If anyone is planning to use Magical Express to the airport until January 10, have a backup plan ready. I just returned from a trip last night. ME to the airport, at least for my family, was a mess. We were supposed to get on a bus at 2 p.m. -- it didn't show up. A front desk CM tried to reach Mears for 10 minutes, but no one would answer the phone. They eventually gave us a taxi voucher and told us to call for a taxi. I wasn't too happy about that and asked which company we were supposed to call when a bell services CM ran outside and flagged down a paid Mears shuttle that was dropping off a family. The driver checked with dispatch, who told him to take us to the airport. We overheard the dispatcher tell the driver that they didn't know we were supposed to be picked up by ME, which is why the bus didn't show.
On the way to the airport, the driver told us that Mears and Disney have been feuding over the end of ME. I mentioned that when we arrived on December 22, the line for ME was absolutely huge and a CM there told us it would be hours before we would get on a bus. We opted to take a cab because we didn't want to miss our lunch reservations (or stand in line for hours for a bus). The driver said that Disney hadn't been giving Mears accurate passenger counts and was letting Mears take the heat from people who were angry about the long delays. Don't know how true this is, but there is no doubt that something was really wrong with ME on the 22nd.