Magical Express: Yeah or Nay!

[MrPeetrie]

We're going back in October and we're considering utilizing Magical Express this time. Usually, we rent a car, because I love the convenience, as well as beginning the trip from the airport to WDW as SOON AS POSSIBLE! In the past, we've used Mears Shuttles. Is this the same thing? Are there frequent shuttles, so the wait isn't too long? Does you luggage actually make it to the room? Please, let me know your pros and cons so I can decide. And, as usual, thanks for your input.

[snifflesmcg]

The only con I can think of is, it'll take a bit more time than just driving yourself. The pros are it's convienent, easy and um....free.

[LoriMistress]

Magical Express is the same thing as Mears, only they take your luggage and deliver it to your room. Which I've heard that sometimes you don't even get your luggage until midnight (from others.)

[SBETigg]

We've had good experience with ME. Not the fastest way to get to your resort from MCO, but reasonable. Our bus trip took 55 minutes-- we were the third of three stops along the way. Our luggage was in our room within three hours of our arrival-- not sure exactly when it arrived, because we headed straight to the MK, but it was there when we got back three hours after arrival.

It was especially convenient for the trip back to MCO. We used a participating airline, so we checked in for the flight at our resort and didn't have to worry about our checked bags until landing at home. We'd thought heading to the airport three hours early was a bit much, but it turned out we only had a spare twenty minutes after clearing security.

[mainemajor]

We've enjoyed it a lot on our trips. ME is run by MEARS. I can not tell you how long it takes for luggage to arrive other than once we have checked into our resorts we head to the parks and when we get back our stuff is there. It is great getting off the plane and pretty much getting on a bus and being taken to your resort. The longest we have waited for the bus to roll is about 10 minutes :mickey:

[GrumpyFan]

DME is great! We've used it the last few times we've been and had no problems whatsoever with it. It's always taken less than 60 minutes to get from the airport to our resort (Pop Century).

The only con I can think of is that on departure day, they require you to be ready to go back to the airport 3 hours ahead of your flight time. So, if you like to get in one last day of fun, it can cut into it pretty bad, depending on your flight time.

[Sean Riley Taylor's Mom]

Nothing but good things to say about ME from me. :number1:

We have always gotten our luggage quickly, usually within 2-3 hours. We have never waited at MCO longer then 10-15 minutes. The bus drivers are great and extremely helpful. The ride to the resorts is no biggie. We are just excited to be on our way to WDW.

We will be using them again in September with no concerns.

Oh yeah...like someone else mentioned...It's free!!!;)

[brogan54]

i can only say that is was great. we used it the last trip we didn't have long to wait to go to the resort. we headed straight out to the parks and when we returned the luggage was in our room. going back was fine as well no problmes . we are going in sept and using it again:mickey:

[ElenitaB]

We've used ME on three trips now and have found it convenient, quick and, yes, free! The only problems I encountered were caused by other guests (checking in our luggage on departure day when one woman decided that she should check in her entire large group —like 12-14 people— who were all heading to different parts of the country on different airlines). Other than that, it's been a breeze!

[Lizzie]

I am so excited to use this. Traveling with two kids under the age of two and all our luggage, having it brought to our room is going to be awesome. How do you know if you can check in at the hotel for your airline?

[Maleficent's Dad]

I am so excited to use this. Traveling with two kids under the age of two and all our luggage, having it brought to our room is going to be awesome. How do you know if you can check in at the hotel for your airline?
From WDW website:

RESORT AIRLINE CHECK-IN SERVICE FOR DOMESTIC DEPARTURES

Q. What is Resort Airline Check-In service?

A. Resort Airline Check-In Service is a benefit offered to you if you are staying at a select Walt Disney World® Resort hotel and departing on participating airlines from Orlando International Airport. You can check your luggage and receive your airline boarding pass right at your Resort hotel and you will not need to check in at Orlando International Airport. At this time, the service is only available if you are flying domestically on the following airlines: Alaska Airlines American Airlines
Continental Delta Air Lines
JetBlue Northwest
United/Ted AirTran

[Soul_Power]

My boyfriend and I were at WDW at the beginning of June, and we had a great experience with Magical Express. It's really nice to have your vacation start once you get to the airport, and of course not having to deal with the hassle of baggage claim is an additional plus, too! We stayed at Pop Century and our bus ride was only 25-30 minutes (we were the first stop)! Our luggage arrived in our room about 3 hours after we checked in.

It's such a fantastic service, and I would recommend it to anyone - I only wish that it was offered everywhere!

[Lizzie]

I am so excited! Traveling with two 17 month old kids and just me and my husband trying to get around with us and the luggage is a pain.

I love Disney!

[MinnieMommie]

ME has many fine points and the fact that it is free is hard to beat. I have utilized this service several times and have had no problems with luggage or with having a long wait time between arriving at the airport and being taken to our resort.

The only cons are that I like to go directly to a park upon arrival and with ME you can only be taken to your resort. You are losing park time this way if you plan to go to the park the first day. I also like to leave at the last posiible minute on the last day of my trip. When we had a car we got a longer amount of time in the park the last day. With ME you have to leave the park, go back to your resort and catch ME to the airport from the resort. I loose precious park time on the 1st and last day when traveling with ME compared to how I had been accostomed to traveling before ME.

