Buses Reduced at Disney World’s Skyliner Resorts
Walt Disney World has reduced bus transportation between the Skyliner gondola hotels, Epcot, and Hollywood Studios. In this post, we’ll cover the new policy, share results of our ‘field testing’ the buses, and recommendations for how this might impact your vacation.
Effective immediately, buses for Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood Studios will pick-up guests approximately once per hour at the hotels with Skyliner gondola stations. This means Disney’s Riviera Resort, Caribbean Beach, Art of Animation, and Pop Century all now have reduced bus service.
Prior to the Disney Skyliner gondola system beginning operations for the day or if it’s experiencing downtime, bus service will be increased to approximately once every 20 minutes. These changes apply to both pickup from the hotels and pickup from Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood Studios…
This news broke over the weekend, but aside from a sign at Pop Century notifying guests of the new policy, there were scant details about how this would work. Rather than rushing to share the incomplete story, we decided to head out to Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort and spend an afternoon seeing what, exactly, “approximately once per hour” means.
Sitting around a bus stop for hours might not sound exciting, but with construction now wrapped up at Caribbean Beach, Riviera Resort, and on the Skyliner stations, we have to find some way to fill our time there this year. 😉
Our first goal was to see whether the buses were operating on any sort of schedule. It seems, to us at least, that this would be fairly easy to accomplish at Disney’s Riviera Resort, Pop Century, and Art of Animation, since each of these only have one bus stop. (Due to the internal loop, it’d be more difficult at Caribbean Beach Resort.)
If buses now departed at the top of each hour or on a consistent schedule, this could actually be an improvement. Guests could plan around departure times and get to the bus stop when necessary. This would save Disney money, and improve predictability for guests. Win-win.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. What we found is that bus pick-up times are totally random, sometimes slightly less than an hour apart, sometimes slightly more. Never did the buses come on the top or bottom of the hour, and clearly that’s not the intent.
It’s unclear to us why this isn’t possible, but it’d be a huge improvement over what’s currently happening. Instead, our experience with the buses was unpredictable and frustrating.
The big problem aside from buses operating on an unpredictable schedule is that the wait time boards (and by extension, times in the My Disney Experience app) are unreliable. At Caribbean Beach’s Jamaica bus stop, times for the Epcot bus never displayed, and the bus just showed up unannounced.
This is actually an experience we’ve been having more and more of late. The entire time we were at Disney’s Riviera Resort, the bus wait times didn’t work in the app or on the signs. At the time, we assumed it was an opening week snafu, but we’ve had similar issues at other resorts in the last several months. (We were staying at Saratoga Springs while doing this test, so we didn’t have access to MDX wait times for the Skyliner resorts.)
If you’re concerned that the reduced bus schedule means longer lines for the Skyliner, don’t be. We took a divide and conquer approach to this testing, and while Sarah did most of the less glamorous bus stop stalking, I was flying the friendly skies. Never once did I encounter any line, let alone a long one.
Aside from park closing time (and to a lesser extent, park opening), the wait times for the Skyliner are rarely above 5 minutes. I often ride solo, and the unofficial midday policy seems to be to give each party their own cabin if the line is reasonably short. (We haven’t been grouped with another party at all in the last month.)
If you’re thinking this results in more crowded buses, that’s also not the case–which probably also helps explain the reduced bus service.
Again, this was midday and all of the buses (except Disney Springs) were departing less than half-full, but far and away the least-crowded buses were those bound for Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood Studios. If this continues to be the case, I could see Walt Disney World discontinuing bus service from the Skyliner resorts to DHS and Epcot entirely within the next year.
For us, this policy change comes as no surprise. Readers who won’t use the Skyliner have been optimistic that more guests using the gondola should reduce crowds on the buses–we’ve constantly been cautioning them that it’ll probably simply end up reducing buses.
Walt Disney World didn’t spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a new transportation system only to run the same number of buses as before. Every decision is always about revenue and costs.
On that note, if you’re not going to use the Disney Skyliner gondolas for whatever reason, we’d strongly encourage you to stay at a non-Skyliner resort. Walt Disney World fans love to praise the “free” perks like Disney’s Magical Express, Extra Magic Hours, and the resort-to-park transportation.
None of this is actually free. All of it is built into the nightly resort room rate.
The monorail is one of the main reasons the hotels on that loop cost over $500 per night. Take a hard look at Disney’s Contemporary Resort…do you really think that hotel would fetch those prices if it didn’t have a monorail running through it?! Same goes for Crescent Lake Resorts and being within walking distance of Epcot.
The same is also now true of Caribbean Beach, Art of Animation, and Pop Century. (Heck, even if you like Disney’s Riviera Resort, does anyone honestly think it could command its high rates without that Skyliner station?) Between last year and this year, this trio of existing resorts saw price increases disproportionate to Walt Disney World hotels, as a whole. We’ve contended that these price increases are surprisingly reasonable for the value-add of the Skyliner, but that’s only true if you use the Skyliner!
In short, the bus service is now virtually unusable between the Skyliner resorts, Epcot, and Disney’s Hollywood Studios as a result of this change due to unpredictability and the longer wait. If you are afraid of the Skyliner, you really should stay at other resorts. If that ship has sailed, we’d highly recommend getting to the bus stop before the Skyliner begins daily operations when bus service is still consistent.
Walt Disney World could turn this into a positive for all parties with a published bus pick-up schedule from the Skyliner resorts (even if this required only offering bus service from Old Port Royale, it’d be a net gain). However, we don’t view that as likely given the lack of bus utilization we observed. More likely, regular bus service will be further reduced or eliminated entirely from these resorts. Even if the buses were operating as before and you had perfect luck, the Skyliner is still the most efficient route to Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Epcot from the gondola hotels.
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Your Thoughts
What do you think of Walt Disney World reducing bus service at the Skyliner resorts? Will this cause you to book elsewhere, or do you not care since the Skyliner is so much more efficient? Does this surprise or disappoint you? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
If the skyliner is a cheaper service to operate then why isn’t it operating on longer hours? As Tom has mentioned– I suspect the left hand (park dept) are not talking to the right hand (transportation dept)!
My honeymoon 🙂 is planned in March and the only thing we REALLY want to do is Galaxy’s Edge! We are now planning on taking an Uber or Lyft that morning to make rope drop. I do not want to chance missing the RoR boarding pass!
Not sure if Tom has any insight on this, but I always had the feeling that the reduced hours after the “incident” last October were implemented to ensure that the system was always staffed with the appropriate experts/specialists (i.e., highly-paid consultants who have run Dopplemayr gondolas elsewhere) to prevent and respond to any technical/maintenance/safety issues.
I suspect that Disney didn’t have the right people onsite on that Saturday evening when the system went down, which likely contributed to either the initial accident and/or the long delays in getting things running again. So they decided something to the effect of “We aren’t running this thing without either Hans or Friedrich onsite, and here are the maximum hours they can be available.” I would expect that over time, once enough cast members gain the requisite months/years of experience with running and troubleshooting the system, the Skyliner’s operating hours will be expanded again.
Pete, we stayed at Caribbean Beach in Dec and I noticed just that. There was a cast member with a slightly different name tag wearing a “Dopplemayer” embroidered jacket. I thought the exact same as you. She was obviously not a ride operator but perhaps an engineer or maintenance at the ready.
We stayed at CRB in August before the gondolas were open to the public. In the mornings when the bus stops were crowded we took Tom’s advice and Lyfted to the parks most days. For most parks this was easy though to the MK we then needed to take the ferry. We always took the buses back rather than try and locate our own driver amongst a sea of cars. We found the bus board to be completely unreliable as far as accurately predicting the arrival of the bus we needed. We ended up watching the Epcot fireworks from the far end of the resort because there was no Epcot bus. It wasn’t a bad view but it was a frustrating experience nevertheless.
