AKL checkout chaos

[BamaGuy44]

This isn't a complaint, almost none of this was AKL's fault, just sharing an experience.

TL;DR: We had a ridiculously long bus wait at MK, causing us to almost miss our ride to the airport, but in the end it worked out (mostly). CMs were great and did their best.

So we did a split stay last week, 5 nights at Copper Creek, 2 at AKL, all in 2BR. We did the 2 at AKL because we've never stayed there and wanted to try it out. If I had a do over we would have just stayed at CC. Not because we didn't like AKL, it just wasn't worth the extra logistics of switching for just a short time. We didn't have time to really enjoy the resort or the savanna view. Live and Learn™.

On checkout day our airport ride was scheduled for 3:25pm for our 5:55pm flight. We were in MK, and headed to the bus stop at 2:15 so we had (we thought) plenty of time to catch the bus and get back to the resort and get luggage from bell services, etc. When we got the the stop only a couple of people were waiting so we figured we had just missed one. Oh well. So we waited, and waited, very frustrating watching multiple buses from every other resort come and go... I know they don't run as many buses in the middle of the afternoon but AKL seemed to be the only one having an issue.

Anyway after 45 minutes DW is starting to have some serious anxiety. It's almost 3 and our car from Tiffany says he can only wait until 3:35. She asks one of the other drivers to please check on the status of our bus. He makes a call and says another 15 minutes(!) By this time a Minnie Van or Uber car seat is at least 10 minutes away, so that's no help. Luckily it was only another couple of minutes and the bus showed up. No idea what the issue was, I can't imagine that's the norm for AKL from MK.

We ask the driver if he stops at Jambo or Kidani first, he says Kidani. We ask can he please go to Jambo first, we are close to missing our airport ride. He says he's not allowed(?) but will do his best to hurry. We arrive at Jambo at 3:29, rush in to bell services and beg them to hurry with our luggage, which they do, they were awesome about it. Tried to call ahead to bell services from the bus but no, you just get the automated system with a 15 minute hold time. Thanks. Does anyone know a way to call a resort directly?

We get the luggage loaded in the car, and we realize DS had left his $229 Savi light saber in the room. He runs back to BS, they give him a form to fill out for a lost item. In the end we were able to get to the airport on time, and DS emailed them the lost item form. They found the light saber and shipped it to us, should be here tomorrow.

Only other small snafu was when BS came and got our luggage, we had a small cooler with some ice packs and medicine inside. BS guy offered to put it in the fridge, we said it should be fine with the ice packs. He said it's no problem I'm happy to, etc. Just trying to give good service. We said ok...oops they forgot to get it out of the fridge when we left and in the chaos we didn't notice. No way to ship the medicine so that's a loss.

Whew, sorry that's so long. Terrible timing for an unusually long bus wait, but the CMs at AKL were great and did everything they could to help sort out the issues and get us on our way.

 

[CarolynFH]

Sorry you had such a harried exit! And we agree, we don’t feel that we get enough time to enjoy a resort if we stay only 2 nights!

 

[_auroraborealis_]

Does anyone know a way to call a resort directly?

Nope. And the numbers people claim go direct go to an off-site call center.

 

[Jsharp13]

Thanks for that but so glad you at least didn't miss the flight! This actually did help me as I was considering a "park day" on check out day and these logistics would probably give me a heart attack! Looks like it may be a leisurely breakfast / pool day instead!

 

[wdw4rfam]

We agree, after years of split stays, no more after this last one. We just had a nightmare experience with SSR that I won’t get in to but decided ultimately it could have happened anywhere but never had, so no more splits. We just really wanted to stay longer and SSR was the only thing left. I wish I had just gone home because it wasn’t worth the hassle. We also decided many trips ago no more relying on buses when time is important- most of the time it is not. They are great, but not when you need to be somewhere by a certain time.