All in all though hard to pass up! Nice airconditioned and comfortable seating. :mickey:

[LauraF]

I like the idea of ME very much because in the past my family would rent a car which would then sit there for the entire trip in the hotel parking lot. Even when we stayed offsite, we were in the DTD area and used the shuttles to get around. The car was only for the trip from and to the airport. Why spend $200+ for a car we wouldn't use?

And as far as the time lost in travel with ME? Check the flight times. I have a flight arriving at 11am my first day and departing at 8pm my last day. I can still squeeze a full day of WDW fun out of both of those days. I don't mind arriving at home late for a few extra hours in WDW.

[LudwigVonDrake]

Magical Express is the way to go :smickey:

[emmingo]

Seriously...its free. And convenient. The only problem we ran into--last time, one of the ME buses got rerouted and missed its stop at the ASMu. It only ended up being a problem for one family, who Disney gladly found a replacement for them. The guy running the service said it is incredibly rare that this would happen, but I figured I could warn anyway...;)

[Jared]

Disney's Magical Express is a great service and definitely worthwhile. The shuttles come quickly and do not make many stops. Renting a car may cost a little less time but does not match the convenience of Disney's service.

Not having to worry about wasting precious minutes at baggage claim is an added perk. Though luggage arrives a few hours after you, the process is quite efficient.

[LibertyTreeGal]

It's awesome! I hate driving in new places (when I went in 2004 I drove and I got lost, yikes!) and so for me, to ride is the way to go. They play a video on the way there and back, so that's nice. And like everyone says, they pick up your luggage, which made it to the hotel room before we did since we went right to the parks! :number1:

On an unrelated note, we always tip the drivers to and from $1/bag. They do an awesome job :thumbsup:

[dumbo ears]

yay. the magical express is so conveinent and free.

[Nevergrowup]

Not a big fan. Lost luggage. Vomiting kid behind us on a bus with no windows. Too long of a wait at thee airport. it is not for us.

[CleveRocks]

Magical Express is the same thing as Mears
THIS IS NOT TRUE.

The way Mears ran their own shuttle service is very different than the way Disney runs DME. It's not a difference of "night and day" ... it's a difference of "night and potatoes."

The old Mears shuttle waited for the bus to fiil up, made multiple stops at the airport before leaving, stopped at potentially MANY resorts before yours, and had no mind to geography when grouping those reosrts together on a bus.

Disney runs DME very differently. They subcontract through Mears for the drivers and buses, but it is run by Disney's policies and procedures, not Mears'.

From the time the first guest gets on a bus at the airport, it is to wait no longer than 15 minutes before leaving, no matter how many people are on there. It will stop at no more than 4 resorts. Three seems to be the most common. And whenever possible they group the resorts by geography so you're not inefficiently traipsing around the entire WDW property.



I've heard that sometimes you don't even get your luggage until midnight (from others.)Well, it all depends when your plane landed. Disney says you should have your luggage at your room about three hours after you arrive at your resort. The average reported time from deplaning to resort drop-off is 70 minutes, so you should expect your luggage within about 4 hours or so of landing. So if you landed at 8:00 p.m., then a midnight luggage arrival would be about normal. But if you landed at 8:00 a.m., chances are your luggage is at your resort before your room is even ready.

Why spread negative rumors???

THIS IS NOT TRUE

[CleveRocks]

Not a big fan. Lost luggage. Vomiting kid behind us on a bus with no windows. Too long of a wait at thee airport. it is not for us.
Your luggage was actually LOST by Disney? Lost, as in never found? I'm going to guess you had a lengthy delay but still got it back.

Mistakes can happen in any system, and I realize it's easy for me to sit here in New Jersey and wax philosophical about a stressful and inconvenient time in your life, but allow me to present you (and everyone else) with another possibility.

I don't know the exact circumstances of what happened to you, but in general, it's quite possible a long delay is caused by the AIRLINE misdirecting your luggage. When this happens, DME works on your behalf to get the airline to find your luggage and get it to you. If you didn't use DME, you would have been waiting and waiting at baggage claim only to discover that your bags aren't there. Then you'd have to go to your airline's baggage office and wait in line there and fill out forms and file a claim and so on.

If your bags have DME tags on them, Disney will act as your agent to interface with the airline for you. So let's say your airline mistakenly sent your bags to MCI (Kansas CIty) instead of MCO. Disney has to wait for the airline to fly the bags to MCO where they belong. From that point, the DME-tagged bags will be brought to Disney's luggage sorting facility at MCO and then will be delivered to your room just like any other pieces of DME luggage.

So there are a lot of people who have waited 10, 12 even 24 hours for their luggage and blamed DME for it, when in reality the airline misdirected it and DME actually saved you the trouble of tracking it down for you and getting it to you. Like I said, this isn't every case, but I'm sure a lot of very delayed luggage cases are due to this rather than a DME screw-up.

