Disney’s Magical Express Info, Tips & Review
Disney’s Magical Express is free airport transportation for on-site Walt Disney World hotel guests. This guide to the shuttle service offers tips & info about DME, a review of whether it’s worth your time, or renting a car or using Uber/Lyft is better. We’ve used Magical Express 30+ times, and have lots of experience with it. (Updated July 25, 2021.)
Disney’s Magical Express is available to guests staying on property in Walt Disney World-owned hotels only. In other words, if you’re staying at a hotel with the possessive Disney’s in front of its name, you’re good. If you’re staying at a Disney Springs hotel, the Swan/Dolphin, Shades of Green, or “Cleetus’ Luxury-r-us Motel, Now with COLOR TV!” down on I-Drive, you’re out of luck.
As for what Disney’s Magical Express offers, let’s start with a brief overview. The service operates to and from Orlando International Airport (MCO) only, where it is located on Level 1 of the B-side baggage claim area. Disney’s Magical Express runs whenever the airport is open. Whether you have the last flight of the day or the first, you’ll have shuttle service to or from your hotel. In fact, those late and early options are usually the most efficient and least crowded!
To take advantage of Disney’s Magical Express, all you need to do is indicate that you want to use it when booking your hotel reservation, and the agent will automatically walk you through the process. If you want to add it to your reservation after you make it, you can do that online or by calling 866-599-0951.
Alternatively, if you’re like us, you can fail to do all of those things and just show up to the Disney’s Magical Express kiosk where they will scan your MagicBands and let you board the bus. This is the easiest way to go about it for us, especially since many of our trips are last-minute. This is also an option if you lose your vouchers, your flight is delayed, etc.
As long as you’re a registered guest, they will make sure you get to your hotel. So don’t fret–after all, Disney wants you to get to Walt Disney World so you can start spending money…err…enjoying your vacation! 😉
2021 & 2022 Disney’s Magical Express Updates
Before we get into the Disney’s Magical Express basics and review, we should probably cover the significant changes and cutbacks that have already happened in the last year with Disney’s Magical Express, and what else is on the horizon. We’ll start with current issues and changes, as those are impacting anyone visiting Walt Disney World now and planning on using Disney’s Magical Express.
First, luggage delivery for those arriving to Orlando International Airport is no longer available. This means that guests who use Disney’s Magical Express will be responsible for picking up any of their checked luggage from the airport’s baggage claim area, so that it can be loaded onto the motorcoach to their Walt Disney World resort hotel.
Additionally, Resort Airline Check-In Service is no longer available upon departure from your Walt Disney World hotel. This means that you’ll need to have your luggage with you to load it onto the motorcoach, and you’ll need to check it in with your airline once you reach the airport. Basically, all luggage handling is now done by guests. Not having to hassle with bags to and from the airport was a huge convenience for many guests, so this is one big loss that has already occurred.
Second, lines can be very long for Disney’s Magical Express at Orlando International Airport. There’s a bus driver shortage and that compounded with high pent-up demand can mean long lines during peak travel times. Unfortunately, there’s also a rental car shortage and Uber/Lyft driver shortage, meaning higher prices and longer waits for both.
The best way to avoid all of these issues is arriving into MCO in the morning or later in the evening. During the middle of the day is when these problems are most pronounced. At off hours, you might not experience any of these issues at all. While it might seem “extreme” to plan your flights around airport transportation, it really isn’t.
Do not underestimate just how bad these issues with DME buses, rental cars, and Uber/Lyft really are. There have been reports of hour-plus waits at rental car counters and/or Disney’s Magical Express during the midday hours. (I wish I took better photos to fully illustrate just how bad things are at MCO, but after our first negative experience earlier this year, we’ve started taking the very first flight of the day to avoid further issues.)
Now let’s turn to the what’s happening next year: Disney’s Magical Express is ending in 2022. The shuttle service will no longer be offered starting with arrivals January 1, 2022. Guests who arrive at Walt Disney World before this date will still be able to utilize Disney’s Magical Express for transportation to Orlando International Airport following their hotel stay until January 10, 2022.