 

[Skippyboo]

215 pm for 325 pm is probably pushing it especially when you don’t know when the bus is going to show up and it could have scooters to load/unload plus MK is farthest away from AKL plus stopping at Kidani factor.

 

[emchen]

This isn't a complaint, almost none of this was AKL's fault, just sharing an experience.

TL;DR: We had a ridiculously long bus wait at MK, causing us to almost miss our ride to the airport, but in the end it worked out (mostly). CMs were great and did their best.

So we did a split stay last week, 5 nights at Copper Creek, 2 at AKL, all in 2BR. We did the 2 at AKL because we've never stayed there and wanted to try it out. If I had a do over we would have just stayed at CC. Not because we didn't like AKL, it just wasn't worth the extra logistics of switching for just a short time. We didn't have time to really enjoy the resort or the savanna view. Live and Learn™.

On checkout day our airport ride was scheduled for 3:25pm for our 5:55pm flight. We were in MK, and headed to the bus stop at 2:15 so we had (we thought) plenty of time to catch the bus and get back to the resort and get luggage from bell services, etc. When we got the the stop only a couple of people were waiting so we figured we had just missed one. Oh well. So we waited, and waited, very frustrating watching multiple buses from every other resort come and go... I know they don't run as many buses in the middle of the afternoon but AKL seemed to be the only one having an issue.

Anyway after 45 minutes DW is starting to have some serious anxiety. It's almost 3 and our car from Tiffany says he can only wait until 3:35. She asks one of the other drivers to please check on the status of our bus. He makes a call and says another 15 minutes(!) By this time a Minnie Van or Uber car seat is at least 10 minutes away, so that's no help. Luckily it was only another couple of minutes and the bus showed up. No idea what the issue was, I can't imagine that's the norm for AKL from MK.

We ask the driver if he stops at Jambo or Kidani first, he says Kidani. We ask can he please go to Jambo first, we are close to missing our airport ride. He says he's not allowed(?) but will do his best to hurry. We arrive at Jambo at 3:29, rush in to bell services and beg them to hurry with our luggage, which they do, they were awesome about it. Tried to call ahead to bell services from the bus but no, you just get the automated system with a 15 minute hold time. Thanks. Does anyone know a way to call a resort directly?

We get the luggage loaded in the car, and we realize DS had left his $229 Savi light saber in the room. He runs back to BS, they give him a form to fill out for a lost item. In the end we were able to get to the airport on time, and DS emailed them the lost item form. They found the light saber and shipped it to us, should be here tomorrow.

Only other small snafu was when BS came and got our luggage, we had a small cooler with some ice packs and medicine inside. BS guy offered to put it in the fridge, we said it should be fine with the ice packs. He said it's no problem I'm happy to, etc. Just trying to give good service. We said ok...oops they forgot to get it out of the fridge when we left and in the chaos we didn't notice. No way to ship the medicine so that's a loss.

Whew, sorry that's so long. Terrible timing for an unusually long bus wait, but the CMs at AKL were great and did everything they could to help sort out the issues and get us on our way.

Your experience just reinforces my extreme dislike of the bus system at DW! Can we get gps tags on them and have their status show up on maps on the nice flatscreens? How about just a real-time ETA for the nearest bus?

We agree, after years of split stays, no more after this last one. We just had a nightmare experience with SSR that I won’t get in to but decided ultimately it could have happened anywhere but never had, so no more splits. We just really wanted to stay longer and SSR was the only thing left. I wish I had just gone home because it wasn’t worth the hassle. We also decided many trips ago no more relying on buses when time is important- most of the time it is not. They are great, but not when you need to be somewhere by a certain time.

They aren’t great even if you have all the time in the world. They were adequate…in 1990, but they just had an update to the buses a few years ago. Should’ve gotten battery electric ones instead. At least would’ve saved on the noise pollution and actual air pollution and be a noticeable upgrade. DW buses! Sigh !!!

 

[BamaGuy44]

215 pm for 325 pm is probably pushing it especially when you don’t know when the bus is going to show up and it could have scooters to load/unload plus MK is farthest away from AKL plus stopping at Kidani factor.

This was very unusual, we've taken buses from the parks dozens of times, never waited nearly that long. But yeah in the future we will use ride share if we need to be somewhere at a certain time. If I have to allow 2 hours to be sure, nah. It's so easy to book your own ride these days with ride share.

 

[Mirabell Rose]

The busses are the most affected by people needing to load a wheelchair or scooter. The boats, the monorail, and the skyliner have quick processes for these. The busses take a really long time to do this. I’ve noticed it often puts them really behind at times and then, especially at AKL since it is the furthest from MK, the busses end up coming right after each other and then it’s a Looooooonnnnnggggg time until another one comes. I guess the good news is that the busses run no matter the weather and don’t shut down for refurbishment or whatever it is they do with the skyliner.

 

[BamaGuy44]

Your experience just reinforces my extreme dislike of the bus system at DW! Can we get gps tags on them and have their status show up on maps on the nice flatscreens? How about just a real-time ETA for the nearest bus?

Yeah we've always been pretty laid back about them, 90% of the time we've had good experiences. Definitely will avoid when I have a deadline from now on. They really could use technology to make it much more transparent if they wanted to.

I'd love to know why that driver told us 15 minutes when it was actually only like 2 minutes until it actually showed up. Maybe they just tell everyone 15 to brush them off who knows

 

[WxKristin]

We were just at AKL last week. For the most part, the busses were fine. But we had two similar episodes during our week (just a bit less stressful w/o the airport connection). The most egregious was a 40 min wait getting to Epcot. My main issue was caused by trusting the bus times in the app from AKL. It said Epcot bus was arriving at AKL at 11:58 am -- we were out there by 11:50 am and apparently had just missed it. Saw the time update to 12:25 just after sitting down and next one finally arrived ~12:30 pm. If busses can be >10 min early or 10 min late there really is no point to even posting times in the app.

I would have thought 2:15 pm was plenty of time too. 20 min to wait for bus, 20-30 min bus ride, another 20 min cushion for misc waiting / EV / traffic issues.

 

[ParrotBill]

For an airport connection, I would want to be at my resort 1 hour prior to the pickup time, so I would leave a park 90min to 2 hours before that time.

On every trip, I have at least one bus or transportation snafu that results in a total time of well over one hour. Buses fill up and pass by, so we wait for the next one, which is also full, and they have to call for an extra. One hour wait to be picked up. Also, mid day 2-3pm the bus interval is often 30-40 minutes due to low volume.

Can't even rely on Uber/Lyft as an alternate. Sometimes I wait for a driver 10 minutes, then a driver abandons my request and a new search starts. Waited 45 minutes at Saratoga Springs for Lyft in June.

 

[we"reofftoneverland]

This isn't a complaint, almost none of this was AKL's fault, just sharing an experience.

TL;DR: We had a ridiculously long bus wait at MK, causing us to almost miss our ride to the airport, but in the end it worked out (mostly). CMs were great and did their best.

So we did a split stay last week, 5 nights at Copper Creek, 2 at AKL, all in 2BR. We did the 2 at AKL because we've never stayed there and wanted to try it out. If I had a do over we would have just stayed at CC. Not because we didn't like AKL, it just wasn't worth the extra logistics of switching for just a short time. We didn't have time to really enjoy the resort or the savanna view. Live and Learn™.

On checkout day our airport ride was scheduled for 3:25pm for our 5:55pm flight. We were in MK, and headed to the bus stop at 2:15 so we had (we thought) plenty of time to catch the bus and get back to the resort and get luggage from bell services, etc. When we got the the stop only a couple of people were waiting so we figured we had just missed one. Oh well. So we waited, and waited, very frustrating watching multiple buses from every other resort come and go... I know they don't run as many buses in the middle of the afternoon but AKL seemed to be the only one having an issue.

Anyway after 45 minutes DW is starting to have some serious anxiety. It's almost 3 and our car from Tiffany says he can only wait until 3:35. She asks one of the other drivers to please check on the status of our bus. He makes a call and says another 15 minutes(!) By this time a Minnie Van or Uber car seat is at least 10 minutes away, so that's no help. Luckily it was only another couple of minutes and the bus showed up. No idea what the issue was, I can't imagine that's the norm for AKL from MK.

We ask the driver if he stops at Jambo or Kidani first, he says Kidani. We ask can he please go to Jambo first, we are close to missing our airport ride. He says he's not allowed(?) but will do his best to hurry. We arrive at Jambo at 3:29, rush in to bell services and beg them to hurry with our luggage, which they do, they were awesome about it. Tried to call ahead to bell services from the bus but no, you just get the automated system with a 15 minute hold time. Thanks. Does anyone know a way to call a resort directly?

We get the luggage loaded in the car, and we realize DS had left his $229 Savi light saber in the room. He runs back to BS, they give him a form to fill out for a lost item. In the end we were able to get to the airport on time, and DS emailed them the lost item form. They found the light saber and shipped it to us, should be here tomorrow.

Only other small snafu was when BS came and got our luggage, we had a small cooler with some ice packs and medicine inside. BS guy offered to put it in the fridge, we said it should be fine with the ice packs. He said it's no problem I'm happy to, etc. Just trying to give good service. We said ok...oops they forgot to get it out of the fridge when we left and in the chaos we didn't notice. No way to ship the medicine so that's a loss.

Whew, sorry that's so long. Terrible timing for an unusually long bus wait, but the CMs at AKL were great and did everything they could to help sort out the issues and get us on our way.

Why does live and learn have trademark next to it lol?

They made it so you can no longer call resorts directly a few years ago. All I can say is this $%#*@#% pisses me off like you wouldn’t believe. We were in an emergency type situation about a year ago and desperately needed to talk to the front desk at our resort and we called the newly centralized line 3 times. No one would help us. They told us there is “no way” to directly contact your resort, and to top it off the people answering the phones were absolutely useless, like seriously of subpar intelligence.

 

[s.r.disney nut]

This isn't a complaint, almost none of this was AKL's fault, just sharing an experience.

TL;DR: We had a ridiculously long bus wait at MK, causing us to almost miss our ride to the airport, but in the end it worked out (mostly). CMs were great and did their best.

So we did a split stay last week, 5 nights at Copper Creek, 2 at AKL, all in 2BR. We did the 2 at AKL because we've never stayed there and wanted to try it out. If I had a do over we would have just stayed at CC. Not because we didn't like AKL, it just wasn't worth the extra logistics of switching for just a short time. We didn't have time to really enjoy the resort or the savanna view. Live and Learn™.

On checkout day our airport ride was scheduled for 3:25pm for our 5:55pm flight. We were in MK, and headed to the bus stop at 2:15 so we had (we thought) plenty of time to catch the bus and get back to the resort and get luggage from bell services, etc. When we got the the stop only a couple of people were waiting so we figured we had just missed one. Oh well. So we waited, and waited, very frustrating watching multiple buses from every other resort come and go... I know they don't run as many buses in the middle of the afternoon but AKL seemed to be the only one having an issue.

Anyway after 45 minutes DW is starting to have some serious anxiety. It's almost 3 and our car from Tiffany says he can only wait until 3:35. She asks one of the other drivers to please check on the status of our bus. He makes a call and says another 15 minutes(!) By this time a Minnie Van or Uber car seat is at least 10 minutes away, so that's no help. Luckily it was only another couple of minutes and the bus showed up. No idea what the issue was, I can't imagine that's the norm for AKL from MK.

We ask the driver if he stops at Jambo or Kidani first, he says Kidani. We ask can he please go to Jambo first, we are close to missing our airport ride. He says he's not allowed(?) but will do his best to hurry. We arrive at Jambo at 3:29, rush in to bell services and beg them to hurry with our luggage, which they do, they were awesome about it. Tried to call ahead to bell services from the bus but no, you just get the automated system with a 15 minute hold time. Thanks. Does anyone know a way to call a resort directly?

We get the luggage loaded in the car, and we realize DS had left his $229 Savi light saber in the room. He runs back to BS, they give him a form to fill out for a lost item. In the end we were able to get to the airport on time, and DS emailed them the lost item form. They found the light saber and shipped it to us, should be here tomorrow.

Only other small snafu was when BS came and got our luggage, we had a small cooler with some ice packs and medicine inside. BS guy offered to put it in the fridge, we said it should be fine with the ice packs. He said it's no problem I'm happy to, etc. Just trying to give good service. We said ok...oops they forgot to get it out of the fridge when we left and in the chaos we didn't notice. No way to ship the medicine so that's a loss.

Whew, sorry that's so long. Terrible timing for an unusually long bus wait, but the CMs at AKL were great and did everything they could to help sort out the issues and get us on our way.

This is why we never did a park day on a check out day. We've been driving lately so we just get on the road, but when we were flying if we had an afternoon/evening flight, we would just hang at the resort.

 

[ak517]

Re forgetting the medicine: I've started making little lists at the top of my main note on my phone that I check before leaving for a trip. I may use your experience to start doing that for my return trip, too! Sorry for that experience OP but thanks for the recap and lessons learned.

 

[mom2missmous]

The busses are the most affected by people needing to load a wheelchair or scooter. The boats, the monorail, and the skyliner have quick processes for these. The busses take a really long time to do this. I’ve noticed it often puts them really behind at times and then, especially at AKL since it is the furthest from MK, the busses end up coming right after each other and then it’s a Looooooonnnnnggggg time until another one comes. I guess the good news is that the busses run no matter the weather and don’t shut down for refurbishment or whatever it is they do with the skyliner.

And also when they "updated' the buses to make more room for wheel chairs and such they drastically reduced the amount of seating for everyone else! NOT the scooter/wheelchair users fault, but I know there are buses out there that can more efficiently accommodate both! More seating= more people can fit so as long as they keep the buses "coming" regularly it would help some with the delays- just MHO.

 

[RichVIII]

We have tried to make it a policy, if we are staying at a walkable resort to stick to what we can walk to. Legs don’t fail me now. Skyliner can be fairly regularly and monorail as well but both of those can be inconsistent.

 

[Boopuff]

OMG. This gives me hives. No way would I ever attempt to have an hour or two buffer on a travel day. I'm that person who arrives at the airport 3 hours prior to filght. Glad it all worked out for you!

 

[BamaGuy44]

OMG. This gives me hives. No way would I ever attempt to have an hour or two buffer on a travel day. I'm that person who arrives at the airport 3 hours prior to filght. Glad it all worked out for you!

Yeah poor DW was a nervous wreck. Normally we would leave more buffer but our last night at Epcot was a rough time, our little 3yo granddaughter had some tummy issues and felt terrible.

We didn’t want that to be her last memory of the trip so we did a few hours at MK on the last day. Had a ball at MK, so the day was a net positive in my book

 

[sndral]

This thread reminds me of another reason I miss the good old DME days, we always were out waiting well before the scheduled time + 15 minutes & had free entertainment as we watched many late for the bus crisis unfold through the years, from the large parties that would send a runner down to try & ‘hold’ the bus while the rest moseyed on down to the missed the scheduled bus trying to sneak on to a later bus crowd (which worked if they had room, but sometimes they didn’t.)
BTW, we are thinking of giving Tiffany a try next month & we’re staying at Jambo, where do they physically pick up at Jambo (and at MCO?)