Will Disney’s Magical Express Airport Shuttle Ever Return?

Since its unceremonious demise, we’ve been wondering whether Walt Disney World would ever bring back Disney’s Magical Express. As I’ve said countless times before, killing off the DME airport shuttle was a mistake. Not just something I hoped they’d revisit as they tried to find guest experience wins. A bad business decision, too.

I’ve discussed this repeatedly in posts like the list of Top 10 Guest Complaints About Walt Disney World. Eliminating Disney’s Magical Express is one of those things that made sense on a spreadsheet or as a short term boost during the period of pent-up demand, but is doing incalculable damage to Walt Disney World. The beancounters got it wrong, and the long-term consequences to the company in ending Disney’s Magical Express will exceed the money saved and to whatever degree it juiced margins for a few years.

The move will cost the company on-site hotel stays, visits to other theme parks, meals outside the resort complex, and more–or having to discount more aggressively to maintain occupancy targets. One of Walt Disney World’s greatest strengths was its bubble, and the company voluntarily punctured that. The captive audience that was viewed as advantageous for years is gone–and at a time when Walt Disney World’s #1 competitor keeps growing and getting stronger. It’s from that perspective that we’ve held out hope for the return of Disney’s Magical Express down the road.

For a couple of years, it seemed like restoring Disney’s Magical Express was within the realm of possibility given the guest experience improvements that Walt Disney World was undertaking. Shortly after CEO Bob Iger’s return, the company announced 3 Big Changes at Walt Disney World to Improve Guest Experience & Value. A few months later came the announcement of 5 Major Improvements at Walt Disney World.

However, the last of those changes rolled out over a year ago with the switch from Genie+ to Lightning Lane Multi-Pass. There have been other changes since that we’d argue have been incremental improvements, but it doesn’t seem like there has been as much as a concerted initiative to enhance the guest experience.

Between that and the practical reality that each passing month without Disney’s Magical Express makes its return less likely, we had started to lose hope. Just when we were about to give up, there were a couple more changes this year (including more at the start of the Christmas season) that didn’t just keep our optimism alive, but caused us to double-down on it.

The big development was the Return of Resort Airline Check-In Service at Walt Disney World as a Pilot Program. Within literal days of launching, the service expanded the test. Walt Disney World made it official shortly after that, dubbing the new program Airport Luggage Transfer.

As basic background for those who missed the original coverage of Airport Luggage Transfer, guests staying at select Walt Disney World Resort hotels can drop checked baggage off with Luggage Assistance to be delivered directly to your flight. A new third-party service, known as BagCheck, will take your luggage directly to the airport for your Southwest Airlines flight.

Currently, this pilot service is available at all Value Resort hotels for Guests with Southwest Airlines flights through Orlando International Airport (MCO). The pilot program soft launched at Pop Century in late March, before expanding to the All Stars and Art of Animation and being officially announced by Walt Disney World less than a week later.

It was our understanding at the time that the pilot program would be expanded based in part on positive guest feedback, utilization rates, satisfaction, and other metrics. Given its quick growth and the third party involved, we were optimistic that Airport Luggage Transfer would only continue to grow over the coming months.

That didn’t happen until a few weeks ago, when Walt Disney World announced that guests arriving on domestic Southwest Airlines flights at MCO and staying at Value Resorts would have the option to skip baggage claim. Guests will be able to do so by checking their luggage at the Southwest bag drop area or ticket counter at their home airport for direct delivery to their resort. Here are full details about how the new Inbound Airport Luggage Transfer works.

It sounds like a great option for a friction-less arrival and departure experience, especially for guests with checked bags visiting during peak season. Honestly, I’d consider Pop Century over a higher tier resort (Caribbean Beach, for example) just for this benefit!

This is another on-site perk that’s been partially resurrected. Old school Walt Disney World fans probably remember the beloved yellow luggage tags that arrived in the mail. You’d attach those to your luggage, check it at your home airport, and it would magically find its way to your room at Walt Disney World.

This paired with Disney’s Magical Express created a seamless arrival experience that was truly magical. In a world where airport and transportation logistics have become nightmarish, Walt Disney World had something special with this, which is a big reason why fans still bemoan the demise of DME. Walt Disney World captured lightning in a bottle…and then just relinquished it for no reason.