Walt Disney World attributed the decision to the rise of Uber of Lyft, saying there has been an the expansion of transportation options for guests: “vacationers have more options to choose from than ever for transportation, including ride-share services that save time and offer more flexibility to go where they want, when they want.”
Following that, guests will need to utilize private transportation or ride-share services. Disney’s Magical Express will also have a spiritual successor in Mears Connect, which begins service in 2022. Mears is the vendor that currently operates Disney’s Magical Express, so there should be good continuity of service. The only difference between how the transportation works in 2021 v. 2022 is that there won’t be Disney branding and you’ll have to pay for Mears Connect directly.
If you don’t want to rent a car or use Uber/Lyft, Mears Connect will be your main option for the next several years. While some Walt Disney World fans might point to the Brightline train station at Disney Springs being the eventual replacement for Disney’s Magical Express, that’s still several years away. Construction hasn’t even started yet on the MCO to Disney Springs line, and the tentative target opening year for that line is 2026. Given the delays to date, we’d bank on it being finished late, not early—and certainly not next year!
With all of that out of the way, here’s basic info about Disney’s Magical Express…
Disney’s Magical Express Info
The Disney’s Magical Express buses are coach-style buses operated by Mears. They have restrooms and on-bus displays that go through a video covering the basics of Disney’s Magical Express and Walt Disney World that’s pretty fun. There’s also an hour-long background music loop that plays on the bus (which is also conveniently available online–it’s nice background music to put on at home!).
If you’re “fortunate” enough to still be on the bus after this video finishes, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck shorts play after it. In total, the commute from your plane (via walking and an airport monorail) to the Magical Express area will take about 10-12 minutes, the wait from the time you arrive in the Magical Express area until your bus departs will be about 10-30 minutes, and the commute from the airport to the Walt Disney World main entrance is about 30 minutes.
After that, add about 7 minutes for each hotel at which the bus stops. In other words, plus 7 minutes if you’re stop 1, plus 28 minutes if you’re stop 4. The whole process will take a minimum of about an hour and a maximum of just under two hours. Oh, and trying to bribe your bus driver with a generous tip will not get you there any faster (although it is customary to tip them, regardless).
If you would prefer a private ride but don’t want to rent a car, Uber or Lyft airport pickups are now an option at Orlando International Airport. How long that’ll take and cost depends largely upon demand and traffic. Arriving at off hours will always be your best bet.
The whole Disney’s Magical Express process is similar when leaving Walt Disney World resort. You will need to schedule your DME ride in advance, and you will receive a voucher slipped under your hotel door the day before you leave with a pick-up time about 3 hours before your domestic flight or 4 hours before an international flight.
Security at MCO can get really backed up during busy travel times on normal days, and the holidays are downright chaotic. If you have it, you’ll be very thankful for TSA PreCheck. In terms of procedure for using Disney’s Magical Express for your return trip to MCO, it’s pretty simple.
Simply go out to enjoy the parks on that precious last day of your vacation. Make sure you give yourself plenty of time to get back to your hotel to catch your assigned bus. Unlike the ride to Walt Disney World property, Disney is not nearly as flexible in accommodating you on the way back to the hotel.
If you’ve never used it before, it can sound complicated, but it’s actually incredibly easy to use. It’s actually fairly idiot-proof, too. As long as you can find Level 1 in the airport, you’re set. Someone there will help you with the rest of the details and herd you to your hotel.
Review
Some of you are probably wondering how something that’s “free” might not be worth it. Well, free is in quotes at various places in this article because it’s truly not free. You probably don’t need a reminder of this, but Disney is a for-profit company that doesn’t offer things out of corporate benevolence. Don’t let those cute characters fool you.
As such, there are a couple of costs associated with Disney’s Magical Express. The first is your freedom. This is the big reason Disney offers the service, as it makes guests much less likely to rent cars when visiting Walt Disney World, and thereby makes them less likely to visit competing theme parks, eat off-property, or even go to the grocery store.
