Advice getting to MK from Dolphin?

[KCheatle]

Staying at Dolphin for the first time in late October. I see that they no longer use Disney buses, but use Mears instead, which drop you off at TTC instead of the normal bus drop off at MK. Wondering if anyone on here has any useful “hacks” to get around this? Or “tried and true” advice if we do end up going to TTC (for example, is the ferry fastest? mono faster?)

TIA!!!

And any other advice for this Dolphin newbie??

 

[jpinkc]

We are going in the same time frame and this was suggested to us. Go to Epcot World showcase entrance and walk thru to Monorail at the front. This was one suggestion we were given. It was suggested this was fastest.

 

[PhantomTeaMistress999]

Are the monorails from epcot even running yet?

My suggestion if things are still the way they are now is to ride the mears to the ttc and jump the Express Monorail to MK.

Other suggestion would be to walk to nearby Disney Resort (Boardwalk, Yacht Club, Beach Club) and catch one of their Disney Resort busses to MK bus drop off.

 

[wdwmagic]

Are the monorails from epcot even running yet?

My suggestion if things are still the way they are now is to ride the mears to the ttc and jump the Express Monorail to MK.

No EPCOT monorails yet.

 

[PhantomTeaMistress999]

No EPCOT monorails yet.

That's what I thought.

 

[bee]

I would walk to either the Boardwalk or Yacht/Beach Club and take a bus. You could try getting a Lyft/Uber to the Contemporary but you run the risk of the security guards not letting the car in.

Taking the monorail wouldn't work right now even if the Epcot line were open, because you'd have to get a park reservation for Epcot and wouldn't be able to enter MK to park hop until 2:00pm.

 

[RememberWhen]

@lentesta suggested that time-wise if you just miss the bus you could go walk to boardwalk or yacht club and take the bus from there. Otherwise just ride the mears bus and the time difference is minimal.

 

[lentesta]

@lentesta suggested that time-wise if you just miss the bus you could go walk to boardwalk or yacht club and take the bus from there. Otherwise just ride the mears bus and the time difference is minimal.

Here's the math I used, along with the original question from the show notes:

Follow-up from Becky:

I have a trip booked for this July and we are staying at the Dolphin hotel. I have stayed there many times before and have always loved it for the location and Disney transportation. I was very disappointed to hear they switched to Mears shuttles. Could you please tell me if it would be better for us to walk over to the Yacht Club to catch their bus to get to Magic Kingdom, or Boardwalk rather than use Mears? Also, would this be allowed?

Len: we sent someone over to time the buses at the Swan and Dolphin, and they seem to be running every 30 minutes, give or take. And that seems like it’s a little slower than Disney’s every-20-minutes. So your expected wait for a bus is 15 minutes. But I’m not sure it’s worth the walk, because the walk will take 10 minutes.

A bunch of people wrote in saying that I didn’t explicitly mention that the Swan and Dolphin buses drop off at the TTC now, not the Magic Kingdom. And yeah, I forgot about that. But does it change the math? We sent researches to time the bus ride from the TTC to the MK, and this is what they found:

• The maximum wait for a bus to leave the TTC once you board in the morning is around 6 minutes (that’s way faster than I expected). The trip itself takes under 4 minutes.

So your expected trip time from the Swan/Dolphin to the MK bus stop using Mears is:

• Half of the bus wait (15 minutes) plus the drive to the TTC (11 minutes), plus half the wait for a bus at the TTC (3 minutes), plus the drive to the TTC (4 minutes) = 33 minutes.
  
  
• Walk to the Yacht Club (9 minutes) plus half the wait for a Disney bus (8 minutes) plus the drive to the Magic Kingdom bus stop (call it 13 minutes, because you don’t have to stop at the TTC) = 30 minutes.

So the question then is whether you’d walk 9 minutes to potentially save 3 minutes of sitting down. I’m not sure the answer to that is an obvious yes. So I think my original answer is good: walk to the Yacht Club if you know you just missed the Mears bus at the Swan.

 

["El Gran Magnifico"]

If you go the Uber/Lyft route - remember that you can also walk from GF and Poly.

 

[DiSnEyF@n]

Going in August and my jaw dropped reading this post. We’ve gone to Disney and stay at the Swan for years now…. To know that they’re not using the busses saddens me. With that said, I plan on using meats to get to MK and then taking the Boardwalk bus back and walking to Swan from there. I am still in shock but we’lol work with the change…. A positive upside is that my kids will LOVE to have a reason to ride the monorail.

 

[Weather_Lady]

With that said, I plan on using meats to get to MK and then taking the Boardwalk bus back and walking to Swan from there.

Well, that's one form of Disney transportation I've never tried! When you take the meats to get to MK, do you find that the ride is a little... wait for it... jerky?

... and yes, I know you surely meant Mears, but it's so much more fun picturing someone riding their pork chop skateboard, or chuck roast wagon, around WDW.

 

[nickys]

We are going in the same time frame and this was suggested to us. Go to Epcot World showcase entrance and walk thru to Monorail at the front. This was one suggestion we were given. It was suggested this was fastest.

This only works of course if a) you have park hopper tickets and b) you don’t want to be at MK at rope drop. Epcot never opens earlier than MK.

In actual time taken, it’s possible it could be quicker. I have my doubts. By the time you’ve got to the Epcot monorail station (25-30 minutes with no hold ups at the ticket scanners) a bus will probably have arrived. And then you’ve got to the TTC, changed platforms and got to MK. But if you don’t care about rope drop then it hardly seems worth it to do all the walking first to possibly save a few minutes travel time.

 

[KaliSplash]

One other problem with Swan/Dolphin. Transportation to the Studios. Only boat is available and they are down in storms. You can, of course, walk to the Studios. In the rain. Otherwise, it's walk to Boardwalk or Yacht Club to get a bus to somewhere else. Eventually, if the rain and storms last long enough, the Yacht/Beach/Boardwalk get buses directly to the Studios. (Ordinarily, they don't have them because they have the boat service, and nominally the Skyliner, if you walk all the way to the International Gateway. But they are also subject to stopping during storms.

 

[DiSnEyF@n]

Well, that's one form of Disney transportation I've never tried! When you take the meats to get to MK, do you find that the ride is a little... wait for it... jerky?

... and yes, I know you surely meant Mears, but it's so much more fun picturing someone riding their pork chop skateboard, or chuck roast wagon, around WDW.

This had me laughing bad!