You were on vacation the moment you landed in Orlando, and Disney took care of the details. For many WDW fans, the real countdown started even earlier: when that envelope arrived with the Disney’s Magical Express booklet and those yellow luggage tags. This probably sounds silly to the uninitiated, but it’s an IYKYK kinda deals.

Disney’s Magical Express and Resort Airline Check-In (or the yellow tags) were actually two separate third party services bundled together with a layer of Walt Disney World packaging. Although both were distinctly Disney in terms of attention to detail, they actually did not end simultaneously.

The luggage handling component was a victim of the COVID closure and phased reopening. It never returned when the parks reopened in Summer 2020. Disney’s Magical Express, on the other hand, did come back. On January 11, 2021, Walt Disney World officially announced the decision to discontinue the free Disney’s Magical Express airport shuttle service.

The company explained that “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.” Walt Disney World continued to operate the airport shuttle service for new and existing reservations made for arrivals throughout 2021, and departures into early 2022.

Back when Airport Luggage Transfer was announced, I did some research into BagCheck (covered in the commentary to our original post). My conclusion based on the totality of the circumstances was Walt Disney World and BagCheck were starting small in order to test the program and scale up successfully.

In a nutshell, the main basis for this conclusion was that BagCheck was founded by Craig Mateer. He previously served on the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District (CFTOD) board until stepping down in last fall. He also had a stint as a Board Member on the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority (GOAA) that also ended last year. These resignations likely occurred to avoid conflict of interest issues.

Prior to that, Mateer founded Bags, Inc. This was the company that previously ran Resort Airline Check-In and the ‘yellow tags’ side of things for Walt Disney World and Disney’s Magical Express. Mateer sold Bags, Inc. for $275 million back in late 2018.

At the risk of stating the obvious, someone with a net worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars would not have spent two years of his life leveraging patents and technology on a dead-end pilot program serving Value Resorts at Walt Disney World and a single airline. The ambitions had to be bigger. They have to be bigger.

Fast forward to last month, and we had a new development: Orlando International Airport’s Big $6 Billion Expansion & Enhancement Plan. This 10-year vision that was approved by the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority (GOAA) is an interesting and ambitious proposal.

One little part that caught my attention is the quotes from Stephanie Kopelousos, Chair of the GOAA Board. In a press release from a few months ago, the GOAA announced that the GOAA Board had unanimously selected Kopelousos to serve as Chair, “doubling-down on a commitment to innovation, enhanced passenger experiences, and the next wave of airport development.”

If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Kopelousos is the administrator of the CFTOD, the government arm of Walt Disney World. She was brought aboard the CFTOD back when the state and the company resolved their standoff. She was viewed as a compromise candidate between the parties, having backgrounds with both Disney and DeSantis. Kopelousos and Mateer would’ve had overlapped on the CFTOD by ~6 months or so.

This piqued my curiosity. With the massive investment plan approved, I started to wonder whether MCO might’ve greenlit funding for interim solutions, with Airport Luggage Transfer perhaps playing a role. After all, most of what’s discussed in the 10-year plan won’t come online until 2030 or beyond. The airport is already overburdened, so it’d make sense to do something now. Especially since 2030 could easily turn into 2035 with delays that often occur in complex infrastructure projects.

As it turns out, Airport Luggage Transfer is a solution that that Kopelousos might’ve proposed to the GOAA back when she first started serving on the board last year. Per a report in Aviation Pros (via an Orlando Sentinel public records request), Terminals A and B’s baggage systems were “running at maximum capacity and are dealing with equipment at end of life,” per airport consultant Frank Barich in an assessment for GOAA.

According to Aviation Pros, the GOAA put Kopelousos in charge of finding solutions to the baggage troubles. She had just been appointed to the GOAA a few months earlier, a couple months after being appointed to Walt Disney World’s CFTOD.

Kopelousos queried a lot of airport executives, aviation consultants, tourism veterans, and other outsiders, while also conducting visits to MCO’s baggage processing sites. She then wrote detailed reports specifying what’s wrong with the airport’s baggage systems.

“The existing outdated baggage system is actually six systems knitted together, but operating separately,” said Richard Clarke, GOAA Chief Creative Officer, in a report to Kopelousos. ”This complexity and fragility makes it very difficult to incrementally improve the system with new technology.”

