Magical Express

[Mrs Bus Driver]

I have a question for those who fly out of Phoenix Sky Harbor. I am planning a trip for the end of Sept and will most likely take South West (area 4 of the airport). If I use Magical Express where do I check in my luggage? Since SW isn't a Disney airline how do I check my luggage for the return flight?
Thanks in Advance:mickey:

[Strmchsr]

If you fly SW on the return trip you put your luggage on the ME bus, take it to the airport, and check it at the SW counter when you get there.

As far as going to WDW, you check it just like any other luggage. Just be sure you put the yellow tags on the bags.

[sainter]

What Strmchsr said! :mickey:

[CleveRocks]

I have a question for those who fly out of Phoenix Sky Harbor. I am planning a trip for the end of Sept and will most likely take South West (area 4 of the airport). If I use Magical Express where do I check in my luggage? Since SW isn't a Disney airline how do I check my luggage for the return flight?
Thanks in Advance:mickey:
Two important facts:
Disney's Magical Express exists only in and around Orlando.
On the way flying INTO Orlando, everyone on every airline gets the full DME treatment ... it's only on the way home that airline matters for anything.

A few weeks before your trip, you'll be sent special DME luggage tags (yellow paper with personalized pre-printed information). Before you leave home, place one tag on each checked bag.

There. You've done everything you need to do. When you go to Sky Harbor, check your bags with Southwest exactly like you would any other time. The SWA employees at Sky Harbor know nothing about DME, and they don't have to. So please don't ask them ANYTHING about DME because all you'll do is confuse them and drive yourself batty.

At Orlando International Airport, after the luggage is unloaded from the airplanes but BEFORE the luggage gets to the baggage claim carousels, employees behind-the-scenes pull the DME-tagged bags and send them to a Disney luggage sorting facility on the grounds of the airport. They are sorted by resort, locked into cages, and loaded onto special trucks for deliver to the resorts. Once the luggage is at he proper resort, that resort's Bell Services staff then delivers the bags to the proper rooms, whether you are in there or not.

During this process, the barcode on each luggage tag is scanned 5 separate times. Disney knows where your bags are at all times; the delivery trucks can even be tracked by GPS if necessary.

So I hope you can see why, when you get to SKy Harbor, you don't need to do anything special ... just make sure those DME tags are on the bags, and then check your bags like usual.

********************

For the trip home, you can't use the Resort Airline Check-in service, since SWA isn't one of the "participating airlines." You'll bring your luggage to the DME bus area, and the driver will load them under the bus. When you arrive at the airport, the driver will unload the bags, then you'll take your bags to the SWA ticket counter to check them, just as you would any other time you'd fly.

Please post again if you have any other questions.

[Bri]

you probably wouldn't want to check your luggage with ME on the way back anyway. you have to have your luggage at ME a number of hours before you leave the hotel which can be an inconvenience. it's better to check your own luggage on the way home, even if your airline is a ME airline.

[sainter]

Actually, the ME bus schedules to pick you up 2 hours and 45 min before your flight, and the latest you can check your luggage at the hotel (if you are on an ME participating airline) is 3 hours before your flight leaves -- 15 min before you have to get on ME.

[CleveRocks]

Actually, the ME bus schedules to pick you up 2 hours and 45 min before your flight, and the latest you can check your luggage at the hotel (if you are on an ME participating airline) is 3 hours before your flight leaves -- 15 min before you have to get on ME.Well, if you want to get technical, I'll get technical ... :spy:

The latest a DME bus will be scheduled to pick you up is 2 hours 45 minutes prior to flight. It's not automatically set at exactly 2 hours 45 minutes.

Each resort gets DME pick-ups twice an hour (but only when there are reservations for pick-ups!!!), 30 minutes apart on a set schedule. I don't know the schedule for any resorts, but let's just say that POFQ's pick-ups are scheduled for :15 and :45 after every hour. And let's say your flight is scheduled to depart at 4:45 p.m. Your DME pick-up time will NOT be scheduled for 2:00 p.m. (which would be 2 hours 45 minutes before) since there are no pick-ups at :00 after the hour; in this case, the most likely scenario would be a 1:45 p.m. pick-up time.

The DME times are set to be within an approximately 30 minute window starting at 2 hours 45 minutes prior to flight, but could be up to 3 hours 10 minutes prior to flight, give or take.

But like I said, it can't automatically be set at exactly 2 hours 45 minutes before.

And just for the purposes of anyone else who might take things very literally and then find themselves very unhappy on the day they leave their resort ....

