Walt Disney World: The Happiest Place On Earth, Unless You Are Using Their Transportation System.

 

My brother and I are standing at the bus stop in Downtown Disney when he makes his feelings known.

 

“There are three things in this world that I hate. Carnies... the Dutch... and Disney's transportation system.”

 

The other people at the bus stop pretend not to hear him, but you can tell by the reaction on their faces that they wholeheartedly agree. I can not stop laughing at this statement, but it is even funnier because of how true it must be.

 

We spent a total of seven days and six nights at the Walt Disney World resort in Florida. It was a pleasant vacation, and very enjoyable to spend time with family. However, of those seven days we must have spent at least two full days waiting for, or riding in Disney's “public transportation” system.

 

Disney's transportation system consists of the monorail, which goes to a few of the parks and a couple of the hotels. There are also boats on any of the lakes that will go to the hotels and parks that sit on that lake. The main form of transportation, however, is their fleet of buses.

 

Now, we were told by one of the drivers that Disney has hundreds of buses and thousands of drivers. Shifts start every half hour and the buses run about every twenty minutes, twenty four hours a day. The problem is that the buses do not go everywhere that you need to be.

 

For instance. We stayed at the Wilderness Lodge. One night we had a dinner reservation at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. Of course none of the buses run from hotel to hotel. We needed to catch the bus from our hotel to the Animal Kingdom park, get off that bus, then catch another one from the park to the Animal Kingdom Lodge. After dinner we had to take the same trip in reverse. I believe, on that night we spent more time waiting for and riding the buses than we did actually eating in the restaurant.

 

There was yet another night that we had a dinner reservation at a hotel. This time in the Polynesian. We decided to catch the first bus that came along, take it to whichever park it took us to and then hop on the connecting bus to the Polynesian. The first bus along was en route to Epcot Center.

 

When we arrived we asked the bus driver which spot was the wait for Polynesian. He informed us that a bus does not run from Epcot Center to the Polynesian. We would have to take the monorail from Epcot to the transportation center, and then another monorail from there to the Polynesian.

 

This baffled our minds. Why would there be no bus from one of the parks to one of the hotels. Our only speculation was that since the monorail could eventually get you there, they must have decided a bus was not necessary. We did find out that the Polynesian is in walking distance from the transportation center, so instead of waiting for the monorail that ran through the hotel, we just went down to the street and walked to the hotel once we got to the transportation center.

 

The problems do not stop there. It can only get worse.

 

Myself, my wife, and my brother were meeting my parents and my son at the Magic Kingdom. We went down to the bus stop and waited at the first space for the bus. At the Wilderness Lodge there are three total spaces and about six different buses stop on their way to different locations.

 

Fifteen minutes pass and we have seen two buses for Epcot Center, three buses for Animal Kingdom, three buses for Hollywood Studios, and numerous buses for downtown Disney. Now, they say buses run every twenty minutes, however in fifteen we have seen multiple buses for the same locations, but not a single bus for the Magic Kingdom.

 

Disney is good for giving you access to customer service. At the bus stop there is a phone for travel information. After another five or ten minutes, my brother used the phone to find out why there had not been a bus yet. The lady told him that they had doubled up some buses and there should be a Magic Kingdom bus soon.

 

We have now been waiting over forty minutes and there have been about twenty buses for the other locations throughout Disney. There is a large group of people waiting for the same bus. Some of them have been waiting longer, others have just arrived, but aggravation is quickly spreading through the crowd.

 

My idea was to block the road and to not let anymore buses through until one for the Magic Kingdom shows up. You know that if a driver can not get through he will be sure to radio his boss and get something moving along. Big changes have been brought about in our world by small groups of people, and I was trying to rally these people to do just that... create a big change. But they were all ignoring me.

 

We did get a driver to radio his boss and let him know the severity of the situation. Finally a bus came and we all got on for our wonderful trip down the street to the Magic Kingdom. The bus driver tried to crack a joke about all of us still standing there for the bus. I do not think that was a good time to be joking with this group of people.

 

I will be the first to say that Walt Disney World has incredible customer service. They will do anything for you, but when something goes wrong... they do not care. No one offers anything to recover from the mistake. They just shrug it off and move on.

 

And why should they care. The rooms will always be filled. The parks will always be crowded. They are definitely not having any trouble making money. I know that I will be going back, and everyone will go back because despite any bad experiences, the good still out weighs the bad.

 

The transportation does need some improvements.

 

First of all they need buses that run to numerous hotels. There are restaurants in the hotels that people make reservations for, and they are so popular that they get booked up pretty fast. So why should people be required to spend an hour and a half just getting to dinner?

 

There is a lot of property and open space in Disney. It is most likely too expensive and too large a project to expand the monorail, but what about a train. The could set up a rail system that runs to every hotel and park. Use two or three tracks and have an express train as well as trains with numerous stops.

 

The most important thing, and the easiest thing to do is create a bus schedule. We asked for one and all we could get from anyone was “buses run about every twenty minutes”. How broad is that? We will understand if the buses get a little off schedule, but we should have a schedule that we can hold in our hands and see what buses go where.

 

Give us buses to all the parks and hotels, make some of the buses express to specific destinations, and make it easier to get from point A to point B.

 

Next time I go, I may be renting a car.

Before you go on a Walt Disney World Vacation, you are going to want to know some more of these tips and secrets that the guidebooks do not tell you.