In short, it makes tourists a captive audience, and Disney has determined that the average increase in per guest spending with Disney’s Magical Express plus the perceived convenience and goodwill obtained from offering the service outweighs the average per guest cost of offering the service. There’s probably a bit more to Disney’s calculations than that, but that’s the basic gist of it.
If you plan on spending your entire vacation on Walt Disney World and thus don’t really care about your freedom, this is not really a cost at all. Even if you do care about having some freedom, services like Uber and Lyft have made it so much easier to go off-property at a relatively low price. These days, we don’t really view “freedom” as that great of a cost.
The second cost is your time. As you can see from the information above, using Disney’s Magical Express can be a time-consuming proposition. It’s usually going to take more time using Disney’s Magical Express than it will take to pick up a rental car and drive directly to your hotel. Unless you are awesome at getting lost in Orlando.
Depending upon how you value your vacation time, the cost of these couple hours on the front and back of your trip may not be worth it. You may see better value in just paying for a rental car for the duration of your trip. These are the two main costs of Disney’s Magical Express. When planning your Disney trip (or living life in general), it’s sometimes important to remember that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
As for the service itself, we generally like Disney’s Magical Express. That much should sort of be a given, as we use it almost every time we travel. Efficiency with DME can be hit or miss; sometimes we wait 10 minutes from the time our MagicBands are scanned until the bus departs, sometimes we’ve waited 40 minutes. We’ve been taking red-eye flights lately that arrive into Orlando at around 5:30 a.m., and our average wait this early has only been around 15 minutes, and often we have a bus nearly to ourselves–not bad!
Even though it does take longer when using Disney’s Magical Express than when not using it, we believe the difference is negligible. You’re probably looking at a grand total of two hours of vacation time (round-trip, and that’s at the absolute most), which isn’t a big deal to us. Granted this time is at the front and back of the vacation, when you’d do just about anything for “one more hour” in the parks, but in the grand scheme of a trip, it’s not much.
The big benefit of Disney’s Magical Express, as we see it, is convenience. All we have to do is show up, and we’re put on a bus and dropped off right at our hotel. We can even sleep on the way there. Of course, sleeping means you miss out on the video on the way there. Watching that video has become a tradition of our vacations, and although the video itself is a bit corny, it always makes us smile. Disney’s Magical Express, in general, has become such a part of our trips that vacation doesn’t really start until we get on that Magical Express bus.
When discussing Disney’s Magical Express, it seems the topic of renting a car instead always comes up. Aside from the above (using the rental car instead of Disney’s Magical Express to get to and from the airport), it’s important to remember that using Disney’s Magical Express and renting a car for your trip aren’t mutually exclusive. You can take Disney’s Magical Express, and then rent a car once at Walt Disney World for just a few days of your trip (or the whole thing, if you really want).
If you’re on the fence about renting a car for your Walt Disney World vacation, getting to and from the airport shouldn’t really be a consideration either way. Since this is a Disney’s Magical Express review and not a post weighing the merits of renting a car, I won’t go any further down the rental car road in this post. Additionally, taking Uber instead of Disney’s Magical Express can be an option (with some caveats). We touch upon that and some other transportation issues in our Walt Disney World Transportation Tips article.
Overall, we believe that Disney’s Magical Express is still a useful service that offers a fun way to start out your vacation. Granted, it’s not a “signature” experience like riding the monorail, but it still has a “Disney feel” that we’d miss if we didn’t take it. As far as efficiency goes, it’s unquestionably less efficient than renting a car and driving directly to your hotel, but the trade-off is convenience and lack of additional out of pocket cost. It’s not going to be for everyone, and rent-a-car die hards are unluckily to change their ways due to Disney’s Magical Express, but for everyone else, Disney’s Magical Express is a good service that’s worth using. Because of this, all things considered, we recommend using Disney’s Magical Express.
