11 responses

  1. Eric
    September 19, 2016

    Do you know if they ever tried having something like having bus hub (or two) and then shuttle trams at each section to just keep looping to the hub(s)? I’m not sure it’s the most efficient from a macro view, but would make the bus-to-parks more simple, and fair from a customer-wait POV.

    Reply

    • Jeff
      September 19, 2016

      Hubs at a Resort.
      Sounds like a nightmare.

      Reply

    • Dave
      September 20, 2016

      Eric, I’m with Jeff on this one. One resort in effect works with hubs (Fort Wilderness) and it is a pain…

      Reply

  2. Joel
    September 16, 2016

    I agree Dave, but only if the buses make it to all of the stops. If 1 bus comes every 10 minutes but makes it through stops 1 – 6 before hitting capacity and I’m at 7, I would not be a fan of my outlier of a wait of infinity while everyone else gets sub 10 minutes. I’d be curious to look behind the curtain of Disney Transportation as I work with many labor and logistic engineers who specialize in productivity.

    Reply

    • Dave
      September 17, 2016

      Joel, there are options for buses to do only a few of the consecutive stops and then exit before they have to drive past the rest. Word is that CB experimented with this recently. It requires more buses to generate the same expected wait, but does limit the time spent driving around the resort.

      Reply

  3. Joel
    September 14, 2016

    What if the second MK bus was there because transportation already knew the first one would fill up before it finished the resort loop? So the 1st gets stops 1 – 4 and the second gets stragglers and 5 – 7. The question is does it matter what stop within the resort you are sitting at since there are slightly different routes in CRB depending on the origin location. In addition, are there exits that a bus can take before it finishes a loop and you would therefore not see it pass your stop?

    Reply

    • Dave
      September 15, 2016

      Joel one bus every ten minutes vs two buses every 20 minutes have the same capacity but yield lower waits.

      Reply

  4. Jeff
    September 13, 2016

    This is the type of geeky & obsessive article that us WDW fanatics live for.
    You have my loyalty forever.

    Reply

    • Dave
      September 14, 2016

      🙂 Jeff

      Reply

  5. Micah
    September 12, 2016

    Very interesting post, thanks. I have always wanted to see more real data on the bus wait times. The data this shows what I have seen at many resorts for years: on average the times are quite reasonable, but there is a lot of variability in the actual waits you find.

    “But practically speaking a bus that comes one minute after another bus to the same park is of next to no value”
    I agree completely. I have never understood how they allow this to even happen, but have seen it multiple times myself. What makes it worse is that the bus driver of the second bus rarely waits more than a few seconds, and typically leaves with a completely empty bus. I don’t see any reason they can’t wait around 5 or 10 minutes to help space things out more evenly.

    “Guests would be better served if these buses were re-routed before their first stop to whatever park was fourth on the list of most recent buses…”
    From what I have been told, each bus is assigned to a specific park as their ‘base’ for the day, so they aren’t even allowed to go to a different park instead. But… they should have never been given the assignment to go to that specific resort right after another bus was sent there.. the issue is apparently at the park where they get dispatched out to the resorts.

    Reply

    • Dave
      September 13, 2016

      Thanks, Micah! If I were in charge–and I think we can all agree that such is a good idea–I’d give bus control to the resorts up until early afternoon, and to the parks in the late afternoon and evening.

      Reply

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