Useful Information

• At the Magic Kingdom, you park your car in the parking lot, and catch a tram to the Transportation and Ticket Center where you get the monorail or boat to the Magic Kingdom. Make a note of which section you are parked in.

• If you get a bus from a Disney Resort, you are taken straight to the Magic Kingdom entrance, it’s better to use the bus service if you’re staying at a Disney Resort, as you avoid the crowds at the Transportation and Ticket Center.

• You can walk from the Contemporary to the Magic Kingdom. But you cannot walk from the Grand Floridian to the Magic Kingdom.

• If you want to transfer from resort to resort, go via one of the four main parks, or Downtown Disney. Many resorts don’t have direct buses from the Transportation and Ticket Center; you need to go across to the Magic Kingdom to get a bus to your resort. Always check the transport guide to see if there is a bus from the Transportation and Ticket Center direct to your resort.

• A boat runs from the Yacht & Beach Club, the Boardwalk, the Swan & Dolphin Resorts, to Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood Studios. The boat stops in this order – Boardwalk, Yacht Club, Swan/Dolphin, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, Swan/Dolphin, Yacht Club, Boardwalk and Epcot.

• You can walk from the Yacht & Beach Club, the Boardwalk, and Swan & Dolphin Resorts to Epcot (through the International Gateway).
  

• You can walk from the Polynesian to the Transportation and Ticket Center.

• You can walk from the Polynesian to the Grand Floridian (a nice walk past the beaches, and the Wedding Pavilion)

• The transportation system is designed to efficiently transport guests to the park destinations. When traveling between resort properties, please allow up to 1 hour and 30 minutes to reach your destination. Some connections can be made more quickly than others.

• When traveling during high volume periods (such as surprise mornings, after parade exits or park closing), please be prepared for crowded conditions at the stops and the need to have people stand on the buses.

• The normal interval between buses is approximately 20 minutes. During peak travel times this interval may be reduced in order to meet capacity needs. (The interval between Disney’s Blizzard Beach buses may be as long as 35 minutes).

• Most buses are equipped with wheelchair lift mechanisms at the rear door. These buses can be identified by a blue emblem on the front bumper and rear door.

• Some resorts share bus transportation – e.g. French Quarter and Port Orleans, the All-Star Resorts. Be prepared for the bus to make stops at another resort before reaching your destination.

• Transportation begins approximately 2 hrs before opening time. Transportation continues until about 2 hrs after the parks close.
  

• Monorails run from 7:00 a.m. until about two hours after Park closing.
  

• If you want to visit any of the WDW resorts, either to have a meal or just look around, transport can be a problem. The transport guide tells you to get to Transportation and Ticket Center or a park & then get a bus/boat/monorail from there to the resort. But there are other ways. For example, if you’re at the Wilderness Lodge Resort & you want to get to the Grand Floridian Resort, you can get the Animal Kingdom bus or the Disney’s Hollywood Studios bus, which will stop at the Grand Floridian enroute. If you want to go to a resort at night when the parks are closed, you could either get a bus to the Transportation and Ticket Center, then to Pleasure Island, then a bus to the resort, or get a taxi.
  

• The bus from Downtown Disney Marketplace to the Yacht & Beach Club stops in this order – Marketplace, Pleasure Island, West Side, Typhoon Lagoon, Swan, Dolphin, Yacht Club, Beach Club. The journey can take well over 30 minutes. I’m not sure if buses from other resorts to Downtown stop at Typhoon Lagoon also, but they do make stops at each of the three Downtown areas.
  

• If you want to get a taxi on WDW property, just ask at Bell Services at the Disney Resort.
  

• If a Disney resort offers a boat or monorail service to a particular park, there may not be a bus service to that park, e.g. there is a boat from Wilderness Lodge to Magic Kingdom, but no bus service, so the only direct way to get there is by boat. The resorts on the monorail don’t offer a bus service to the Magic Kingdom or Epcot.
  

• There is a direct bus linking Epcot to the Magic Kingdom to Animal Kingdom, but you must get a boat to Disney’s Hollywood Studios. There is a direct bus linking Magic Kingdom to Animal Kingdom & Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
  

• Some WDW Resorts are now giving three-hour parking passes to guests who aren’t staying at that resort, but who are parking there. This is to prevent people parking there to avoid paying parking fees at the parks.
  