We stayed at POP century Dec 8-16. Loved the skyliner! I use a scooter due to some mobility challenges that does not allow me to walk through the parks for an entire day and I found it so much easier to use than the bus. There are slow downs on the way to Epcot if they need to facilitate scooters and wheelchairs at the Riviera as there is no turn out to hold gondolas for access. (not sure how they work it, but I think it is a negative for staying at Rivera if you are using a scooter or wheelchair). We never had to wait long for the skyliner. We usually had the gondola to ourselves. Only once did we have another group go with us and that was the last day we were there and I did not use the scooter and wanted to check out the new Riviera. For people using scooters, I find buses more difficult. Especially those that have more than one stop, such as going to lunch at Animal Lodge Jambo house. When you return to the Animal Kindgom you are the second stop and either there are no scooter spots or there are people on the bus who do not want to move so the scooter can be maneuvered into place. One night at Epcot we were closer to the front of the park than the Skyliner and opted to take the bus. I think it took longer because pop century bus stop is far from the gate and then we had to wait. I would recommend if you are near the front gate of epcot, I would still go to the back of the park to catch the skyliner. We never had any long stops on the skyliner when we were there (but I know that is never guaranteed). The day we got up to get in line for the rise to the resistance cue, we had to use other transportation because the skyliner didn’t open early enough, but if watch this blog you will be kept up to date to figure things out. (we got into boarding group 13.. thanks Tom). So if you are using some kind of mobility device I found the skyliner the way to go.
As somebody who had an extreme phobia regarding heights, I now know which resorts I will be avoiding in the future (glad our first stay as a family was at AoA 8 years ago….liked that resort).
However, I can see why Disney would be reducing and possibly eliminating bus service from the Skyliner resorts to/from DHS and Epcot, as your posts have made it clear that the Skyliner can handle large crowds much more efficiently than buses running every 15-20 minutes.
It makes sense that if buses are reduced, they will affect parks with no Skyliner service. If the Skyliner resorts are only getting a bus once per hour, that means you’ll be waiting longer for a bus back to them from MK or AK. If there is normal bus service from MK and AK, those buses would be hitting those resorts more than once an hour.
Wait, the bus service to AK & MK is affected as well? Maybe I missed something, but I would think those would (well, should) stay unchanged as the skyliner isn’t an option as far as accessing those particular parks.
As far as I know, the bus service to AK and MK are unaffected. Also, the buses generally run from point A to point B. Reducing or eliminating buses to/from Epcot and DHS would have no logical impact on your wait time for a bus either going to or returning from AK or MK to any of the SkyLiner resorts. I think Todd may be confused… it’s being reduced to about 1 bus per hour PER PARK for transport between Epcot/DHS and the SkyLiner resorts.
Tom, I’m very interested to hear your recent experiences with the Skyliner. How often has there been a stoppage while riding it, and how long have those stoppages lasted? From your reviews earlier, it seemed it was pretty bad before. I was wondering how things are now that months have passed.
Thanks!
I have literally never had a problem with the Skyliner. I think the longest I’ve been “stuck” is still <5 minutes, and I've used it more times than I can count now--easily 40+ "flights." There were a couple of times (last year...never after early November, I believe) when I saw it was down at International Gateway, so I simply walked to DHS instead of taking the Skyliner.
With that said, I know I've been fortunate. Aside from the obvious with the collision and subsequent closure right after opening last fall, I've heard scattered reports of multi-hour stoppages, but that has not been my firsthand experience. So, I could say "it's getting better" but truthfully, I don't have any personal experience with it being bad.
That is good to hear. Hopefully, things will only continue to go more smoothly. 🙂
On an unrelated note, I have been a subscriber for a long time, but I have not received any e-newsletters since November. I have tried to re-subscribe several times, but I still don’t get any. (And they are not appearing in my Spam folder.)
Can you help, Tom?
When I was there on Veteran’s Day weekend (mid-November 2019), we were trying to use the SkyLiner to head back to our resort from Epcot after Epcot Forever. We stood in line for 15 minutes and didn’t move because they couldn’t get it running for some reason. It would start, process maybe 2 cars, then stop again. Was infuriating. As the line started to literally double back on itself, we eventually decided to try our luck walking to DHS to use that SkyLiner station but eventually bagged it entirely when I realized I could get a Lyft for $10 from Boardwalk back to Pop Century and get the kids in bed that much sooner. I did ride that line when I was back in December and had no issues other than a couple of very short slowdowns. I’ve never had any issues on the DHS line or the line between Pop/AoA and CBR. But that night when it was down after Epcot Forever was brutal and really frustrating!
All of the above…wait times, unreliable schedules, breakdowns, lines, and sheer terror of heights…are the reason we drive from our resort to the parks. Signs are plentiful and adequate, so we find it easy to get around, and we arrive and depart on OUR schedule, and don’t have to share our vehicle with masses of other folks! 🙂
Is parking still “free” at the parks for resort guests, or has Disney taken that perk away (as they now charge guests to park at the resorts)?
We usually take the buses to the parks when we stay at WDW, but we usually tend to drive to the resort from our home.
Yes Peter, it is still free:
“Standard theme park parking is included for registered Guests of Disney Resort hotels and select Annual Passholders. These Guests can also choose to enjoy preferred parking by paying the difference in cost between their included standard parking and preferred parking (difference is currently $20-$25 per day*).”
https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/guest-services/parking/
It is still technically free at the parks but it is really more like “free” since you now have to pay at your resort for parking.
Same here Donna. Its amazing its under 15 minute process to get from most resorts to/from Epcot, AK, and DHS with a vehicle. Too bad if you stay outside the MK resorts, there is no quick way to MK.
Stayed at Disney CB Dec 11-20. Late in the week, Skyliner was stopped for over an hour. A 10 minute sudden stop freaked us out. Can’t imagine an hour, at night no less. There are people, like me, afraid of heights. A bus, even if once an hour, is useful for people who prefer to keep their feet on the ground. Have gone to Disney in December the last 26 years and have seen little improvements in busing. Always the same excuse that they are working on getting it better, while overall pricing increases.
predictable maybe, but to not announce it ahead of time for people staying at those resorts to plan accordingly is not fair to them. they booked based on the current situation of transportation, not to have it suddenly change one morning without warning.
we stayed at AoA in september and fell in love, the layout really worked for our family. skyliner wasn’t yet running, but i’ve been a bit leery since it’s inception, and once it broke down a week after opening, that really makes me not want to ride it. but because AoA worked out so well for us in all other aspects, if we stay again, we’re forced to use something that isn’t reliable and potentially dangerous without an alternative? how does that work out for us exactly?
i agree that if buses are going to be reduced, a firm schedule should be in place. how much time is going to be wasted by people who may have just missed an “hourly” bus waiting around for the next one but having no idea when it’s coming? top or bottom of the hour should be a requirement with this change. saying once an hour could mean in some cases almost 2 hours in between, if bus A leaves at 12:02 and bus B leaves at 1:56.
i also agree that this is 100% a cost-cutting measure, that’s obvious, but i’ll take it a step further- the snarky remarks i see over and over from people who say those who don’t want to take the skyliner “should just take a minnie van”. i think that’s probably disney’s endgame here. reduce free transportation in the hopes that people won’t want to wait and will shell out money for the minnie vans. sure, for our family with 2 needing car seats, a minnie van to get to breakfast at other resorts would have been super convenient, but i was not about to shell out $50 a ride after what we’d already paid for our entire vacation. but if i were a betting person, more minnie vans will become the norm with this change. i’m not trying to be cynical, i just have a knack for seeing the writing on the wall. sometimes change is good, but for the guest, this isn’t that friendly.
i forgot to add, while for me not riding the skyliner is a personal choice, some parties won’t have that choice. thinking of mobility issues or other special needs cases, of which there are countless at disney. the party line just seems to be “choose another resort” but there’s a lot more to those decisions for families in those situations, and that again isn’t guest-friendly in any way to have to choose another resort when their resort of choice which may happen to be on the skyliner might work well for them in every other respect. uber, minnie vans, renting a car, etc all cost additional money.
“predictable maybe, but to not announce it ahead of time for people staying at those resorts to plan accordingly is not fair to them. they booked based on the current situation of transportation, not to have it suddenly change one morning without warning.”
