Bus wait times thread [split from Trip Report]

[Admin]

[Continuation of discussion that originally started in viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1264]

The main comment I'd make about the buses is try to avoid using them at the same time as everyone else does. That applies especially when returning from the parks around fireworks time - either leave the park a little before the fireworks, or hang around 45-60 minutes after the fireworks are done before you try to get a bus. If you leave with the crowd of 30,000 other people just as Wishes finishes, it will be a cattle market. Yes they put on extra buses, but there's only so much that they can reasonably do, and POR is one of the bigger and more popular resorts.

Andre

[shoemakers4]

Andre is right on! 2 of the all time favorite memories of MY LIFE happened just after the evenings entertainment (one in MK the other in EPCOT) that if we would have been part of the cattle herd we would have never experienced.
1st, Wishes just ends and my twins 7 yr old boys start walking along with the other cattle. We grab them and start swimming upstream toward the Tea Cups. One twin says, "that castle is beautiful!" Mommy started to cry. The boys hugged mommy and we all started to share Disney stories on a park bench. The boys' stories were minutes old, us grown-ups had stories that were decades old. About 30 minutes later we walk to a half full bus and another girl on the bus is crying because she's leaving the castle. My other boy says, "Dont worry, it'll be there when you come back".
2nd, after Illuminations wraps up there was a MASS EXIT!!! Since my boys dont move fast at all we played a game of counting hats vs ears as we left the park. One boy was counting ears as "people without hats" but the other was counting ears as "people with Mickey Ear Hats". The first boy says, "lets go back and start all over again!" So we did. On the way back we all started singing it's a small world because it finally hit my 7 yr old twins that Showcase is about the countries in the world. Again, after we made it to a bus it was half full at best! This time is was all adults and our boys wouldnt stop telling them all about our trip and the adults just ate it up!

Not all post fireworks bus rides have been this great for us. Our very first one we almost never rode a bus at WDW again. The first bus that showed up we loaded and then unloaded as there was a large group of wheelchairs that we let go first and said we'd wait for the next. The second bus included two families that had a feud going on from the parks and a minor fight broke out after some negative language. Just remember, "it's a small small world"

[pdrazine]

shoemakers4 - I think that's the best post I've ever read on here!

[BigRedDad]

I should have put a caveat on the buses. We never left at a busy time for buses. I do this on purpose to avoid cattle calls. Our issues with buses were at odd times, never right at the end of the night. When we left a park early in the day, it was around 2PM or more than an hour after park closing.

[MardiGroggy]

Yep, sounds like you caught one of the problem times. Not to belabor the point, but that is why guests need to remember that anything, even Disney Magic, is not perfect. Always make allowances for the unexpected and you can still have a great time.

Just to be clear, personally I consider the WDW transportation system a major "plus" of staying on site. For all of its glitches, it still beats driving, parking (and the parking fees) and otherwise ferrying yourself around the property. I've stayed inside and outside, and I much prefer the convenience of using their system to get around (even when it isn't convenient).

One suggestion I made to management, several years ago, was to provide more places to sit at the transport waiting areas, particularly at the theme park ends. I don't stand as well as I used to and the long waits take more of a physical toll than a mental one. Since nothing has been done in the years since then, I guess not enough folks have made the same request.

Again, BigRed, don't let that rain on your parade. Next time may well be much different!

[Thorpy]

My worst bus experiences have also been at off peak times, and have involved prolonged waits. the thing that goes with that is that they will schedule drivers to work a morning or an evening, and probably not to many in the middle.
I don't think it will be that long before they start utilising the magic band system into the bus system. As you join a bus queue you scan your magic band, which tells control they have somebody waiting for that bus. At the moment they are trying to cater for all possible demand at all times. If they start tracking guests via bands, then they will get a much better understanding of actual demand and therefore provide a much more efficient system. we see the introduction of the bendy busses, I can also see the introduction of much smaller busses for the routes that are almost deserted.

[shoemakers4]

Thorpy, they will never track via magic band or even an "oncall" type system where you would show up to the depot and press a button "calling for a ride". In fact, Disney is head over heals crazy about their current system. The longest you will EVER wait for a bus is 20 minutes. They have a call center that distributes buses based on the last time a bus left and when another is due. That is an automatic regardless of the demand or the lack there of. They will add more buses when demand is higher (morning ADR's and closings) but they will never reduce below 20 minutes per location.