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
Your Thoughts…
Are you a fan of Disney’s Magical Express, or do you prefer to get yourself to the hotel? What have been your experiences using Disney’s Magical Express? Disappointed that DME no longer handles luggage? Upset that the service will end entirely in 2022? Planning on using Mears Connect next year? Do you agree or disagree with our review? 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!
Hi,
Can anyone tell me approx. how much it cost to take uber from MCO to a Disney resort. I know time and resort location will vary the price. But just wanting to know approx. price. Thank you
I too am upset with the cancelling of the Magic Express. I understand the cost of this service, and don’t mind handling my own luggage. I wouldn’t even mind paying say,,,,$7 to ride it. It’s still a heck of lot cheaper than a taxi-rental or Uber. I have waited anxiously for retirement so I could visit Disney several times a year. After finding out that a rental car was almost double an airline ticket from my area I was glad to take a flight and leave the driving to someone else. To find out I’ll only get the bus service one time and then it’s done is very upsetting. Please lets all beg to have it kept even it means paying a small fee. Almost any hotel of any standards these days has airport shuttles. Why wouldn’t Disney?
Hi Tom (and Sarah): I think you have already covered this in other articles but (in this year of lots of unprecedented things) things are still volatile in _everything_ to do with transportation. Uber and Lyft prices are coming back down from the highs they were at a few months ago but they were still higher this week than pre-pandemic and wait times were still longer. Meanwhile car rental rates are skyrocketing. Hertz (for example) went through chapter 11 and suddenly this month changed the rates for _existing_ reservations. This has happened to us and I have heard this is happening to others as well. This means rates in the app for existing reservations are showing as 2 -3 times the rate quoted in the reservation email (for reservations made this spring for the upcoming fall and winter). When speaking to a supervisor at hertz I have been told to bring the original email quote to the rental desk and it will be honored- but I will believe that when I see it since Hertz has completely restructured. Maybe by the time DME ends things will be more stable in transportation (one can hope…). In the meantime, we are weighing the “inconveniences” of DME differently than we did in the past.
Sorry to hear this–I have heard the same from several friends and readers. Like you, I’m highly skeptical that Hertz will honor the old rates when push comes to shove. Personally, I’m worried that the inventory will even be there as I’ve also heard some horror stories recently about people waiting hours at the airport for their confirmed vehicle to come back into service.
Hopefully this starts to work itself out, but I’m not convinced it will.
I have heard it is hard to get an Uber or Lyft at the airport or the resorts because of demand and fewer drivers.
Hi Tom,
Is there anything we can collectively do to ask Disney to reconsider this abandonment of the DME? We really enjoy the service and really feel Disney is making a huge mistake by ending the service
To anyone upset about Disney’s Magical Express not returning, I would encourage you to politely voice that opinion to Walt Disney World directly by emailing [email protected] or [email protected].
I don’t know a lot about Uber, but from the research that I’ve done on MCO pickups, there don’t appear to be any sort of restrictions anymore on which types of Uber service can go to MCO. So that bit of information appears to be out of date (I don’t think that Uber Family or Uber Select even exist anymore).
You are correct! Missed that one when updating this–thanks for the heads up.
The Magic express has always been our first choice in transportation. Your vacation beings when you check your luggage in your departing airport. No schleping luggage, it magically appear in you room. “THAT WAS GREAT” BUT ALAS, the Magic express no longer handles your luggage ( 2021 ) because of covid. Now we arrive in term A, go down to get our luggage, grab luggage, go up to concourse, schlep to terminal B. Go down to level 1. Walk ( long walk) all the way to the Magic express. All the while dragging ( or using a cart) all the bags, car seat and 2 kids in tow . I’ve said a number of times, the loss of luggage handling make the trip abysmal. I’ve been using the service since 2010.
If you miss your scheduled DME bus on your return trip back to MCO, can you grab another bus?