Totally agree. Why WDW communications have gotten so poor recently is beyond me–and it’s ultimately counterproductive for Disney, too.
“i think that’s probably disney’s endgame here. reduce free transportation in the hopes that people won’t want to wait and will shell out money for the minnie vans.”
Eh, I’m not so sure about that. A huge motivation for the Skyliner and other infrastructure projects is to reduce traffic congestion. The Minnie Vans are a step in the opposite direction, but not a significant one (at their current level of use). While I suspect their numbers will increase, I doubt it’ll be a huge spike. There’s still a scalability issue–a large percentage of guests can’t use Minnie Vans. It simply isn’t possible.
oh, i bet there’s a bean counter in an office right now with dollar signs in their eyes dreaming on the possibility of more minnie vans. maybe not all at once, but i bet over time they become more the norm. as long as there are enough people willing to pay for them, they will remain.
Hi there a recent stay in December at the Boardwalk also had completely unreliable bus schedules. The schedules weren’t on the screens at all or if they were they often kept slipping 5 minutes at a time until the wait stretched out for over another half hour. We actually just gave up and took pricey Minnie Vans. Outside of Magical Express, now I will do anything to avoid WDW buses.
We also requested the 60’s building… and got the very end of the 90’s next to century drive! A little over 1/3 of a mile from the Skyliner station. Disappointing, but that’s the luck of the draw sometimes.
I’ve found all of Disney transportation to be unreliable over the last few years. We had tremendous difficulty with cast members inaccurately stating monorail opening and closing hours during our stay at the Poly, and buses at POR were often too crowded to board from stops further down the loop. AoA and Pop have been our most reliable bus experiences over the last 10-years, but it sounds like this will no longer be the case. We’ve been using Uber for any PPO ADRs, but it irks me to pay extra for transportation when this is supposed to be a perk of paying more to stay in the bubble.
I agree. The bus transportation was by far the worst aspect of our recent stay. We routinely waited between 40 minutes and over an hour for buses no matter where we were going. I tried to do a triple rope drop on the day that I got up at 5 for Rise of the Resistance. Made it from HS to AS with no problem, but the bus from AS to MK took over an hour to show up. I could have walked there faster. I’m hoping this reduction of buses will allow more buses to circulate amongst other locations. We spoke to a minnie van driver who said that Disney’s main issue is lack of drivers, so fingers crossed this helps.
On a positive note, my husband and I stayed at Pop Century December 30th and 31st and requested the 60s building in order to be near the Skyliner station. It was SO convenient to have that mode of transportation steps from our room, we enjoyed it thoroughly! On another blog of FB post I read someone make a great point regarding reduced bus availability to Epcot and Hollywood- monorail resorts don’t have any other option besides the monorail to Magic Kingdom and Epcot, so that option to have a bus at all when there’s alternate transportation is somewhat generous on Disney’s part. I would agree that it may not be a forever offering, following suit with the monorail resorts to MK/Epcot.
We just got back yesterday and No the skyliner did not start service until 7:30. With the park opening at 7:00 this was a HUGE disappointment. Especially since you had to be in the park at 7 in order to get on RoTR. Nor did it stay running when the park stayed open an additional hour. This should be corrected as why are folks paying premium for a service that isn’t even available? Why in the (Disney) World don’t they run the skyliner to the very park everyone is trying to get to at opening?!?
I know a lot of people are grumbling about this reduction, but you’re right that this was totally predictable. My only issues with it are the lack of schedule information (both bus times and skyliner operation times) and that the skyliner drops off at a different entrance at Epcot than the buses. This could mess with plans that included entering futureworld instead of world showcase. I’m hoping the skyliner can reliably be used for rope drop when we’re there in a couple of weeks. I’m excited to try out the skyliner!
I’m not surprised of this news but disappointed nonetheless. I was considering Caribbean beach for our next stay for a few reasons. Unfortunately I’m afraid of heights but want to try a run at the skyliner and have bus back up if I freak out my first skyliner ride. Think I will look at swan and dolphin instead. Going to check your reviews of those. Want to save a little dough this time around but like hotels with great pools.
