[img1:left]Disney’s Magical Express

You’ve booked your flight and your hotel. Your Magic Your Way tickets have been ordered. You have made all your Advanced Dining Reservations (I still like priority seating so much better, but that is a whole other subject). So now you are wondering what´s the best way to get to your Disney Resort from the airport. Well now Disney answers that question for you too, with Disney´s Magical Express service. Magical Express is Disney´s free bus service to and from anyone of their resorts. This service will also collect your luggage for you from the airport and deliver it to your room. This will allow you to start your vacation off without having to deal with baggage claim or lugging bags to your room. Magical Express kicked off on May 5, 2005 with the rest of the Happiest Celebration on Earth. And if you read all the descriptions of the service on Disney´s websites, they say it is free during the celebration. What will happen to the program once the party has ended? No one seems to know. I´m hoping it still continues to be free, but only the minds at Disney know for sure.

Below is a complete walk through the Magical Express service, along side my review of my experience with the service. My experience was not 100% "magical", so I have included some tips at the end to help you avoid some of the flaws I found with the program and to help you better plan you trip.

Before you Leave for the World

Once you have your flight and hotel booked, you then can sign up for Magical Express. To sign up for the program you can go to disneyworld.com, call 407-W-DISNEY, or book it through your travel agent. This service must be booked a minimum of 10 days prior to you arrival. I would recommend you book a minimum of 6 weeks in advance, because the service has been having issues getting the luggage tags out in time for people´s trips. My arrangements on Magical Express were booked through a travel agent, so I´m not sure how many weeks in advance she ordered them. I believe it was a good 3 weeks at least. I left for the World on a Friday evening and I received my tags the Tuesday before I left.The sooner you order your tags, the faster you will get them.

In your little package from Magical Express, you will receive a booklet that

Disney's Magical Express

Disney's Magical Express Booklet

Disney's Magical Express Yellow Luggage Tag

Arrival in Orlando

Once you arrive at Orlando Airport, depart from your gate and head on the tram over to main terminal as if you were going to collect your luggage (also where the Disney Store is located). You will find a Mickey Mouse gloved Cast Member holding a sign for Disney Magical Express and Cruise Line guests. Stop and talk to the Cast Member and they will direct you to go down the stairs and to follow the signs. When you locate the Magical Express area, go to the desk to get your bus ticket stamped. If you need extra lanyard & pin coupons for the rest of your family members, you can get them here also. When your ticket is stamped, you can head over to the bus line and find the one for your hotel.

Now on a side note, I went right to the line for my hotel and they were already loading the bus for my resort. So the Cast Member directed me to the bus and when I went to get on it, they saw my ticket wasn´t stamped. Well, let me tell you, I got treated like such a princess for making this little mistake. They took such good care of me to show me were I needed to go and even held the bus for me till I was all set. The only bad thing was everything happened so fast; I missed all the cast members´ names that helped me. So to all CMs working Magical Express at 12:30am Saturday June 4^th, 2005 THANK YOU!

When I got on the bus, I was impressed at the décor. Nice comfy red seats with yellow pixie dust stars, green lights and video screens. Once the bus got started on the road the driver popped in a DVD. I was expecting to watch a commercial for the Happiest Celebration on Earth, or even "The Seven Must See Attractions at WDW" (anyone who has stayed at a Disney Resort knows this one). To my surprise we got to watch "Finding Nemo"! What a great way to start off a vacation, comfy seats and one of my favorite movies! But remembering I was going to be writing this review, I couldn´t pay too much attention to the movie. The first stop the bus made was at the Coronado Springs Resort. There were not that many people on the bus, so I really had know way of figuring out how many stops we were making. After Coronado Springs the bus headed right to the All Star Resorts, with Sports being the first top (this was were I was staying). When I got off the bus the movie was at the "Sharkbait" part. So I´m figuring I was on the bus for just under an hour.

Here is where the journey gets not so magical. I got off the bus to find the driver unloading suitcases from under the bus. Now from experience, I know how long it takes to go through baggage claim to get your luggage. It takes a lot longer than the time it took me to get off the plane and on to the bus, so I didn´t think my suitcase would be on the bus with me. I asked the driver where my bags were and he told me they were most likely already in my room.Now I know it was late (My flight was supposed to arrive at 10:40pm, and it was now 1:30am...I had a 1 and 1/2 hour delay) and I was tired, but I could not figure out how my suitcase could already be in my room with out real magic being use. I know this is Disney, but I don´t even think they could pull that trick off. I went up to the front desk to pick up my room key and I asked about my luggage. The lady at the desk said" Oh you were on the flight with the delay, your stuff is already in your room." Yes my flight was delayed, but the luggage was on the same delayed flight.So I walked over to my room.