If you have a carry on with you and use the Magical Express, can it be left at the hotel prior to your hotel check-in time? We want to pack important items and extra clothes in a carry on, but don’t want to have to take this carry on in the parks before we can check in later that afternoon. So basically, will the hotels hold additional luggage while we go to the parks until we come back that evening to check in?
Absolutely! If your room is not yet ready when you get to the hotel, Disney will keep your bags for you until you’re back from the park. They will also hold your bags the day you leave if you need to check out but have a few hours in the parks before you head back to the airport.
Thank you!
We have been 6 times to disney and this has been the first time in Oct that we did not rent a car for the whole of the holiday . It was brilliant using the bus transportation, we had to wait a bit of time on a couple of occasions but still quicker than parking and grabbing the shuttle to the front of the park . All in all will definitely use the buses again .
We hired a car to to go to universal , was brilliant collecting / dropping off from the dolphin hotel . Couldn’t fault them at all , hire from Alamo .
My husband really enjoyed not having to be in a car all the time , helped him relax more and also enjoy his time at disney .
There is also the gondolas that are brilliant getting you from and to the parks too . We used them loads of times and so quick .
We plan to take ME from airport to Disney however at the end of our vacation we are going to my niece’s wedding and I will need a rental car. Does Disney offer this service on property or do I need to go back to the airport to pick up the car?
Car rentals are available at the onsite Car Care Center. Or Enterprise, which is right outside Disney, will deliver a car to you.
Were coming from the UK on 02/06/2020. I’ve never used ME before. Can we pick up our cases and take them on the ME ourselves? and do you just queue for the ‘next available’ ME to depart or as we have pre requested ME will we be allocated a particular ME coach?
You can collect your luggage yourself and take it to the ME. You do need to book your travel with the ME but it is a free service .
If we decide to rent a car, can we still have magical express deliver our luggage to our room?
My husband went in the car with our friend and the 4 of us went on the ME with all the luggage .Dont think you would be able to send the luggage on its own but never tried
Disney will deliver your bags to your room only if you’ve checked your luggage and put the yellow tags on them. Disney will not accept bags on the bus unless you are also riding on the bus. (I know this because I asked about putting my carry-on on the bus to be brought to my hotel while I Uber’d direct to the parks. No can do.)
We’re staying at Port Orleans but are thinking of ways to get right to Epcot. One idea we had is to take the magical express to the Beach Club and walk to Epcot. Are you allowed to take any ME or do you have to take the one designated for your hotel?
ME only goes to and from the airport. You can’t use it to go between resorts.
Yes, you can do that. Just be sure to bring your MagicBands in whatever you’re bringing to the park and not the luggage you’ll be leaving behind. Have a great trip!
If we get to the Magical Express line and see that it’s really long, we may decide to take an Uber. Does anyone know if Disney will still grab our bags for us in that case? Or do we have to actually take the bus for them to get our bags and deliver them to the hotel?
If you’re talking about carry-on bags, Disney won’t take them to the hotel unless you are also on the bus.
All Walt Disney World Resort guests can take atvantage of Disney’s Magical Express Service no matter what airline, however not all airlines participate in the Resort Airline Check in Service
Magic express is the buses that are to and from the airport only .
There are Resort buses which you can catch to anywhere around the parks or to different resorts .
You can also catch the Gondolas now too .
You can’t take a regular Disney bus direct from one resort to another. You’d have to go to a park, the TTC, or Disney Springs and then switch to the bus for the other resort. In those cases, I call a rideshare service; it’s worth the few dollars for the savings in time.
I’ll be flying in domestically, and need to know what airlines are compatible with DME.
Thanks.
Thank you for this article. I’m reading it now as we sit at 1 AM on the Magical Express for 40 minutes and counting. Our flight was delayed a few hours. Wish I would have read this earlier. When we booked they told us the transportation departs every 20 minutes. If we would have known, we would have picked up an Uber. With three little kids so late at night and staying at the Polynesian (the last stop), this is not a good option.
I booked a reservation for Animal Kingdom via Priceline Express. Can I still use DME?
Do you know the order of the stops for each bus?
Thanks!