To the guest who missed their dining reservation because of the buses, I work at a table service restaurant in Magic Kingdom, and for us, I don't know if this is standard across property, but we give guests a 15 minute grace period after their reservation time to show up. After that, we put them on the hold list. If they show up, we will always honor their reservation even if it is 3 hours later(I don't think I've ever seen that happen though.), we just give them a wait time which could be anything from 5 minutes to an hour or even longer (again...never seen that happen), it just depends on how we're doing with reservations that particular night.
As for the buses, to the person that said they should be coming every 5-8 minutes, that is beyond impractical. Besides the fact that a lot of buses would be near or completely empty, can you imagine how many more buses they would have to purchase, how many more CMs they'd need to schedule to operate that way? I understand the frustration of the bus system because it's supposed to be a perk for staying on site, however like others have said, it's not always that long. It's very hit or miss. If you just so happen to just miss a bus every single time you head to a bus stop and have to wait 20 minutes + over a span of a 4-5 day vacation, I can understand where that would be frustrating. But can you imagine if Disney didn't offer bus transportation for resort guests and how much added traffic that would be to the area? That 20 minutes you'd save waiting for a bus would probably be spent sitting in heavier traffic. It's also great for guests who aren't familiar with the area and would have to rely on gps/road signs. Now I, as someone who has lived down here for over a year now think navigating around Disney property is relatively easy, given the amount of signs posted telling you where to go, but I also know that it can still be confusing to people who are from out of the state or even the country. I'm sure we've all seen those tourists cutting across three lanes to get to their exit while driving in the Orlando area, that problem would increase substantially if the on site bus transportation/DME didn't exist. I'm sorry about the lousy experience with the bus system, but if it's that bad, rent a car or find a taxi.
Also, about the "20 minutes should be the maximum wait". When you get on a Disney bus, listen to the recording. They say buses depart APPROXIMATELY every 20 minutes. Meaning it can be less than, it could be exactly, or it could be more than 20 minutes.
Lastly, about Downtown Disney's buses typically being worse than the parks. There was one time I was staying at All Star Sports with my dad and we were at Downtown Disney in the evening. We we were waiting for the bus back at the West Side and it was taking a very long time. Finally, a bus showed up but it was almost completely full and very few people were allowed on so we had to wait for another one to come. I think finally, they just sent a bus directly to the west side and skipped the Marketplace completely because the buses were filling up too much over there that they didn't even bother to go pick up at the West Side. To the person who mentioned waiting a long time at DTD, I don't know what side you were waiting for a bus at but I thought I'd throw that out there.
