DME after 10pm

[glvsav37]

Looking at taking a late flight down for this trip and arriving at MCO after 10pm. I read that you need to grab your own luggage and bring it down to DME loading which is fine.

We were wondering though how frequent the buses are running that late? Do they group up more than the general few resorts onto 1 bus to make up for the lower capacity (we will be going to AKL)?

What do they do with the bags...put them below the bus? I assume bell service is open at the resort that late?

thanks for any insight

 

[Monty]

Frequency of buses will depend on how many folks are booked to use DME when you are. I believe they are contractually required to limit the number of resorts each bus stops at to four, regardless of time of day, but it's been a long time since I heard that so it may be wrong or may have changed. @Rob562 might know.

Yes, your bags go under the bus or if they're carry-on sized, you can keep them with you. Bell Services are available 24/7 at all resorts AFAIK, but certainly at the Deluxes, so AKL will have it.

 

[Rob562]

I haven't heard of any changes to the official policy, @Monty . Though from what I've read online, experiences at the very end of the night can vary, presumably due to staffing and bus availability.

One thing to make sure of if you're on a flight that's arriving after 10pm (or if you're rescheduled day-of to a different flight than your original one) is to ensure that DME has your correct flight info. The DME desk does close at some point (I think it's at 11pm). But if they know they have people on the handful of flights scheduled to arrive after 11pm (or on a delayed flight) then they keep a skeleton crew on-duty to handle those passengers. I've never read of it happening, but theoretically you could miss a connection, get on a later flight that arrives at 11:30pm, and if you didn't inform DME you could arrive to a closed DME desk.

So always important to make sure DME has your flight numbers (they can track delays using the flight numbers).

-Rob

 

[glvsav37]

Thanks everyone for the info

 

[NeverEnufDisney]

We've come in late a few times and it did take a bit longer, maybe another 10-15 minutes for loading.