Do Commando Families Drive or Take Disney Transportation?

[DanielNYC]

Trying to figure out if I should rent a car to have at our disposal to travel to the parks and back to the hotel at night. For context, we are the commando family that rope drops every day and stays in one park all day until close or maybe a little before close. We are staying on property for five nights then driving down to Miami after our final park day (more like a half day) at DHS.

I initially thought we would do the whole Magical Express thing and then use the buses/boats/monorail during our stay, but I've been reading a bit and it seems like some folks are less than satisfied with Disney transportation either because it doesn't start early enough or is too crowded or for whatever reason.

I'm leaning towards the car mainly because I like the flexibility of coming and going on our own schedule, but am I being too hasty? Any other commandos out there care to confirm my decision or offer another perspective?

 

[lynzi2004]

You will be fine either way. We are commando type people and we occasionally take Disney transportation because my kids (5,4) like to ride on the buses/boats/monorails. But I will say that while most of the time Disney transportation is fine, I can never get my head around being on "Disney time". When I'm ready to go to the parks, I'm ready to go...not sit around waiting 20 min on a bus to pick us up. Yes, I'm definitely impatient but it's just how I am. When I'm worn out and tired at night or the kids have fallen asleep in the stroller, we find it's much easier to walk to the car, put kids in their seats and drive back to Ft. Wilderness. It beats one of us holding 2 sleeping kids while the other juggles a double stroller and all the days bags, only to have to stand the 20 min back to the resort. Driving to MK is probably my least favorite bc you still have to rely on some form of transport. But I do think it's easier to drive if your a commando vs someone who likes a mid-day break or someone who park hops, I don't think driving is worth it if your going to be going to your car multiple times a day.

Edit to add: we drive to Disney to start with so I don't know whether it would be worth it to rent a car...

 

[iujen94]

We take a taxi from the airport and then use Uber to go to parks for rope drop. We usually use Disney transportation to go back to our resort at the end of the day. And then Uber back to the airport. Most Uber rides around Disney are pretty cheap, maybe $6-8.

 

[glassslippergirl]

We usually stay off site, but even when we stay on site, we drive. At 3 of 4 parks, it's so easy to walk out to the car, hop in, and head back to the hotel. MK is kind of a pain. Like I said, we are off site usually, so we have to do the tram to TTC to monorail or ferry to MK, and it's time consuming. If I could, I'd probably take a bus to MK and drive everywhere else.

 

[bluefunnel]

No kids but we do tend to go from rope drop(or sooner with An early ADR) to close. We take a car for everything but MK, don't want to deal with the TTC. The bus home tends to be a bit of a hassle but I'm sure getting on a boat or monorail would as well.

 

[robl45]

I wouldn't drive to MK, the others I have, but really rather not, I think it would be simpler to UBER which i likely will try in August to save time. Driving you have to wait for tram, get to car, get back to hotel, hope you find a space, etc.

 

[Gophers]

Were were on site for first time on our last trip. We never had issues getting to anything on time. We love the transportation and I enjoy not having to worry about gas fill ups during the trip and my wife wanted me to go to the store to pick up something

 

[tinkerbellandeeyor]

I love the Disney buses especially the signature welcome home who you get to your resort

 

[sbrost13]

We were just at Disney World July 12-19 and had fantastic bus transportation while staying at Coronado Springs. I'd say it was the best we've had in our last 3 trips. We did the 8:00 AM EMH parks every day they were open. We left for an afternoon break every day except one and had no long waits for the busses at that time either. We did uber twice for rope drop at Animal Kingdom because I wanted to ensure we got there at least 60 minutes prior to opening so we could get on FOP.

 

[Alesia]

We've done both and we prefer to use Disney transportation

 

[Superchikk]

Our last trip, we had two kiddos & a stroller. We drove, so we had our car. We ended up driving to AK & HS a couple of times, and took Disney Transportation to MK and EP. Part of my kids' joy in going to Disney is riding the buses. I know...it's weird. We early rope-drop, go back to the resort for a bit of a rest, then go back to a park for the evening. We hop, so some days we would've had to drive to a second park anyway. We like having the flexibility, but I wouldn't consider it an absolute must.

 

[lovethattink]

Imho, buses are more convenient to and from MK, own car is more convenient to and from other parks.

 

[Bullseye]

We drive everywhere including MK. Prefer having wheels at my disposal. We also like having car to occasionally dine off site and grocery shop.

 

[Lavitz]

Last trip was the first one we drove down and it was nice having a car to lug around the stroller. If no stroller there is no way I'd pay to rent a car just to get to/from the parks when the buses work so well. Overall we saw that you probably saved a little bit of time driving (except MK where it's faster to bus it).

 

[Parker Clan]

We drive and wouldn't do anything else.

 

[disneyjunkie]

We only use Disney transportation.

We do role drop/AM EMHs, hop from park to park, and PM EMHs. We have never had awful wait for the buses, monorail or boats.

 

[maltdizzy]

We drive to FLA, so we alreadsybhave our car. We do most of our own driving around property and figure it saves us 1-2 hours a day compared to the buses and boats.

I agree with others that the TTC parking lot makes the MK less desireable to drive to.

But I do NOT think that justifies the cost of a rental car. If we flew in (and we have), we would use Disney transporation (and we have).

 

[cgattis]

We tour commando but usually don't hop. We usually drive down, but we almost exclusively use Disney transportation once we arrive. It's nice to have a car for resort ADRs and water parks, but not worth a car rental IMO unless you have lots of those planned. Sometimes we drive to a park if we're going someplace offsite afterwards.

 

[Jennasis]

We drive everywhere but MK (have our own car).

 

[TXDisneyFan1]

We just got back from our week long trip (July 19th) and we used Uber to get to most of our destinations and we will never do anything else. (We stayed at Poly, so we used the monorail to MK and Epcot)

Uber is the best of all worlds: drivers are rarely more than 3 minutes away, they pick you up/drop you off close to the gates and/or front door. We didn't have to worry about getting gas, driving directions, parking, waiting for a bus, standing on a bus all the way back, walking across a hot parking lot, etc...I was surprised at how nice and clean all of the cars were that we rode in.

The only con is that it costs money, but it was cheaper for us to Uber almost everywhere than it usually cost us to rent a car.