Yes, the latest you can use Resort Airline Check-in is 3 hours prior to your flight. HOWEVER, the entire transaction must be totally completed in the computer by exactly 3 hours prior to that flight. The computer won't allow the transaction to be completed even if the last button is pressed on the keyboard at 2 hours 59 minutes prior to flight. One practical aspect of this would be for people with flights scheduled to leave at precisely 8:00 a.m. The RAC desk doesn't open 'til 5:00 a.m., and since it would be impossible for the whole transaction to be completed in one minute (even if you were first in line and the desk opened on-time), people with 8:00 a.m. flights can't use RAC.

[CleveRocks]

you probably wouldn't want to check your luggage with ME on the way back anyway. you have to have your luggage at ME a number of hours before you leave the hotel which can be an inconvenience. it's better to check your own luggage on the way home, even if your airline is a ME airline.Well, of course, it's a matter of opinion, as well as a matter of circumstance.

Let's say you have a 3:00 p.m. flight out of MCO. The DME bus will be picking you up sometime between 11:45 a.m. and 12:15 p.m., give or take. Check-out time is 11:00 a.m.

You decide you want to get a few last spins on Rock 'n' Rollercoaster, or you made an ADR for a Chef Mickey's breakfast that morning. If you are flying a RAC-participating airline, it's a great convenience (for many people) to check their luggage with RAC before they leave for a park or a meal. That way, they are done with the luggage and don't have to deal with picking it up later from Bell Services (which, at times, can be a time-consuming process in and of itself). These people can get back to the resort after playing or eating and just wait for the DME bus without having to mess with any luggage.

It's even more apparent if you have an evening flight, like I did last time. We had a 6:45 p.m. flight, and a DME pick-up time of something like 4:00 p.m. or so. Well, it's not like we were going to sit with our checked luggage all day. Had we been flying a RAC-participating airline, it would have been a pleasure to check the bags through to our final destination, get our boarding passes, go to MK and get back in time to just walk onto the bus.

Instead, we had to allow for sufficient time for Bell Services to return our stored bags to us, and then when we got to the airport we had to handle our own bags and find an elevator and then wait in line at the Spirit Airlines ticket counter to check-in for our flight. Not a huge bug deal by any stretch of the imagination, but it would have been a nice "plus" to just breeze onto the bus, breeze off the bus and head right through airport security and by-pass the whole ticket counter thing.

You may find it more convenient NOT to use RAC, but I don't think a majority of people see it the same way you do.:mickey:

[sainter]

Cleverocks,I guess I should have been more specific, I was actually referring to Bri's post and trying to say that it would probably not be incovenient to use resort check in if you are using ME to go to the airport. But you put it much better in your next post anyway! :thumbsup:

[Piglet822]

I don't know the schedule for any resorts,

I do. If you need to know what your pickup time will probably be let me know where you're staying and what time your flight is.

[sainter]

Jeanne,
Are you only doing DCL now--not ME? I am making a list of Intercotees who work at WDW and where so I keep an eye out for them on my June trip!

[Bri]

i thought it was inconvenient cause a few times our flights were in the morning and the people at concierge told us our bags had to be down there the night before to get on ME without us bringing them. i agree that if you are leaving later in the day it wouldn't be as inconvenient.

[CleveRocks]

i thought it was inconvenient cause a few times our flights were in the morning and the people at concierge told us our bags had to be down there the night before to get on ME without us bringing them. i agree that if you are leaving later in the day it wouldn't be as inconvenient.This is not a comment about you at all, but a comment about resort staff in general.

It's scary what kind of horribly bad information Disney resort CMs give about Disney's Magical Express and about Resort Airline Check-in. The concierge who gave you that information was very badly mistaken, and I'm glad you decided not to follow that advice, as it just would have been a waste of time and a disappointment to you, at the very least.

The Resort Airline Check-in desk at each resort is open every day from 5:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. RAC is exactly like curbside check-in at the airport. Ehen you use this service, you are actually checking in for your flight, and thus you must show ID. In other words, you can't simply leave your bags at the lobby and have the RAC folks check it in for you the following day. Moreover, you can't even do that in-person on the day before your flight. RAC must be used on the same day as the flight -- you can't check-in with RAC on Tuesday for a flight that leaves early Wednesday morning.

It's a real failing of Disney's, a real soft spot, that their resort front desk-area CMs aren't properly trained in DME and RAC procedures. I've reqad countless stories of front desk, lobby concierge and bell services CMs give totally false information. They're not lying, they're just untrained (in that area) and mistaken.

There are no DME CMs posted at any of the resorts. And the folks who work the RAC desks are not Disney cast members ... they are employees of a subcontractor called BAGS Inc.

[Love of Disney]

CleveRocks...thanks for the info on your first post. I am flying SWA in July!! :cool: