JoeCamel
Well-Known Member
It was to get people moving and not waiting for luggage. They provided people to do that for you
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News Disney's Magical Express to end after 2021
- Thread starter WEDway Inc & Company LLC
- Start date
JoeCamel
Well-Known Member
Take the seats out of school buses and load from the back. Not really a difference but if you can pick the buses up for cheap?
I agree that it's highly unlikely the parks will ever FAIL and be shuttered. My point is that they're turning the parks into just another theme park with a super high premium price for the nostalgia and that business model isn't going to hold up.
Chip Chipperson
Well-Known Member
2 different things. DME had the storage underneath for people who brought their luggage with them. The box trucks were for people who used the yellow luggage tag stickers to have their checked bags picked up for them.
DME tagged bags were pulled on the tarmac, trucked to an airport location, sorted then trucked to the resorts.
Bags Inc will handle your incoming luggage. The cost is $40 for the first 2 bags.
I don't know how much guest's would pay
Would Disney charge an acceptance fee?
Disney won't accept third party scooters, except from exclusive vendor
They did use the bus storage compartments for carry on luggage and strollers (and in my case, backpacks!)
ImperfectPixie
Well-Known Member
No, they weren't. We always had DME tags, but we made a point of getting our luggage and bringing it to the bus so it traveled with us and we wouldn't have to wait for it.
Bags with the DME yellow bar coded tags attached were usually pulled on the tarmac. They typically didn't go to baggage claim.
ImperfectPixie
Well-Known Member
Dude. That's not true at all. Not once have we ever had to go searching for our luggage with the yellow tags on them. They ALWAYS showed up on the luggage carousels. The one exception was our checked strollers/car seats. Those are left by the door to the airplane and are usually found there upon landing...however because they had DME tags on them, they were pulled aside and we had to ask where they were.
I'm talking about the long, yellow tags, which had your name, bar code and resort zone. They went around the luggage handle and attached to itself. Similar to an airline baggage tag.
For domestic flights, during DME luggage hours, bags were typically pulled from the tarmac.
Some posters confused the small, yellow Mickey luggage identification tags given to package bookings with the long yellow DME luggage tags.
Edited to add I think in the.first few months of DME luggage may have been pulled from the carousel
ImperfectPixie
Well-Known Member
I'm not confusing them at all. The long, yellow tags with a bar code that are sticky on the back and stick to themselves and need to be cut off with scissors.
EDIT: You DID mention hours...perhaps that's the difference. We've ALWAYS caught the 6-6:30am flights out of Boston, so landing at MCO as early as possible (between 9:00 and 10:00am, depending on if take-off was on time). Perhaps for the early flights they weren't doing that?
I took 6 to 7a flights. I looked out the window and saw the yellow tagged bag neing put in a different truck. I guess it was a staffing issue which determined which bags got pulled on the tarmac and which got pulled from the carousel. I fly Southwest, I don't know if airline was a factor
ImperfectPixie
Well-Known Member
That could be, too. We've always flown Jet Blue primarily, aside from our 2000 trip, which we flew Delta.
DrewmanS
Well-Known Member
The differences in experiences that each of you are describing is probably a big part of why Disney eliminated DME. I had one trip where our bags did not arrive at the resort until 12 hours after check-in. On another trip, we rented a car and were waiting for our bags at the carousels that never showed up. It turned out that even though they did not have bar coded DME tags, they were pulled off because they had plastic Disney tags. I imagine DME luggage issues were a big part of complaints.