Once at the room I opened the door to find my friend (Hi Tracy!) sleeping and my suitcase nowhere to be found. Since it was so late I walked back to the front desk to inquire about its whereabouts. When I arrived at the desk, another women helped me; this one was not so friendly. I was told that if the luggage wasn´t already in the room it could take up to 3 hours to arrive. 3 hours?! It was almost 2:00am and I wanted to go to sleep! The woman told me that once the bag arrived they would leave me a message on my room phone telling me it was in. So I walked back to the room and laid on the bed, in my clothes without brushing my teeth, and tried to go to sleep. During the night I would wake up every so often and check the phone. No messages.

At 6:30am I got tired of waiting for them to call, so I popped a piece of gum in my mouth and walked back down to the front desk (Tracy was still sleeping, so I didn´t want to wake her up by using the phone). On the way to the desk I did have a lovely phone call with my mother who was trying to calm me down, because needless to say I was a little "angry". Once at the desk I got in line and found only one person working and a line of people piling up behind me wanting to check out or in. As is the case with any line, you find yourself talking to the other people and I was filling them in on my luggage issue. They suggested I check with the Cast Member that was outside the front door. I head over there to see someone walking into the room were they stored the luggage that was waiting to be picked up or delivered to the room. Through the open door I could see my suitcase. I started jumping up and down with excitement and a guy walked over to me and said "Gee, for a moment there I thought you were Tigger!" I explained that I finally found my suitcase that was missing from last night and he let me in the room to get it. When the pulled the sheet out to check off that is was picked up, I asked them what time did is arrive and they told me 3:00am. Being that I really wanted to change my clothes, I wheeled the suitcase out of there and never bothered to find out why no one ever called me to tell me it was in. As I walked past the line at the front desk, the same people I was talking to before were still waiting in line and they all applauded for me!

Needless to say, if I was arriving at the World and heading straight for the parks, letting Disney handle my bags would have been okay. Arriving and wanting to go straight to bed, not such a good move. So delayed flights and misplaced luggage aside, I was ready for my vacation to start.

Returning Home

The day before your flight leaves, a Magical Express rep (or Resort Staff) will put an envelope on your door with a letter indicating what time your bus will be departing and other directions. I had a 4:40pm departing flight on Southwest. My "Transportation Notice" as they called it said my pick up was at 1:55pm. The notice also stated that I had to be at the bus stop 15 minutes prior to my pick-up time. Since I was flying Southwest, I did not have the luxury of testing the Resort Airline Check-in feature. What is Resort Airline Check-in? If you fly one of the below airlines domestically, you have the ability to check-in and check your luggage in the lobby of the resort, allowing you to skip this step at the airport. The participating airlines are:

• American Airline
• Continental Airlines
• Delta Air (including Song)
• United Air (including Ted)

I was told that more airlines would be added to this service as the year goes on, with Southwest potentially being added in December `05.

When it came close to my pick-up time, I wheeled my luggage to the bus stop and waited for the bus to arrive, the bus stop for Magical Express is the old Mears stop located with all the Park bus stops. The bus arrived right around its scheduled time and we were off. We lined up outside the bus, where the driver took our passes, wrote down what airline we were going to and sorted our luggage accordingly.

Now the moment I hit the bus seats (did I mention they were really comfy?), I sort of feel asleep, so I´m not sure what video was played or how many stops at other resorts the bus made. I can tell you I did time it and it took us about an hour to get to the airport. As we were pulling into the airport, the bus driver did break out into a little Jungle Cruise spiel (if you enjoyed the ride my name is Hugo, if not, it´s Jim). I thought it was a great ending statement to my trip. The bus makes two stops are the airport, terminal A and terminal B. Make sure you pay attentions to which terminal you are at (the driver does say it a few times). The driver did a good job of keeping everyone and their luggage straight, however one suitcase in the bunch seemed to have "sprung a leak". It looked like some kid threw a bottle of coke in the front pocket of his suitcase, so I don´t blame the driver for this leakage. I grabbed my suitcase from the pile and was off to my airline. The return trip went much smoother then the arriving trip.

Oh and a note...these buses have little tip boxes located in the front of the bus. Gratuities are appreciated the sign above the box reads. So don´t forget to tip the driver, especially if he channels a Jungle Cruise cast member.

Tips

• Call and request your Magical Express information and luggage tags a minimum of 6 weeks prior to leaving. This way you will receive them before you leave.

• If you are arriving in the evening and are not planning to go visit any of the parks, I suggest you do not use the luggage pick up service. Collect your own bags are the airport and bring them with you.
• Keep all medication, trip information and other important items in a carry-on bag. I would even suggest packing important toiletries and some clothing in a carry-on too.
• When arriving, plan for a good hour to get from the Airport to the hotel, so when making Priority Seating plan accordingly.
• When departing, plan to leave a good three hours before your flight leaves. If you keep this in mind when planning your day, you won´t find yourself hurrying to catch the bus.

Happy Travels!

Disney's Magical Express Luggae ID tag