Magical Express Experience

I just wanted to share our experience with the Magical Express.
We received our luggage tags on Monday, May 16 via Fed Ex, and we flew out of Dallas-Fort Worth Airport on Sunday May 22.

We arrived at MCO around 6:00 pm, after hiking from Terminal A to the Disney Welcome center, we had to wait about 5 minutes before we were registered and sent across the lobby to get in line for our bus to All Star Movies. We waited in line less than 2 minutes and were escorted out towards our bus. Upon arriving to our bus we were told that it wasn't our bus after all. There were about 3 Cast members trying to figure out what bus we were to board and following about 3-4 minutes of confusion, we were finally sent to the correct bus and we boarded. After boarding we waited about 5 minutes for others to board and we were off. There were two stops before we arrived at All Star Movies. We checked in and arrived in our room by 7:30. We dropped our carry-on luggage in the room and headed to Down Town Disney, when we got back to our room, around 11:50, all of our luggage was waiting in our room for us.

Upon leaving, we checked our luggage at the resort and went back to the room to finish getting ready to leave. The Magical Express but picked us up at 7:40am for our 10:43am flight. There were no stops between ASMo and MCO and security took about 3 minutes to get through.

Over all we had a wonderful experience with Disney's Magical Express.

Allen
Tuscola, Texas

 

[Imagineer]

Glad to hear you had a good experience w/ magical express. I had a mixed experience on the week of May 16. A couple of days before our trip I recieved the WRONG luggage tags. No problem, we just picked up our own luggage from the luggage claim. This only took about 15 minutes. Luged the luggage ourselves to Magical Express checkin. Only took 5 minutes to check in and get in line for our bus. Then about another 5 minutes and we were on our bus. The bus stopped once before getting to the Pop Century. Since we had our own bags we were all set and got into our room about 2hrs after our plane landed.

The return trip on May 21st was a completely different experience. We checked our bags in at the hotel at 8am and recieved our bording pass. Then we went to DAK for the day. We returned to Pop Century at 3:30to catch our bus. Pickup was set for 4:10. When we get to the bus stop we come to realize guests were waiting from a 3:10 and 3:45 pickup time. We waited, and waited, and waited for over an hour before our bus came. All the magical express busses were dropping off not picking up. The nice Mears guy was constantly on the radio trying to get us a bus. He even claimed dispatch quite answering his calls, good to know they have a good work ethic in that company...Finally at 5:00 our bus came. By this time guests for 5pm pick ups have arrived too. Luckily 2 busses came at once and they were able to fit every one on (close to one hundred guests I would assume by just looking around). Luckily our flight didn't leave until 7 so we had plenty of time but some guests had 6 o'clock flights, I hope they made it. Needless to say I was pretty stressed for about an hour with this service. It did turn out fine but not something I want to go through again.

The thing that really got me was that Disney managment didn't arrive on the scene until about 4:45. I know Mears is running the busses but ultimately its the Disney name at stake here and they need to take responsibility. When the Disney managment did arrive they started getting everyones names to rent taxis, just when they were ready to call the taxi service our busses showed up. My opinion on this service is that Disney needs to run the show, not another company. Disney's busses are run with very high efficiency and a great service. They need to use the same technique on this service or get rid of it. The return trip to the airport needs to be perfectly timed during the buisy season comeing up. Hopefully with more practice this service will become better, but Disney needs to take responsibility.