Dealing with different airlines for collecting and checking luggage, cost of Mears, agreement with MCO, bus delays, long lines, lost/delayed luggage, etc. While in concept, DME seems like a no brainer providing easy transportation for guests and keeping them on property, the reality is that the "system" often did not go smoothly. Many of the issues were out of TDO's control, but in the eyes of guests, the start of their vacation was ruined by Disney. So, why provide this service at a high cost if it generated so many issues/complaints? Just speculation, but eliminating DME may not have been just about reducing costs but eliminating a major source of headaches for management and improving guest satisfaction (people can't complain about a service you don't have, except of DIS boards
).
nickys
Premium Member
Bags Inc only collected luggage before 10pm and after a certain time in the morning, maybe 8/9am.
nickys
Premium Member
They could have scrapped the luggage service and kept the buses. The two were run separately by different companies.The differences in experiences that each of you are describing is probably a big part of why Disney eliminated DME. I had one trip where our bags did not arrive at the resort until 12 hours after check-in. On another trip, we rented a car and were waiting for our bags at the carousels that never showed up. It turned out that even though they did not have bar coded DME tags, they were pulled off because they had plastic Disney tags. I imagine DME luggage issues were a big part of complaints.
Dealing with different airlines for collecting and checking luggage, cost of Mears, agreement with MCO, bus delays, long lines, lost/delayed luggage, etc. While in concept, DME seems like a no brainer providing easy transportation for guests and keeping them on property, the reality is that the "system" often did not go smoothly. Many of the issues were out of TDO's control, but in the eyes of guests, the start of their vacation was ruined by Disney. So, why provide this service at a high cost if it generated so many issues/complaints? Just speculation, but eliminating DME may not have been just about reducing costs but eliminating a major source of headaches for management and improving guest satisfaction (people can't complain about a service you don't have, except of DIS boards
ImperfectPixie
Well-Known Member
And just had people bring their luggage to the bus. We did it every trip and never had a single complaint.
ImperfectPixie
Well-Known Member
We just didn't want to wait for our luggage to catch up with us, so we brought it to the bus every trip...and we never had a single complaint - even when we had to ask where our checked strollers/car seats were - it was really no issue finding them (took all of maybe 3 minutes to ask and get them) and they were only maybe 15-20 feet from the luggage carousel (there's a smallish corridor with a storage nook where luggage enters the building and comes down a belt and onto the carousel, if memory serves...our stuff was in that nook).The differences in experiences that each of you are describing is probably a big part of why Disney eliminated DME. I had one trip where our bags did not arrive at the resort until 12 hours after check-in. On another trip, we rented a car and were waiting for our bags at the carousels that never showed up. It turned out that even though they did not have bar coded DME tags, they were pulled off because they had plastic Disney tags. I imagine DME luggage issues were a big part of complaints.
Dealing with different airlines for collecting and checking luggage, cost of Mears, agreement with MCO, bus delays, long lines, lost/delayed luggage, etc. While in concept, DME seems like a no brainer providing easy transportation for guests and keeping them on property, the reality is that the "system" often did not go smoothly. Many of the issues were out of TDO's control, but in the eyes of guests, the start of their vacation was ruined by Disney. So, why provide this service at a high cost if it generated so many issues/complaints? Just speculation, but eliminating DME may not have been just about reducing costs but eliminating a major source of headaches for management and improving guest satisfaction (people can't complain about a service you don't have, except of DIS boards
I would bet that many of the complaints could have been alleviated if people planned appropriately and packed a change of clothes or bathing suits/what-have-you in their carryon so they had it with them in the event that their luggage took longer than expected to reach their room, or that even just telling guests to bring it to the bus with them would have helped. Having a separate company handle the luggage was likely a big contributing factor to that issue...the more people involved in a process, the more likely things are to get screwed up...especially when you're talking about companies with differing policies, training procedures, etc. Having guests bring their luggage to the bus would have also reduced costs (by eliminating the involvement of Bags, Inc.) and still would have allowed for guests to have their luggage dropped with bell services and waiting in their rooms for them in a more timely fashion.
The luggage portion of DME was dropped earlier this year. The biggest, and probably only, reason is $$$. Disney decided the benefits, to Disney wasn't worth the cost.
doctornick
Well-Known Member
They could have, but IMHO that would have eliminated the main value of DME (both the luggage pickup/delivery and being able to check bags at the resort). The transportation itself is relatively trivial and easy to replace.
The luggage transport was the real "magic" of the service. YMMV.