To that point, what they will also do is slow buses down (we encountered this a few times while on the bus recently). But you're saying, "SEE... They are making us wait more"... but think about it. If you just saw a bus leave and you were 150 yrds away, you'd know the next one for that destination will be around in about 15-20 minutes. Each driver working is assigned a route, every route is covered. Additional drivers are available for higher demand routes because the drivers also report full buses that might have went directly to their destination.

In my eyes, basically, if you cant wait for 20 minutes for a bus then Port Orleans is not for you. Maybe you should look into something on the monorail system that has boats also. I'm not saying that to be rude its just a fact. We took our departure day and sat at the North Bus Depot of Riverside. Between 9am and 12:40pm the longest wait for a destination was 21 minutes to Animal Kingdom. Why did we do this? Because we took a bet and lost. We also rode a full circuit with a driver from POR to Downtown Disney and back. We paid attention to the chatter on their box and he explained a bit about their requirements. At one point we were hung up around the chaos that is currently Downtown Disney. They saw that on their GPS system and because of that we heard an announcement from the dispatch that sent out a bus to cover the rest of his route for depot pickup back at Port Orleans.

Dont let the buses ruin your trip... just dont expect them to be there the minute you arrive at the depot. Take a seat and enjoy your fellow tourists' company. Make new friends!

[lovthesurf]

Andre is right on! 2 of the all time favorite memories of MY LIFE happened just after the evenings entertainment (one in MK the other in EPCOT) that if we would have been part of the cattle herd we would have never experienced.
1st, Wishes just ends and my twins 7 yr old boys start walking along with the other cattle. We grab them and start swimming upstream toward the Tea Cups. One twin says, "that castle is beautiful!" Mommy started to cry. The boys hugged mommy and we all started to share Disney stories on a park bench. The boys' stories were minutes old, us grown-ups had stories that were decades old. About 30 minutes later we walk to a half full bus and another girl on the bus is crying because she's leaving the castle. My other boy says, "Dont worry, it'll be there when you come back".
2nd, after Illuminations wraps up there was a MASS EXIT!!! Since my boys dont move fast at all we played a game of counting hats vs ears as we left the park. One boy was counting ears as "people without hats" but the other was counting ears as "people with Mickey Ear Hats". The first boy says, "lets go back and start all over again!" So we did. On the way back we all started singing it's a small world because it finally hit my 7 yr old twins that Showcase is about the countries in the world. Again, after we made it to a bus it was half full at best! This time is was all adults and our boys wouldnt stop telling them all about our trip and the adults just ate it up!

Not all post fireworks bus rides have been this great for us. Our very first one we almost never rode a bus at WDW again. The first bus that showed up we loaded and then unloaded as there was a large group of wheelchairs that we let go first and said we'd wait for the next. The second bus included two families that had a feud going on from the parks and a minor fight broke out after some negative language. Just remember, "it's a small small world"

I don't know if I am just moody or extra touched because I just put my deposit down for our trip last year but this post really did get me. I teared up hearing about your boys! Thanks for sharing!!!!

[Thorpy]

I'm not complaining about the bus system by any stretch, just following on from the post before mine really. they were talking bad experience, so I followed suit. I have stayed onsite for the last 5 years, primarily because of the bus service. I'm an absolute advocate of it, but think they might be able to make it even more efficient if they use bands as well. I wasn't so much suggesting a guest presses a button system, more a guest walks past a sensor they don't even know is there, and that triggers disney to maybe send a bus even earlier. Im not saying it's bad now, if you look at an average time you wait over the course of a holiday, it's not bad at all, especially if you play a bit of bus roulette, whereby rather than deciding where to go, you let the bus decide for you, and hop on the first appropriate bus that comes past. I'm saying they might be able to make it even better with a little imagination and utilisation of the technology. Given the money they spending on it, and the patents they have in place, i'm sure they will be looking for something innovative that couldn't be copied, to give them an adge over the cometition for years. They are already ahead of rivals, using GPS etc, but why stop there.