The vomiting child behind you in the DME bus ... yeh, well, I can't explain THAT one away!:D

A note about how DME luggage handling works:

By the way, just FYI, the DME tags have barcodes. These barcodes are scanned 5 separate times between leaving the airplane and entering your room. The first takes place upon arrival at DME's onsite luggage sorting facility, The second takes place when the bags are grouped by resort zone and loaded into locked cages by resort. The third scan is a scan of the cage itself as it's loaded onto the truck (your bag was already scanned as it was loaded into the cage). The fourth scan takes place as it is unloaded from the cage at your resort. The fifth and final scan is done by a Bell Services/Luggage Assistance CM after the bags are carried into your room; the scan is done using a wireless hand-held device. You don't need to be in your room to wait for your bags -- it will be delivered whether you're in there or not, and Disney even picks up the tip!

When you arrive at MCO, skip baggage claim and check-in at the Disney Welcome Center, one of the questions they will ask you is whether you put DME tags on your bags and how many pieces you checked with your airline (okay, that's 2 questions). If in a reasonable amount of time one or more of your reported number of bags doesn't appear as "scanned" in the DME database, they are alerted to begin searching for it. Just in case, they go to the baggage claim carousel and then the baggage claim office before actually requesting the airline put a tracer on it.

Furthermore, the luggage trucks that deliver the luggage to the resorts are tracked by GPS. CMs at the airport and at each resort are able to track guests' luggage in real-time.

[MrPeetrie]

On an unrelated note, we always tip the drivers to and from $1/bag. They do an awesome job :thumbsup:

When I used Mears in the past, we tipped the drivers. Do most of you tip the Disney drivers, as well?

[Maryutigger1]

Just a quick question~~This will be our 2nd time using DME. Unfortunately, our flight won't arrive until almost midnight. Can we get our OWN luggage and bring it with us to DME check-in? I'm just thinking that by the time we get to our resort (SSR) it'll be around 1am.
We will need our toiletries and such B4 we get our luggage?? :thumbsup:

Anyone have any ideas or comments?

Any help would be greatly appreciaed!!

Only 110 days till The World!!!

Thanks in advance~~
Maryutigger1:mickey:

[Beast_fanatic]

When I used Mears in the past, we tipped the drivers. Do most of you tip the Disney drivers, as well?

I tipped even though we didn't have any bags for the driver to handle. I looked at it like a taxi or shared ride service, and I would tip the driver in either of those cases.


Just a quick question~~This will be our 2nd time using DME. Unfortunately, our flight won't arrive until almost midnight. Can we get our OWN luggage and bring it with us to DME check-in? I'm just thinking that by the time we get to our resort (SSR) it'll be around 1am.
We will need our toiletries and such B4 we get our luggage?? :thumbsup:

Anyone have any ideas or comments?

Any help would be greatly appreciaed!!

Only 110 days till The World!!!

Thanks in advance~~
Maryutigger1:mickey:

Welcome to INTERCOT! Yes, you can get your own bags and take them on the bus with you to the resort. Just do NOT put the yellow DME tags on the bags before you check them at your home airport. If they have the yellow tags, they won't ever make it to the luggage carousel as they are pulled before they get there.

[CleveRocks]

Just a quick question~~This will be our 2nd time using DME. Unfortunately, our flight won't arrive until almost midnight. Can we get our OWN luggage and bring it with us to DME check-in? I'm just thinking that by the time we get to our resort (SSR) it'll be around 1am.
We will need our toiletries and such B4 we get our luggage?? :thumbsup:

Anyone have any ideas or comments?

Any help would be greatly appreciaed!!
Yes, you can claim your own bags at baggage claim -- just DON'T put the DME tags on your bags or you won't have access to them. Go to baggage claim, get your bags, bring them with you to the Disney Welcome Center, and when you get to your bus the driver will load them under the bus for you. You'll get them back as soon as you arrive at your resort.

Another option is to wait 'til morning to have your bags delivered. This way, you don't have to wait at baggage claim for your bags and unnecessarily delay yourself from getting to your resort after a very long day. In the time it takes you toi wait for your bags, you might just miss the next available bus to your resort and have to wait for the next one.

We did this a few months ago when we landed around 10:00 p.m. We packed our "3-1-1" bags with the allowable amounts of toiletries, and also had other night-time stuff and a change of clothes for morning in our carry-ons. That's a smart way to travel, anyway, just in case the airline delays your luggage. Our suitcases were delivered to our room in the morning.

[CleveRocks]

When I used Mears in the past, we tipped the drivers. Do most of you tip the Disney drivers, as well?

Just FYI, the DME drivers aren't Disney cast members, they are employees of a subcontractor, Mears.

My personal way is to tip the driver if he/she handles any of my bags, or even if he/she is just exceptionally friendly or helpful or has a great joke I've never heard before.

I live in a casino town. I don't gamble much, but I go with friends when they visit. My buddy was playing craps and I was just watching. One of the dealers was just one of the funniest and friendliest guys I ever met. He made standing there a really really good time for me. I tipped him $5 when my buddy left. The boxman (the boss of the table, the guy sitting in the middle) literally rasied an eyebrow as he looked at me, like he'd never seen that before. I told him I had a really great time even though I wasn't playing, and wanted to show my appreciation.