• There are now 3 routes and the ferryboat which run on Seven Seas Lagoon and Bay Lake. The different color routes relate to the color of the flag on the bow of the boat. The 3 different colors are:

Gold – services the Grand Floridian and Polynesian. The route goes in a counter clockwise direction, so starting from Magic Kingdom; the route goes Magic Kingdom, Grand Floridian, PO and returns to Magic Kingdom. This route runs with park hours and starts 1/2 hour before the park opens and until about an hour after it closes. The wait to get a boat is usually no more than 10 min. An entire cycle is about 20 min.

Blue – this is the route that runs on Bay Lake. The route services Contemporary, Wilderness Lodge and Ft Wilderness. Usually two boats on this route unless there are boat problems and one goes clockwise and the other goes counter clockwise. A complete cycle takes about 20 min, but with the boats going both directions, unless they both just pulled away from your dock, you won’t have more than a 10 min wait.

Green – This route was previously two separate routes (the red and the green) It now is a combined route for the Wilderness Lodge and Ft Wilderness to and from Magic Kingdom. There are 3 motor cruisers (capacity 120) on this route. (Previously, two went to Fort Wilderness and one went to Wilderness Lodge.) The morning and early afternoon, the route is Magic Kingdom, Fort Wilderness and Wilderness Lodge. After 3pm, it switches direction and goes Magic Kingdom, Wilderness Lodge and Fort Wilderness. These also start about a 1/2 hour before parking opening.

• The ferryboats run from the Magic Kingdom parking lot to Magic Kingdom. The lines do back up from time to time, but they hold 600 passengers and during opening and closing times, all 3 boats are running, which translates into moving about 1800 people every 20 minutes. The time to pick the monorail over the ferryboat would be from about noon-3pm (approximately). That is when there is only one boat running and the wait can be up to 20 min for the boat to return if it has just left. Strollers and wheelchairs roll right onto the boat. It is recommended that regular wheelchairs with low foot pads go down in reverse and up in forward, but slowly.
  

• When leaving the Magic Kingdom from the turnstiles, when you look at the water, you have the Gold dock (Grand Floridian/Polynesian) on the far right (at the foot of the monorail station). The Green dock is the middle one (has a two-tiered canopy and sticks out into the water and is often mistook to be the ferryboat dock to the parking lot) The ferryboat dock is the one at the far left towards the Disney buses to the resorts. There is no Blue dock at Magic Kingdom as that route does not leave Bay Lake.
  

• “If you are planning to stay in one of the All Star resorts, it will be harder to get transportation to the parks at peak times of the day if you are staying at the Movies or Music resorts. There are many times when an empty bus fills at the All Star Sports and can only fit a few people from the other All Star resorts.”
  

• Resort Guests:

Buses:   Most if not all resorts offer complimentary bus transportation to and from the respective hotels. They are there for your use, so make the most of them and use them.

Monorails:   The monorail system is a great transportation device. If you want a nice leisurely ride to the Magic Kingdom and EPCOT then the way to go is the monorail.

Boats:   Magic Kingdom,  you’re better off taking this to get to your car. Taking the Monorail to the Transportation and Ticket Center is a waste of time, especially if you have small children that are starting to get fussy. EPCOT, at the International Gateway you can hop on a boat that will take you to Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

• “If you are taking a Disney bus please read the signs. If you sit in a seat look up and read the sign above that seat it may be for the handicapped or elderly guests. If one of those guests get on the bus you may need to move from that seat and move to a different one. If the bus is crowded you can hold on to the hand rails above the aisle or you can wait for the next bus and get a seat. Please fold your strollers before getting on the bus. Please try to keep the aisles clear from bags.

• “Walking from handicapped parking at the Magic Kingdom is difficult, because no shuttle service runs there. Park at the far end of the handicapped parking and then walk about 20 yards away from the Transportation and Ticket Center into the regular parking to catch a shuttle that will take you directly to the Transportation and Ticket Center.