We’ve done every strategy mentioned. We used to DME from the airport and use all buses (and our feet when we stayed at BLT) when our kids were little. I became very disenchanted with busses on our spring break trip in March 2017. There was a freak cold front, water parks were shut down completely, parks were crazy packed and buses to AKL from DHS took over an hour and a half. An hour waiting for a bus was on the low side for that trip. I declared, “I will not step on another Disney bus!!”. So we have rented a car the last two times. Once, we parked the car at BC and never moved it. We used Lyft and Minnie vans each day and loved it. It was so inexpensive, and took minutes instead of hours. We walked to EPCOT and DHS from BC.
This last trip two weeks ago, we rented a car again, but drove from BC to Typhoon lagoon to avoid the 2 buses required otherwise. SO EASY and worth it. We arrived at 9:30am for a 10am opening, parked on the second row and it was minutes each way from BC. WINNING.
Emboldened by that experience, we drove to AKL the next day. Lines to go through the parking terminals were long and slow moving (it was around park opening time; we slept in and didn’t rope drop it). It took a while to get to the parking places, and then wait for a tram (or walk). Seemed maybe faster than a bus but probably not by much. Maybe it would have been faster earlier (or maybe worse?). We park hopped to DHS mid day. That wasn’t bad, but again we had to park way out (there were spaces people had left from the morning but they would let us park up there). Long walk to park entrance. That evening we went to DS for dinner, and that was easy in the rental car. But again we had to walk all the way out to our car at DHS, which just seems really far with tired park feet!
All in all, I loved having the car from the airport (
MDE makes me crazy now that I no longer need the benefit of not needing to bring car seats... my girls are 11 and 13!). I absolutely loved driving to Typhoon Lagoon. Saved at least an hour each way compared to two buses each way.
Driving to the parks was so so for me. I would not bus it, so I am comparing driving to Lyft/Minnie Van. For the small price, I think I would do Lyft to the parks, except MK, where I would do the Minnie Van so that you can be dropped off and picked up at the bus stop (( think it is stop 8, closer than it used to be), instead of the Contemporary or TTC with regular Lyft/Uber. Even if we park hop, the incremental $8 each way is not prohibitive compared to walking and tramming all over to my rental car.
Of note on the Minnie van from MK, we requested one as we were leaving MK, but we were still inside by the train station. It kept saying I would have to go to TTC to meet it. I didn’t want to do that, so we walked out of the park and then it let me chose the bus stop as my pick up location. That saved a bunch of time at park closing for sure!!