“Passenger experience would be enhanced if they were able to relieve themselves from the burden of bringing bags with them to the airport,” said Anthony Davit, MCO COO, in Kopelousos’ reports.

Kopelousos’ recommendation was for the Orlando International Airport to “promote the start up of something like the Disney Magical Express,” per Aviation Pros. Except the solution would be “more inclusive of the tourism industry and the airport would underwrite some costs.”

GOAA agreed to pay qualifying companies $6.75 for each bag transferred to a remote TSA screening site, easing the volume at Terminals A and B. The GOAA is prepared to pay as much as $25 million annually for such a service that mimics Disney’s Magical Express (I’d editorialize that their primary concern is the luggage logistics, not the bus; but also that the $25 million was before the big $6 billion master plan got funded, so the number could be higher now).

This might seem like a lot to pay for a single bag, but apparently, aviation experts believe $6.75 would be lower than cost of providing the service. Moreover, that “other financial backing would be needed…though from whom remains unknown.”

This might read a bit conspiratorial, as if I’m putting the pieces together on some massive exposé about self-dealing and conflicts of interest. Just to be clear, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Based on what I’ve read over the last year-plus, the clear consensus view among GOAA and MCO leadership and senior staffers is that losing Disney’s Magical Express was a big blow to airport operations. That it was “magical” for MCO in the relief from passenger and baggage congestion it provided. Outside aviation experts agree; there’s no conflict here, it’s more coincidence.

Millions of MCO travelers never arrived by car at the busy third-level drop off lanes and millions of their bags were never lugged into lobbies every single year. It’s funny that we think of DME as a nice guest perk that enhanced our experience, and meanwhile, it was nearly critical to relieve pressure from strained airport infrastructure. Its existence was a happy accident, but one that became almost essential.

The confluence of circumstances since–the explosion of revenge travel, MCO’s visitor volume increasing by 15% year over year in 2022 and 2023 to over 57 million passengers, and a heavier screening strain since travelers at MCO have more luggage on average and are not connecting–exacerbated the situation and made it untenable.

It seems pretty obvious for Kopelousos to conclude that a service similar to Disney’s Magical Express would be invaluable for the airport, and to enlist Mateer to help provide the solution. They would’ve known one another and he was vital to the previous iteration of the infrastructure.

The GOAA and MCO recommending the promotion of a service like Disney’s Magical Express and approving funding to subsidize it strikes me much more as a ‘stars aligned’ kind of solution to a very difficult problem!

Where things go from here is anyone’s guess. That $6.75 subsidy was previously authorized, prior to the GOAA’s approval of the $6 billion master plan. That includes a lot of funding for a lot of things, and the full specifics aren’t yet known.

Given that there will be further strain on the airport during expansion–and on luggage handling during construction of the new system for Terminals A & B–it wouldn’t surprise me if that subsidy increases. It would behoove MCO to further incentivize solutions for the next decade or so.

There’s also the Walt Disney World side of the equation. Airport Luggage Transfer has been available at the Value Resorts for ~9 months now. I’d hazard a guess that Walt Disney World has been attempting to ascertain the perceived value of this perk among guests during that time. I haven’t heard anything about surveys focused on this, but I’d nevertheless imagine Disney is trying to figure out how much they’re willing to fund this at scale.

The GOAA and MCO subsidizing a large portion of the program doesn’t mean Airport Luggage Transfer will be rolled out at the remainder of resorts or for all airlines. Or that Disney’s Magical Express will return.

Even if low costs make this a no-brainer for the next 5-10 years, Walt Disney World might be inclined to consider the longer term. GOAA and MCO aren’t going to subsidize these programs forever. They’re investing at least $6 billion over the next 10 years (probably more in both time and dollars, if we’re being realistic) to fix these problems permanently, so that such a subsidy is not necessary.

It’s safe to say that Walt Disney World won’t want to foot the full bill for Airport Luggage Transfer and/or Disney’s Magical Express in 2035 or 2040, since they didn’t want to back in 2021. And it’s also worth remembering the intense fan backlash to the news that Walt Disney World was discontinuing DME.

Do they really want a repeat of that backlash further down the road? There’s no good way to message that this would be a limited-time return of DME for ~5-10 years, underwritten by the airport. The question thus becomes whether the goodwill of the perk in the next several years outweighs the badwill when it’s inevitably taken away again? (Or, here’s an idea: they could just not take it away!)

