Moderates & Bus Service

[travellerman]

Planning a split stay, and for half the trip I'll be staying at a moderate. At the moment I can't decide which one I like best. I will be using the bus system and won't have a car, so looking at it from that point, which do you think has the best bus service of the moderates? I have read that CSR has great bus service, and have read about POR having to share buses with FQ so can lead to long waits. Is this true? I'd love to try POR as I've only been to FQ but when you're depending on buses that has to be considered. I've been to CBR and didn't mind the buses there, and I don't mind the walk if it's a big resort. But I'd love to try a new hotel so I can make new memories, so thought I'd get a few opinions on the bus service.

 

[PUSH]

I've stayed at POR several times, and have never witnessed them sharing buses with POFQ, but I to have heard that they do share them. I only go over peak times crowd-wise, so maybe they share them when crowds are lighter. Regardless, I've never had a bad bus experience at POR other than when a bus broke down once, leaving me to wait longer for one, but that could happen anywhere.

It should be noted that I don't use the bus all the time at WDW, since we always have a car.

 

[aw14]

FQ was our best bus experience. Only shared once with riverside. CBR was awful in our experience and CSR was ok, but certain buses were always slow and/or late.

 

[DizneyPryncess]

On our last trip to POR, I only rode the bus once since we had our car. But we did share with POFQ that one time. I'm not sure how common that is. I only waited a couple of minutes for the bus to arrive though, so it wasn't bad.

 

[JasonDeyoung]

FQ has best imo as POR does at times share with FQ during the slow periods. I never had much trouble with them at Coronado either but that resort is just spread out so if you aren't by a station, happy hiking lol. As for cbr I haven't been there in a good 15-20 years so not much help on that one

 

[JohnD]

All the moderates have more than one station/depot (with the exception of POFQ but sometimes that depot is included with all the stops for POR). If you're expecting to go straight to a park after boarding, don't count on it. Even at CSR, you may think you're going to a park after boarding at Station 4. Nope, many times it goes back to Station 1.

 

[WellFedDave]

POFQ has by far the best bus service of the moderates. Our last stay we only had one shared ride with Riverside and even then the bus was far from full.

 

[Tinkerbella16]

We usually go the second week of November when its not too crowded and never had problems with the buses at POR or POFQ. I know they can be a hit or miss anywhere. Both resorts shared only once or twice the whole time we were there. It was never more than that all 4 times I have stayed at either Riverside or FQ.

 

[Weather_Lady]

We've now stayed deluxe as well as in moderates, and at every location, we stayed for a week, had generally good luck with buses (waits averaging around 5-10 minutes), and experienced one random, catastrophic clustercuss per trip (e.g., a bus wait of an hour). My conclusion is that bus service is fairly similar everywhere and at all resort tiers, although we have found that at larger moderate resorts with multiple bus stops (e.g., PORS, CS, etc.), the average wait at the "main" bus depot (the one closest to the check-in/food court building) is typically shorter than the waits at the more far-flung depots.

 

[jaysmom4285]

I think it's important to note that the resorts don't have any control over their bus service - it isn't as if each resort has a fleet of buses assigned to it. Buses are all dispatched from a central location, and whether a resort's bus service is good or bad on a particular day or week really has nothing to do with the resort itself. So it's really hard to state that any resort's bus service is consistently good or bad - it's just the luck of the draw with the dispatching system. As Weather_Lady noted above, the number of bus stops within a resort or how many resorts share a bus can affect wait time, but that's all the resort has any control over.

 

[sissa216]

I agree- my experience with buses has been basically the same all over property, no matter where I've stayed. FQ is nice in that it only has the one stop. We have been there when POR and FQ shared, but it still wasn't bad.