Disney Express & My 6 Month Old

[jake]

I have concern with Disney Express. Do the buses have seat belts for babies with car seats? I really want to use Disney Express but we are concerned about the car seat placement in the bus. What do we do with our 6 month old? He will be in a car seat and we want to seatbelt him in. Also the same concern withthe bus to and from the parks.

Thanks

[Strmchsr]

No Disney transportation - meaning both park buses and DME buses - has seat belts for car seats. You just hold your kid in your lap. Or, our preference, we used a Baby Bjorn so that the baby is strapped to us. If using a car seat is a must you'll need to rent a car for the length of your vacation.

[Tick-Tock]

I don't think you can use car seats for either DME or Disney transport. I've only ever seen parents holding car seats as carriers on Disney transport.

From Intercot Info Central on DME:

Q: What about young kids? If I check a car seat, will I have to retrieve from baggage claim? Or is there another recommendation?

A: Because of a Dept. of Transportation regulation, children are not allowed to be seated in a car seat on the motorcoach. Therefore, if a guest carries on a car seat it will be stowed underneath the motorcoach.

[Sean Riley Taylor's Mom]

As the others have said, there are no seatbelts on the ME bus or the buses that go to and from the parks. Unfortunatley, you cannot use a car seat. We use one on the plane for our daughter and store it underneath the ME bus to the hotel.

We also brought the Baby Bjorn when they were younger to put the kids in on the buses. I always chose not to stand when the buses were full and wait until another bus arrives. My older boys don't like it but, I feel safer sitting with her.
Have a great trip.

[jake]

I am really suprised by this, it's an accident just waiting to happen. I guess we will be renting a car.

[CleveRocks]

Of course, you will do what you feel is safest for your family.

Just keep in mind that in cities all over the USA, people take their babies on buses (and subways and commuter trains) every day.

The main reason seat belts/car seats aren't required on large buses is a matter of physics. Buses passengers just aren't in as much peril as passengers of smaller vehicles.

Because it is a very large vehicle, simple physics dictates that the structure of the vehicle will absorb more of any impact than a smaller vehicle would. If the structure absorbs most of the kinetic energy, there is less to pass along to the contents of the vehicle.

For example, consider one toddler running at full speed into a stationary toddler. Both are going to wind up on the floor, crying and possible injured, but at least knocked around a bit. Now picture a toddler running at full speed into a stationary adult, a big, thick, sturdy adult. The toddler will bounce off the adult (and may or may not be hurt), but the adult will brush it off like it was nothing, not even wobble. This is a good analogy for most motor vehicle accidents involving buses.

Think about that horrible, tragic accident that occured maybe a month ago or so, I think down in Georgia involving a college baseball team from Ohio, where the bus drove through a concrete barrier and fell 30 feet and crashed onto the roadway below. There were about 36 people on board (no seatbelts) and only 6 died. When I say "only" 6, I'm not at all minimizing the human tragedy, but what I mean is, only one out of 6 was killed. Imagine 6 people in a car, SUV or van, falling the same 30 feet. I can't imagine that only one out of those 6 passengers would be killed in the fall, I'd imagine most or all of them would meet that horrible fate. The reason that so few (relatively speaking) people died in the recent bus crash was because of the mass and the size of the bus itself.

I was in a bus accident when I was in high school. We were on a highway, and a stolen car tried to enter the highway at an entrance ramp, at full speed. They slammed into the bus right around the right front tire. We were aware that something happened because the bus shuddered a little, but no one was knocked around or anything like that. The car was demolished, and the people in the car were taken away in ambulances.

As others have said, if you find it unsafe to have your child unrestrained in a DME bus, then PLEASE, please rent a car at the airport. It will be your only way to keep your child in a car seat while on the road. As others have said, Disney Transport buses (the way you'll get from resort to park and back) also do not have seat belts. The reason I'm strongly recommending a car rental is that I've heard car service drivers and owners talk down DME because of lack of seatbelts and tout their own service as a safer way to get to your resort. However, they are dropping people off who then will need to use other buses to get around WDW; their argument defies logic, why one must avoid one bus but then use another.

The ONLY way to do WDW without an unrestrained child in a bus and without a rental car is to stay at a monorail resort and tour only Magic Kingdom and Epcot, since you'd only be using the monorail and not be using any Disney Transport buses.

Whatever you decide, GOOD LUCK and HAVE FUN!

[sainter]

Cleverocks, you did an EXCELLENT job of explaining all of that!! Are you a teacher? I am now thinking it is probably statistically safer to ride a bus with a baby in your lap than in a car restrained. Actually that makes me feel better about riding the buses altogether. Of course every family still MUST do what is comfortable to them!!

[CleveRocks]

I'm a therapist, specializing in treating people who've been injured, and most of those injuries occur in motor vehicle accidents. So I've picked up some info here and there.