Imagine with the Disney Diva for a second:
You’re excited! You’ve discovered you can actually get in the parks before they “officially” open by making an early advanced dining reservation. You get an 8am reservation for Tusker House and are ecstatic. But then you have a strange revelation… resort buses don’t start running until 1 hour before park opening. How am I going to GET to my reservation since I’m staying on property and I don’t have a car???
I recently had a reader ask a question similar to this and was baffled. I have not encountered this issue myself, so I set out to find the information and get it to the faithful Chip & Co readers!
It is correct that buses start running one hour before park opens (this is crazy to me. I don’t know how I have never heard of this before, but I haven’t!!) I called Pop Century‘s front desk and they were unable to find the answer for me. Then our co-writer, Jodi at Magical Mouse Schoolhouse, called her travel agent friend and got this answer:
This seems to be the most simple solution, but there are a few more options if you are feeling unsure.
1) Rent a car. This seems to be the worst option to me as its costly, you’ll have to pay for park, you’ll deal with stroller issues on the tram, and you’ll only be doing all that hassle so you can eat an hour before everybody else.
2) Call a taxi in order to make sure you’re there in plenty of time. They recommend checking in 15 minutes a head of time, but it will be less of an issue if you’re the first reservation of the day. I would recommend that you you need to call for a yellow cab directly at (407) 699-9999. Unless you are desperate, use only the yellow cabs (sedans and vans) with meters! There are different brand names on the vehicles (Yellow Cab, Checker, City or Safety), but they all are yellow and all operated by Mears Transportation, which has an official relationship with Disney.
3) Be standing at your bus stop at 8am ready to go and hope that the bus gets you in on time. Remember that you can be up to 30 minutes late for an ADR before they cancel your reservation.
4) Move your reservation back some to give yourself a cushion.
So the bottom line is have a plan if you’re booking a dining reservation at a time that is before parks are scheduled to open in order to avoid quite a stressful situation! Happy Eating!
– The Disney Diva, www.tipsfromthedisneydiva.com
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I have been told by staff that as long as you show up for your reservation the same day you made it for, they do not cancel your reservation. Though this means if you made a reservation for breakfast, don’t show up for dinner.
When I last had this situation a few years back at POP there was one bus dispatched per park at about 1 hour and 30 minutes to 1 hour and 45 minutes before park opening. I don’t know if it is the time of year we went but no confimation with concierge was needed they just dispatched one bus per park for the early morning reservations. I even saw one come and have nobody get on it for a reservation. Things may have changed but it was that way for several years that we did the early park restaurants and the time of year may make a difference too.
I recently stayed at AKL – Jambo House and had an early morning reservation for Crystal Palace. We had booked the reservation through the concierge and had this concern. She advised us that buses do run a little early for this reason. We had no problem getting to our reservation on time. I believe it was for 8 a.m.
I had this problem when i was booking our ADR. We have never stayed on the Disney grounds and with some of our dining as early as 7:15am I had wondered how we were going to get there. I emailed Disney and they told me “yes, stop by and let them know you need a bus for your ADR.” They told us for our 7:15am ADR to be at the bus stop at 6:15am. So I am hoping not to run into any problems. Do you think an hour before our ADR is enough time?
Wow – no cost?? As I stated in my post below, we had to pay close to $40 for our taxi. We are going to run into the same issue next trip. How do you get a voucher for a no cost taxi??
I had heard of the Character bus but I have never seen one. I didn’t know it needed to be requested. Great information to know for our next trip!
We were able to talk to the concierge the night before and arrange transportation if needed at no cost. We were staying at Saratoga Springs and my dad had a train tour one day, golf another both before buses were running. Transportation using vouchers were taken care of. Our dinning wasn’t a probably most days but we always checked the night before with concierge. They were very helpful and always made sure we had transportation for our party of 6 (with a double stroller!).
We had this issue on our last trip. We stayed at the Contemporary, so our early Ohana reservations were no problem (monorail), but Tusker House was. It’s true that there is a early breakfast bus that you can ride, but when we tried to have the resort front desk CM make arrangements for us it turned out to be a ridiculously early time (like 7:00 for an 8:40 reservation). Instead, he called and reserved a taxi for us. We made arrangements the night before because we needed a van (there was six of us) and a car seat as well. We ended up paying close to $40, but we made it just fine! Early morning reservations are awesome, but tricky!