I think that’s the smart option–stay at Swan & Dolphin, have foot access to both of the same parks and test the Skyliner to see how it works out for your family.
If it’s a success, book one of those resorts in the future. If not, you now know and saved yourself some headache.
Swan and Dolphin are both great! The location is fantastic, the amenities are equivalent to deluxe-tier, and the prices are equivalent to moderate-tier on-property. I know some consider these resorts to be an eye-sore, however I have been to Disney 9 times in the past 5 years consider the stay at this resort complex to be the best experience we have had to-date. Walking distance to Epcot and HS (also boat service to both) and the bus service was reliable and never busy. Due to a slightly different demographic, the buses were never packed going to or from the parks as many guest at the park are there for purposes beyond Disney. They also host a family friendly Karaoke each night from 9:00pm – 11:00pm with a lot of kids participating that is fun for everyone (after 11:00pm it turns more adult and kids cannot get on stage). You are also able to easily explore and access the restaurants at Boardwalk & Beach Club. We enjoyed our stay it is now the go-to place for us on property.
How early in the morning is the Skyliner open? Before the parks open? I want to be able to ride Rise if the Resistance, so I need to plan accordingly. Thanks!
buses will still run every 20 min or so if the skyliner is not open/not operational. So if you’re trying to get a boarding group for RotR, you can take a bus to DHS early.
How early do the buses start running now though (since the advent of the Skyliner gondolas at least)?
We did Lyft twice to get to HS for boarding passes in our stay this past week. Saw people coming on skyliner too late for crowds that were already there.
1st time pu at Pop at 5:37am dropoff at 5:45am in gates way before 7 and On app right at 7am but it froze and had to reload, but still got on with BG 97. All the while in crazy crowds waiting to get to lands. Line for SDD was at 120m by the time got through the crowd.
Next day was better idea for us-Lyft pu 6:09am drop 6:24 went in no bag line in park 6:44am BG 54 and then left, went back to Pop on Skyliner to get more sleep. The Lyft rides discounted 50% under $4 each time. I will do this way again.
We stayed at Wildnerness Lodge this past December and had a prepark opening reservation at MK. What’s annoying is cast members never give us a straight answer on transportation. We asked if boats run early enough to get us there at 730 and got a “eh… probably not” answer. Asked if buses run and got a “well yes technically they always run… since not everyone has sea legs… but also they don’t really officially run” type answer. Best we got is “you will probably have better luck at the bus stop during that time” and sure enough an unpublished MK bus showed up. Just ridiculous that asking a CM point blank when transportation starts or if it even runs at all (aka buses) won’t get you a straight answer. I say this because if Wilderness lodge still has unofficial buses I don’t see why the skyliner ones would discontinue completely too.
I know it doesn’t remedy the problem, but Cast Members give evasive answers because the info isn’t communicated with them. Sadly, one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing.
We are going in February and staying at Art of Animation. Have the buses reduced for going to AK and MK?
No, just the bus routes that connect the Skyliner to HS and EP from AoA. Bus routes going to those parks that do not have skyliner access (ie, AoA to AK/MK) will continue to operate normally.
No, why would they? The other two parks are only ones affected bc of the skyliner.
” our experience with the buses was unpredictable and frustrating” that seems like an apt statement for most of WDW in the past decade. 🙂
We stayed at Pop over Christmas week and found the wait time boards/app completely unusable. That was disappointing as it had worked well the only previous trip we’d taken since the boards were installed. I agree with you that the 1/hr departure wouldn’t be a big deal if it were like any other major form of transportation and was scheduled. But the frustration of walking to the bus stop just as your Epcot bus pulls away and knowing you now have an hour wait would be high.
It was also frustrating that the skyliner was operating to DHS from 6:45AM to 11PM on a day that park opening was at 7AM and the last Fantasmic was at 10:30. So we were paying a $30-40 premium to stay at a skyliner resort, but couldn’t actually use it for one of the two parks at open/close.