It’s impossible to say what the answers are to those questions, or what GOAA and MCO are proposing beyond Airport Luggage Transfer. The passenger transportation element might be worth a lot less than the off-site luggage processing element.

There’s also the fact that a lot has changed since 2020. One of the things we’ve repeatedly mentioned is that the guest utilization rate of Mears Connect is really low, far lower than Disney’s Magical Express. Fans derided the decreased competition when Mears and Sunshine Flyer merged, but I pointed out even then that it’s unlikely both were viable in the long-term. Consolidation was probably the only path forward.

Since then, it’s only gotten worse. I take Mears Connect a lot and it’s seldom busy. I’m often put on the smaller vans because there aren’t enough guests to justify taking a big bus, and when the buses are used, they’re rarely over 25% full.

My fear is that consumer preferences have already changed. It’s not 2003 or even 2019 anymore, and maybe the world has moved on from this type of service. I don’t want to believe that, but it is possible.

The reason I don’t believe this is because, in my view, there are a couple of critical distinctions between Disney’s Magical Express and Mears Connect. The first is guest awareness and branding. The second is cost. Disney’s Magical Express was free (or built into the cost of resort reservations, if you’d prefer), whereas Mears Connect has a fee.

Of course the adoption rates are going to differ as a result. When it was just the two of us, we never used Mears Connect–the math didn’t pencil out over taking Uber or Lyft. By contrast, I use Mears Connect a lot for solo research trips because it’s cheaper, I’m never in a rush, and I like sitting in the back by myself and working on my laptop.

It’s easy to see why families opt for other options over Mears Connect. However, many of them would use Disney’s Magical Express if given the option. The fact that Disney’s Magical Express Was Used By One-Third of Hotel Guests at Walt Disney World corroborates this. (There’s no way Mears Connect is coming anywhere close to 33%.) And if all goes well here, perhaps they’ll soon have that option!

The big wildcards are whether GOAA is willing to subsidize passenger transportation and not just luggage, how much of an appetite there is among Walt Disney World leadership to restart the program, costs on both sides, and the duration of a deal.

Ultimately, it is nothing short of fantastic to see Airport Luggage Transfer return. With both inbound and outbound bag handling now being tested, it’s safe to assume this will expand to Moderate and Deluxe Resorts in 2026.

It’s also good to see that GOAA recognizes how valuable Disney’s Magical Express was to the airport, and has already authorized funding for the return of something like that service. It’s also good to see the $6 billion master plan approved, which suggests that there’s probably more than $25 million to fund DME as a band-aid solution for the next 5-10 years.

We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves and be overly presumptuous, but it seems pretty clear that there are bigger ambitions than the limited return of a pilot program. That doesn’t mean it’ll happen, though.

Walt Disney World has not aggressively advertised Airport Luggage Transfer, and has been slow to expand just that test. There’s a long way to go before even that rolls out at every resort. There are likely logistics to be worked out with other airlines. Nothing is guaranteed.

More optimistically, the return of Airport Luggage Transfer does feel like Walt Disney World laying the groundwork for bringing back Disney’s Magical Express. The GOAA and MCO wanting an interim solution like Disney’s Magical Express (even mentioning it by name) and being willing to subsidize it seems promising!

The luggage handling is the more complicated piece of the puzzle that would need to roll out first. The airport shuttle infrastructure already exists, just with different stickers on the buses. Unlike Airport Luggage Transfer, which has already taken 8 months to start rolling out and could end up taking over a year, the changeover from Mears Connect to Disney’s Magical Express could be like flipping a switch.

This seems like the stars aligning: Walt Disney World finally realizing the error of their ways in deflating the Disney Bubble and MCO needing relief from its high luggage and passenger volume as the airport expands. Oh, and it also at a time when Epic Universe is going to be scaling up and the next big park expansion projects at Walt Disney World don’t debut until late 2027 through the early 2030s. Seems like the perfect window of opportunity to bring back Disney’s Magical Express!

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Your Thoughts

Thoughts on GOAA and MCO recommending the promotion of a service like Disney’s Magical Express and approving funding to subsidize it? What about the return of Airport Luggage Transfer as a pilot program? Does all of this pave the way for a comeback of Disney’s Magical Express, or is it still unlikely? Do you agree or disagree with our commentary? 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!