Magical Express Issue - Would you complain?

[Nimbus]

Originally Posted by Gill H

They automatically assign you the bus four hours before your flight. You can ask to change but we would rather play safe.

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I didn't think you were assigned a specific bus. I thought they just assigned a timeslot for your bus?

It's a bit like when you arrive in Orlando and get a bus from the airport to WDW. You get on the next available bus that has room. You don't get on a specific bus. You may have to wait a while for the bus to fill up. There is no implied guarantee you will set off within, say, 10 minutes of getting on the bus.

Therefore, in the OP's case, what they described sounds like normal working business.

[Nimbus]

Originally Posted by 7SeasSailor

Interesting point that Disney can tell you how many thousands of people are in their parks at any given minute but can't count how many people want to use a particular Magical Express coach?

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I suspect they do know roughly how many people have been assigned to use the Magical Express system at any one point in time. However:

1. Often there may be more people in a given time period than can fit on a single bus. Therefore multiple Magical Express buses are required and will probably be staggered - they can't all arrive at the same time.

2. Some people may not actually turn up at their allotted time. Some might be early, some might be late. Some people might turn up even though they haven't booked the ME. Because... people.

With regards to the first point, when we left CBR last time around 3 ME buses turned up in a 10 minute period. We just got on the first one that arrived (I think).

With regards to the second point, I suspect Disney tries to accommodate people as best they can. That means some buses might contain more or less people than expected. If they rigidly enforced the rules and didn't allow any variance I suspect they'd get a lot of complaints.

Finally, knowing how many thousands of people are in the parks is a bit different to knowing how many individual people want to use ME. I doubt Disney knows how many people are expected to turn up at the entrance to a particular park at, say, 10am to an accuracy of half a dozen people.

[Loulou127]

The people standing on the DME is an interesting one, if that had been me I’d probably have opted to wait for the next bus, but how is that very different to how they pack people onto the resort/park buses? after fireworks those buses are really packed, if there was an accident even at those slow speeds there could be many injuries x

[chmurf]

Originally Posted by Loulou127

The people standing on the DME is an interesting one, if that had been me I’d probably have opted to wait for the next bus, but how is that very different to how they pack people onto the resort/park buses? after fireworks those buses are really packed, if there was an accident even at those slow speeds there could be many injuries x

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well, it's quite different, in the sense that DME is a coach that drives on highways, at speeds in excess of 60mph

Resort transportation is not different from the town buses that drive on city streets at speeds of 30mph

the main difference is that coaches are rated for X seated passengers and no standing passenger, while buses will have a max capacity of X seated and Y standing passengers. (you can see that on a sticker on the ceiling close to the driver on every public transportation vehicle)

buses and coaches are 2 different type of transportation and do not follow the same rules and requirements.