Updates to the Disney Bus routes at Port Orleans

News Updates about the Port Orleans Resorts.
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The Sassagoula Sentinel
Posts: 416
Joined: April 6th, 2011, 11:32 am

Updates to the Disney Bus routes at Port Orleans

Unread post by The Sassagoula Sentinel »

Disney has recently made a few tweaks and adjustments to the free bus system which transports guests from the Port Orleans resorts to the theme parks. The route changes actually make a lot of sense, and should make the service generally more consistent and predicable for guests when visiting the different parks - and hopefully reduce some of the confusion that has been reported over the years.

The bus information page at portorleans.org/buses.php is now fully up-to-date with the new details, but the main points to take away are:
  • Buses now start running at 7am (whereas the first buses used to be around 6:45am).
  • The first few buses of the day all run as shared services from French Quarter and Riverside (apart from the Animal Kingdom buses for some reason).
  • For the rest of the day, more of the routes now operate as independent services rather than having so many shared French Quarter/Riverside routes. Both the Magic Kingdom and Disney's Hollywood Studios now appear to have their own separate services running to and from Riverside and French Quarter all day for example.
  • Whenever bus routes do happen to be shared, the first call is now always French Quarter rather than one of the Riverside stops (which used to vary park-by-park).
  • The Riverside pickup order for all of the theme parks now consistently has the West Depot as the first call, then North, East and South.
  • The Disney Springs buses continue to also act as an Internal Resort Shuttle service, with stops at French Quarter, Riverside South/West/North/East and then back to French Quarter again before heading onward to Disney Springs.
So what do people think of these changes, and if you've experienced any of the new routes over the last few days did you feel that the service has improved? Let us know via the comments or on our Facebook page.

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gtaro
Posts: 14
Joined: September 25th, 2011, 1:40 pm

Re: Updates to the Disney Bus routes at Port Orleans

Unread post by gtaro »

My wife and I were at POFQ last week. Overall, the bus service was very good. The one route I will comment on is the Internal Shuttle / Disney Springs piece. It's a bit of a mess, really. I had read about the double stop at POFQ before heading to Disney Springs, so I wasn't surprised to see the Internal Shuttle banner still on the bus upon it's return to FQ. However, in most cases, the drivers never switched at that point to announce that they were going to Disney Springs. When I asked the drivers, I got a different answer about the route each time. In one instance, we saw the same driver return to FQ 4 times before he switched the banner to Disney Springs. Another morning, in the space of about 10 minutes, 3 different buses came through with the Internal Shuttle banner. None of them switched to Disney Springs. It was pretty frustrating.
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