We stayed at All Star Movies in 2003, and the busses were fine. In 2005 we were back in Florida, but stayed on I-drive, and that was when we had our really bad experience, when we were going (presumably Downtown Disney to a park) and we waitied the best part of an hour at one of the outlying bus stops. Thinking about it, we'd probably done a Lynx bus to property, waitied at DTD, and then got stuck at CBR, so were well cheesed off by that time. We next visited in 2009, but by then we also had a daughter in tow, and that experience at CBR, and a bit of free dining, somewhat played into the decision to try Riverside, and 4 visits later it's very much our resort of choice, so it's all well that ends well as they say.

[Admin]

It would be a great implementation of the wide-field protocols that are already built into the Magic Bands, but not widely used as yet (the part that picks up your general vicinity, rather than the current NFC 'tap-to-use' feature).

They could count the number of people arriving/waiting at a bus stop, how long they have waited there, and even how long it takes each Band to reach a park. That would be a very cool use of the technology.

Andre

[MardiGroggy]

It would, but the technology would also have to have a way to determine your destination from the particular bus stop. Leaving the parks should be easy, but leaving the hotel bus stops would be the issue. You always have a bunch of folks who are headed to any of several possible destinations, just waiting for the correct bus to arrive. I'm thinking that it would be hard to sort that out. I've waited at the POR bus stops before when several buses to one park came before even one bus for our destination park arrived, for example.

Btw, it seems we are getting a bit far afield from this specific trip report. Maybe we should start a thread about the bus service in general? That way people can offer their comments/suggestions just about the bus system. Or maybe that is outside the scope of this PO-specific website? Forgive me, as I'm not trying to play moderator here. But I am finding the discussion interesting and some folks may not even know it is going on, since it is buried in a "trip report." Just a suggestion.

Looking forward to using the bus system over the Thanksgiving weekend. It is still the way to go!

[Admin]

Good point, topic split into the Trip Planning forum.

Andre

[Thorpy]

It's all about finding innovative ways to track the demand accurately without having a clip board everywhere to log things or using anecdotal information. At the moment they theoretically respond to all possible needs at all times, and use their experience to mount an appropriate response level. There is enough anecdotal evidence of long waits at bus stops, and seeing 3 Epcot busses, before the Studios bus you wanted arrives, to know it's not perfect, but they clearly get this mostly right, as every time I go, I'm amazed at the logistics of the place. Imagine if they make it even better, the first time families that would simply think they got lucky on day one, then suddenly realising after a few days that their bus always turns up quickly. Attacking peoples senses inperceptibly, to make sure nothing breaks the magic was always one of the early concepts.

There's a decision to be made whether you'd track unotrusively, and slightly second guess the guests intentions, or have some sort of a bus call system, whereby you get to know the exact needs, but inconvenience the guest slightly. Unobtrusive tracking would possibly have a magical quality to it, but the inconvenience of waving your band at a sensor is hardly a bind, and if that gets you exactly where you want to be as a guest then it might be preferable.

Theoretically you could unobtrusively avoid the scenario whereby a number of busses come past for somewhere else, before your bus turns up. If you scan the bus stop as an area and a "band" turns up at a resort stop, and then doesn't disappear out of range as say an Animal Kingdom bus loads and departs, then you could reasonably presume that this party is not going to Animal Kingdom, and unless another party turns up, they don't need to send an Animal Kingdom bus, they should try sending a bus for a different park. I know people could let a given park's bus go past, and then decide they actually do want to go to tyhat park and "defeat the system" to their detriment, but I would expect it to be a rare event. Also they could track the length of time you've sat in a bus stop, and maybe use that somehow.

A call system could have a set of Mickey heads to wave your band at, to request a bus for a particular park, and clears the request as the bus for that park turns up. Only if you've been called do you need to stop at that stop, and by skipping stops you could get through the route quicker, and therefore have more efficient busses. It would work in a morning, but when they are doubling loading and unloading, not quite so beneficial. If your band is used to make the request, rather than a simple button press, they could also track people persistently "pressing the buttons" and then running off, by whether their bands remain in the vicinity of the stop. Imagine the look on little jimmys face when his parents have a message on the room phone saying Mickey knows what you're up to, please be a good boy.

There are so many possibilities,you wish you could be there working on it.

[Admin]

One of the complications of the bus system is that the WDW transportation services are 'hub based'. Each bus works from a main hub location - mostly these are the parks/DTD, although there are a few extras that can send out special buses to help out with problems.

