How to Use the Walt Disney World Bus Transportation System to Get From Your Hotel to the Parks.

Because Disneyland is my "home park," 2021 was my first visit to Walt Disney World in Florida since I was 14 years old. I did as much research as I could on-line about how to get from our hotel to the different parks but I was still a little anxious about it when I left. So I thought I would post a few pictures of the "in's and out's" of using the Walt Disney World Bus Transportation System. It was an extremely convenient and easy system to figure out, even for me!

 

We like to get to the parks as early as possible - usually getting to Disneyland about 45 minutes before the park opens. I knew I'd be at the mercy of the buses at Walt Disney World, so I wanted to make sure I got on the earliest bus. I was told that the first bus leaves about an hour before the park opens. The virst Park we were visiting was Animal Kingdom and when we got to the bus loading area an hour before Animal Kingdom opened, we found that the first bus had already left. But another bus was there in only a few more minutes. So if you want to make sure to catch the very first bus, I recommend getting to the loading area about an hour and 15 minutes before the park opens.

This is a look at the Loading Area. We stayed at the All-Star Movies Resort where it was located out in-front of the hotel. 

Each park (and Disney Springs) has it's own sign, queue, and bus pick-up area. Just find the sign of the park you want to go to and get in line! 

There are different styles of busses, some with seats facing forward and some, like this one, with seats against the wall. This was from our second day, heading to Epcot.

Depending on what resort you're staying in, the drive can take from 5 minutes to 20 minutes. The good news is that you get to bypass all the traffic!

Here's a look at the bus drop-off area at Epcot. From here, it's a moderately long walk to the entrance.

But it's easy to find if you just follow all the people headed in the same direction...

...or the many signs that point the way.

Finding the way back to your resort at the end of the day is also a pretty easy process.

The parks will have signes indicating the direction where each method of transportation can be located. This was the sign outside of Epcot.

For bus transportation, they then have this board that will tell you which "gate" to go to, to get to your resort hotel. Again, this is the board at Epcot.

Here's a look at the board at the Magic Kingdom. If you can read the small writing in this picture, you can see that the bus for our resort, the All-Star Movies, leaves out of gate 20... 

...so we found gate 20 and got in line to wait for our bus. How long you'll have to wait for your bus depends on when the last bus left. We never waited more than about 15 minutes for ours.

      

Here's another look at the bus loading area at Magic Kingdom. 

This is the Bus Directory at Disney Springs, the shopping area. When we were ready to get back to our hotel, the All-Star Movies Resort, we looked at the board and saw that our bus was leaving out of gate 18...

                              

...so we made our way to gate 18 and our bus was already there.

                              

                                        

This is the bus loading area at Animal Kingdom where the "gates" are found. In this picture, you can see that gate 14 is going to Disney's Saratoga Springs. The only drawback is that when we were there, you couldn't go from one of the parks to the Disney Springs shopping area. So we took this bus to Saratoga Springs since it is a pretty short walk from Saratoga Springs to Disney Springs. Hopefully Disney will start providing buses to go directly from the parks to Disney Springs in the near future.

Here's another look at the bus loading area at Animal Kingdom. These loading areas are huge! There are typically about 30 gates at each one, meaning that there is room for 30 busses to park to load up guests.

This is the bus loading area at Hollywood studios. The only slight drawback to the bus transportation is that it is a pretty long walk to get to certain gates so, if it's raining...

...you're going to get soaked!

Walt Disney World's Magical Express

I decided to document our experience using Disney's Magical Express in June of 2021. Eventhough Disney is unfortunately doing away with this service starting in 2022, I thought this post would be good for any last minute 2021 travelers looking for more information on how the service works and also serve as a nice nostalgic write-up after the Magical Express is gone.

The Magical Express Bus service a complementary service offered by Disney to guests staying at a Disney World Resort Hotel. It is really a win-win situation for both Disney and their Guests. First, it's a win for Disney because it assusres that guests will be more or less "stuck" on their property, forcing them to eat meals and purchase more merchandise there. It's a win for guests because if you don't need to go anywhere off property, you are provided with free, convenient transportation to and from Orlando International Airport to the Walt Disney World Resort. So why are they doing away with the service? I'll discuss that at the end of this post. But first, here is a pictoral look at our experience with the Magical Express:

The Orlando International Airport has 3 levels. We arrived on the "B" side (there are two identical sides - A and B) and took the tram to the large open food court area that separates the two sides. The Baggage Claim is located on the second floor, so we took the escalator down. 

Once we got our bags, we headed down to the lowest level to find Ground Transportation, where the Magical Express is located. It is important to note here that the Magical Express is only found on the "B" side of the airport. So, for instance, if you arrived on the "A" side, you would need to go down the escalator on the "A" side to the baggage claim and then return up to the main level where you would then do down to ground transportation on the "B" side.

Once on the Ground Transportaion (3rd) level, we followed the signs to Disney's Magical Express.

Signs were easy to follow. It was a relatively long walk down a mostly empty hallway.

Almost there...

A Disney Cast Member was waiting to check our itenerary. Disney mailed us a Magical Express Confirmation letter prior to us leaving on vacation.

There are different lanes for each bus, depending on what Disney Resort you are going to.

We were directed to lane 7 because that was the bus number for the All-Star Movies Resort (our final destiantion).

We stopped here and waited about 5 minutes for a Cast Member to direct us to our bus.

There were quite a fleet of buses for both the Magical Express and the Disney CruiseLine.

We were given assigned seats. We had rows 8, 10, 12 and 14 which were on the right side of the bus.

We were required to wear masks on the bus because of Disney's Covid precautions. The back of the bus was full...

...but the front of the bus was empty. We waited on the bus for about 10 minutes before we left.

I absolutely loved the bus ride. It was about 30 minutes long and was especially exciting when we got to the Resort and saw all the signs.

We were brought right to the main entrance of our resort where our luggage was off loaded. Once we found all of our luggage, we went to the lobby to check in. 

On the day we left, because we had an afternoon flight, after checking out of our room we left our bags with the bell services so we could go to Disney Springs for a couple of hours. We came back about 30 minutes before our bus was scheduled to leave for the airport (we received a notice on our door the day before we left with the time our bus left) and the staff brought our bags back. 

I really love the Magical Express service and I have to wonder why Disney would get rid of such a popular program. Surely they have to realize that by taking this service away, guests will now have an option to eat, sleep, and travel elsewhere. I imagine they are banking on another company - Mears possibly - picking up where Magical Express left off. Of course, Mears will have to charge for the service if they do take over the service. So Disney will save a ton of money by not offering this service and hope that they won't lose too much because of a new service being offered. From Fastpass to Magical Express, Disney seems to be eliminating value-added services to their guests and, in the case of Fastpass, replacing them with pay-for-play program. I hope they will get back to their roots by creating a more magical experience fot their guests rather than primarily worrying about cost saving measures.