark the whole way. The Disney bed never felt so good after that splitting headache I got.
Another fun story was running into the same family on the way from Art of Animation to Disney's Animal Kingdom and then from there to Disney's Hollywood Studios. One of the cool things about the morning buses is that they tend to be less crowded than the night buses. On the way to Animal Kingdom I got to chatting with a family from Australia. They were visiting for the first time and were going to try to get on Flight of Passage. I was doing the same thing and had done it a few times prior so I was able to answer questions about the ride and the kids seemed really excited. They also asked about shows and I directed them specifically to check out Festival of the Lion King. Funny enough we ended up on the same bus to Hollywood Studios later in the day and I got to hear all about their adventures and how much they loved Festival of the Lion King and how awesome Flight of Passage was. I was so glad that they enjoyed themselves and apparently got into pin trading in the park which led to a whole additional conversation after talking about Toy Story Land which the kids were o so hyped for. I really do hope that family enjoyed the rest of their trip.
Real short story. So EPCOT's old bus loop had virtually no shade for many of the resorts. At one point I was trying to go from EPCOT to Animal Kingdom and it was blazing hot out. So I'm sitting there baking away and a group of dance students (dance weekend... woohoo...) join the line. Well after about 30 minutes of no bus they begin singing Part of Your World from The Little Mermaid, only they changed the lyrics to longing for a bus. Was actually pretty funny and wouldn't you know it, a bus showed up halfway though.
One final story is probably my worst moments on a Disney bus. It was another late night ride from Magic Kingdom to All-Star Movies Resort. I was fortunate enough to grab a seat (bus wasn't overly full for once). The unfortunate part was the person next to me fell asleep and while sleeping ended up using my shoulder as a pillow. Mind you this was one of my first late night Disney bus experiences and I am NOT one to enjoy random people touching me in any form so I was internally freaking the whole ride back. Not only was I drooled on , but when the person woke up I didn't even get a sorry or a thanks for being my pillow or anything. So I did the only thing a person internally screaming could do. Went to the food court and ordered the largest ice cream sundae they had and stuffed my face. Then burned off all my skin (not really) in the shower.
Whew that was a lot. If you read all of that, thank you so much! I hope you find at least one of those little stories amusing or interesting. The real point is, you never know what is going to happen on a Disney bus ride. It is still my preferred method of transportation through the majority of the property, but there are still plenty of other ways to get around the Walt Disney World Resort and I will be covering those next time! Thanks again for reading and expect a new post real soon!
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