The upshot of this is that there may be buses coming round quite regularly for AK, Epcot and Studios, but there is a problem with the MK that needs more buses. Unfortunately, the two Epcot buses which have arrived in quick succession and left mostly-empty can't simply re-route to the MK, they need to return to their home base of Epcot.

I think the ETA screens are an excellent idea, and given that Disney tracks all of its buses via GPS anyway, not a wildly difficult one to implement property-wide with sufficient modern technology. Perhaps a call point at each stop might be an idea too, to report major issues - but it'd be hard to stop people just pressing the button because they demand a bus NOW!

Andre

[MardiGroggy]

I think you're right, Andre. A call system would probably get abused, as many people don't seem to have as much patience as the situation requires. Overall, the bus system is quite amazing and was one of the main considerations in our originally staying "on the inside." We used to stay at a nice, really inexpensive motel outside WDW, but the traffic in Orlando is horrendous. Once we are at WDW, we stay on site until we are ready to leave. And even then we sneak in and out the back door (Western Way), since the shortest drive to our home is via the Route 429 toll road and the FL turnpike. We come in from the west side and see nary a car, until we hit the main park roads. Then it is instant traffic jam! But I digress.

We have experienced some really horrible wait times over the years, and have seen some really stressed out guests (and even CMs trying to get home after a long shift at their park). All this simply taught us to leave plenty of time in our plans for delays. Patience may be a virtue, but it can also be a necessity. There are some places that I wish they would provide more seating, however. At my age, I don't stand as well as I once did. And, although I am not adverse to sitting on the ground, it is becoming increasingly harder to get back up!

It certainly would be nice to use technology to tweak the system, but it still is remarkably efficient, given the numbers of folks they move around every day. It is, after all, a bus transit system, not valet parking or taxi service.

[Thorpy]

I agree a basic call system would be abused, but if you had one whereby it's your magic band that activates it somehow, rather than a button push and if you then have to stay in the vicinity of the bus stop to keep the "call" alive. It would go a long way to prevent false calls and abuse.

On a slight tangent, one benefit of the "mickey heads", that is probably underappreciated is that they should be pretty well sealed and therefore much less prone to weather based reliability issues.

[lindap1]

I didn't realize that POR is the most popular moderate I hate waiting for buses and I hate how they pack them full of people. I like being at the very first bus stop for parks so we can get a seat. I've asked on the DIS and FB so I'll ask here. If we decide to stay in a royal room...what would be the best bus stop for us to go to for park pickup ( meaning...first pickup point)

[Admin]

I've asked on the DIS and FB so I'll ask here. If we decide to stay in a royal room...what would be the best bus stop for us to go to for park pickup ( meaning...first pickup point)

As you'll probably have found elsewhere, bus routes and times vary. Most commonly, the MK buses do the outer circle stops first and then the South Depot (so you might be best to get on at the East Depot), while the other buses stop at South first and then do the circle stops (making the South stop the least crowded). Other than for the MK, I'd suggest South is the most popular stop and at least it has an ETA screen showing when the next bus is due, but East will be quieter although the bus might be more crowded when it gets there.

But it's not an exact science, and routes do vary.

Andre

[Whodatdare]

So, I'm new to the resort...

Is it true that FQ bussing during Peak season is by itself? As in, doesn't share with Riverside? This seemed to be a nice little perk.

[Admin]

Is it true that FQ bussing during Peak season is by itself? As in, doesn't share with Riverside? This seemed to be a nice little perk.

It varies a bit. Magic Kingdom buses never seem to share. The other parks do share buses for POR and POFQ, but generally at the busier times (e.g. park closing time) the two resorts usually have separate services.

Andre

[hollywoodmd]

Leaving in a few days for POR. First time with the kids, 3 and 6. We will be staying in Oak Manor or Parterre Place. What bus stop will be the best to go to for the MK? From my research the South seems to be they way to go? We will be going early each day, (only going to the park for 2 days), and want to make it the easiest.

[Admin]

The South Depot is normally the last pickup before the bus heads off to the MK, so it would be the shortest journey time. However, if lots of people have already got on at the earlier stops (West, North, East) then it could be quite crowed - maybe even full at very busy times of the day - so you might have a better chance of getting a seat at one of the other stops.

If I were staying close to the East Depot for example (as you might well be given that you are booking into a Royal Room) then for the MK buses then I think I'd suggest that stop. But there are no hard-and-fast rules, you'll get there whichever stop you choose to wait at.

Andre