One of the biggest perks of staying on-site at Walt Disney World is the ease of transportation. Disney Resort hotel guests get to take advantage of complimentary transportation, which can include the Disney Skyliner, Disney Monorail, buses, boats, and more. Overall Disney does a great job with transportation at the resort, but if we had to pick the hotels with the worst transportation to others, this would be the list.
Often, we tend to look at resorts that have only bus transportation as some of the worst options only with resorts that are located further away from the most popular theme parks. Internal bus systems, meaning multiple bus stops within one large resort, can also result in long wait times as they need to make multiple stops in the resort itself before heading to the destination. Below, we break down the 9 worst hotels for transportation, including even some of our favorites. Mickey Visit brings you the latest Disney news and planning resources, including the closure end date for an upcoming Magic Kingdom ride refurbishment and the highest prices ever coming for select Disney World Lightning Lanes.
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5. Disney’s DVC Resorts – Old Key West and Saratoga Springs
Disney’s Old Key West and Disney’s Saratoga Springs are both DVC hotels that are large enough to have their own internal bus systems. Internal bus systems can be quite inconvenient and can add multiple stops as the buses travel throughout these large, sprawling resorts. This means that guests need to wait for multiple stops inside the resort itself before the bus can actually get moving to its actual destination. This can create long waits while on the bus, at the individual bus stops, or when waiting at the theme parks for the resort hotel bus to arrive.
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Both these resorts do offer proximity to Disney Springs, making the rating a bit lower on our list for worst transportation.
Saratoga Springs is close enough to walk to Disney Springs, while Old Key West offers boat transportation to Disney Springs. Outside of the boat transportation to Disney Springs, they only offer bus transportation to the theme parks.
4. Disney’s Port Orleans Resorts – French Quarter and Riverside
Disney’s Port Orleans French Quarter and Riverside Resort are two resorts located right next to each other. Both of these moderate-level resorts are large, meaning this can result in long walks to get to your room to the various amenities, including the bus transportation stops. The resorts only offer bus transportation to the theme parks, although there is boat transportation to Disney Springs.
Sometimes these two resorts will share buses, making for even longer bus stops as the buses plan on going to both resorts. This can create longer than usual waits, along with the potential for the long walk to the bus stops.
For guests that don’t like bus transportation, this can be a big downside of these resorts. These two large moderate resorts also have multiple internal bus stops, which can create similar issues as the Saratoga Springs Resort and Old Key West Resort.
3. Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort
Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort offers a deluxe-style tower with more elevated dining and resort room options along with its older, sprawling outdoor buildings built in the moderate style. The bus transportation goes to multiple individual stops around the outdoor buildings, along wth a stop at the Gran Destino Tower.
Along with the internal bus stop issue, Coronado Springs Resort is also the only other moderate hotel to not at least offer one alternative mode of transportation in addition to buses.
There is no other mode of transportation available at Coronado Springs Resort, meaning that guests only have the bus transportation to pick from. This can be a big downside and can create longer waits at the bus stops since all guests are using the same mode of transportation. The other moderate level resorts at least include the option of a Skyliner or boat transportation to Disney Springs.
2. Disney’s All-Star Resorts
Disney’s All-Star Resorts, including All-Star Music, Sports, and Movies, often get a bad rap for their transportation. Similar to Coronado Springs Resort, the All-Star value resorts only offer bus transportation, meaning there are no other on-site transportation options offered.
The downside of having three All-Star Resorts located near each other is that during slow periods the value resorts can share buses, resulting in more stops than usual. This often only happens midday rather than the busy morning or end-of-night times.
The other downside of the All-Star Resort transportation is that the bus stops for these resorts at the theme parks are often the furthest away, making an even longer walk at the end of a long day at the parks.
On the other hand, these hotels benefit from having a lot of rooms and thus a higher amount of buses running each hour. It is also easy to take a bus to one of the other All-Star resorts and walk to your resort if the lines for one of the buses is long but the other is not. Generally, the cadence of buses running to the All-Star resorts is pretty good.
1. Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge
Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge takes my top choice for the worst transportation at Disney World. While this is one of my favorite resorts, the transportation here is the most inconvenient. This deluxe resort offers only bus transportation and is the only deluxe resort without any alternatives besides buses. That alone is a big downside, but it’s not the only reason transportation at Animal Kingdom Lodge is the worst.
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Animal Kingdom Lodge’s biggest transportation downside is not that it only uses buses, but that is physically so far from theme parks besides from Animal Kingdom. While a bus ride to Animal Kingdom only takes a few minutes, guests will face a far longer ride to Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, and EPCOT. Since these theme parks are often higher on the list for repeat visits than Animal Kingdom, that makes this deluxe resort the worst choice for transportation.
That is what makes it different than other resort hotels that also only have bus transportation. Animal Kingdom Lodge is just physically located further away from the other parks since its right next to Animal Kingdom. However, Animal Kingdom Lodge remains one of my favorite Disney World resorts despite its distance.
The hotel also has fewer guests than the All-Star resorts which results in buses coming less frequently during non-peak times. This is a general issue with Deluxe resorts that rely on bus transportation. Most of the Deluxe resorts have some kind of transportation that is not a bus, but all resorts rely on buses to get to Disney’s Animal Kingdom and each resort also has buses that run to the parks that are not served by the monorail, boat, or Disney’s Skyliner.
While these hotels are all ranked for their lackluster transportation options, it’s also important to keep in mind that Disney is often quite efficient with their bus transportation. Having only buses as an option may not be the most popular, but we’ve never found ourselves waiting that long for a bus, even at the All-Star Resorts which often get the worst rap when it comes to that form of transportation.
While these may be the worst Disney World resort hotels for transportation, that’s only in comparison to other Disney resorts, where transportation is generally excellent and often far better than what you’ll find at off-site hotels. Disney has done a fantastic time modernizing and accurately scheduling buses in recent years.
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