Our family has sort of a love/hate relationship with Disney transportation.  We love the convenience and we certainly appreciate not having to rent a car or go through the hassle of navigating ourselves around Walt Disney World on vacation.  We hate waiting more than 30 minutes for a bus and we still, after all these years, have a hard time estimating the time it will take to get from points A to B – especially when we’re trying to get from a park to Disney Springs, which takes quite a bit of strategizing at times.  We’ve also noticed quite a few monorail breakdowns and closures in recent years, which can be frustrating (especially if you’ve just finished a runDisney event, are freezing, and desperately trying to get to Bay Lake Tower!).

Braced for crazy crowds and slow transportation during the über-busy week between Christmas and New Year, we’d built extra travel time into our daily touring and dining plans to allow for longer waits for the sure-to-be-packed busses, boats, and monorails.Turns out, it was unnecessary.  Except for one morning when then monorail we’d intended to take from the Polynesian to Magic Kingdom was down due to a loss of power, Disney seemed to have upped their transportation game.

At the resorts, extra Cast Members were on hand at bus stops to help guests find the right bus, answer questions and give estimated wait times (not all stops have new screens installed yet for this information).  We rarely waited more than 5 minutes for a bus throughout the week and the longest we waited for any transportation was when we took the boat from Disney’s Hollywood Studios to Epcot (but we had time & love this particular trip).

We felt that Disney transportation was consistently better on this vacation than it had been for several years.  Was it due to the time of year we were there?  Were we simply lucky?  Is this a trend we can expect to continue?  We’ll have to wait and see, but after having my own complaints about Disney transportation and listening to the frequent criticisms of others, I thought I’d take the time to say that we were delighted with our most recent experience and look forward to our next visit in a few weeks.

Your turn – Have you visited Walt Disney World recently?  Was the transportation different than on previous visits?  Better? Worse? The same?  Are you someone who tries NOT to use Disney transportation at all?  Please share your transportation tips!