New Bus Schedules at OKW

[PumbaaToo]

A friend just came back from OKW and said that the bus schedules had recently been changed and the results were horrible. 45 minute waits for busses and longer routes than he had remembered. This is somewhat disconcerting as we'll be going down at the end of September. Does anyone else have light they can shed on this?

 

[dianeschlicht]

Yikes! I have never had any trouble with the buses at OKW, but I hope they haven't renegotiated their contract and the service has suffered! I understand each resort negotiates their own bus service, so hope our dues aren't getting us less these days. We won't be going back until January. What happened to "bus on demand"?

 

[GCM13]

We just returned from OKW on Friday. We never had to wait 45 minutes for a bus. We did wait 20-25 minutes a couple times though. I think a lot of our wait time depended on which bus stop we went to - Peninsular Rd or Hospitality House. Sometimes we would miss the bus at Peninsular Rd. and have to wait a little while for the next bus. I did notice that the buses didn't always go the same route. At the beginning of our trip, the buses stopped at Hospitality House first and last. Most of the time, the first stop was Peninsular Rd., but a couple times it went to Miller's Rd first. Other than that, we didn't really have any problems with the buses.

 

[dianeschlicht]

We noticed the different routes our last trip too. Miller's Road used to be the first stop, but now is supposed to be second to last. I think some drivers make up their own route. Again, has anyone heard what has happened to the "bus on demand" program? We heard of this being very successful at first, but sounds like it has been abandoned if the waits are that long. Over the years, we have rarely waited more than 15 minutes for a bus at OKW. Morning seems to be the worst time.

 

[The4OfUs]

We just returned too, and the longest wait we had was Thursday morning, when we missed the MK bus and waited about 20 mins for the next one - and once it arrived, there was another right behind it, the driver commented that they pulled an extra bus because they were overwhelmed that morning with folks going to MK.

One night, DH drove part of the family back in our rental car, and my brother and I volunteered for the bus - we actually beat them back to the room, and they were parked in the front row nearest the entrance to Epcot!

The only place we ran into problems was the bus BACK from Downtown Disney - DH waited a long time there, well over 1/2 hr. But we have always experienced that.