bluezy
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2008
I'm a newbie, but have been lurking for a few months. I so appreciate all of the helpful info found here!
We are staying at AoA end of Jan 2018 - husband and three kids 6, 5, 1. We chose AoA for the affordable suites and fun theming. Question or where to find an old thread: How brutal is the bus wait and drive BACK from MK?
Most days park days we will RD and stay as long as kiddos can handle. There is one day that we need to come back for a break then return to MK for CRT and I'm starting to wonder if I should hold out to see if we can afford any Poly discount so we can use the monorail.
Thanks!
We've stayed at AoA three times and I would never consider the bus waits/drive "brutal". We travel in June (busy time) and always head back to the resort for the afternoon. I don't think we've waited more than about 10 minutes for a bus in the afternoon. Sometimes if the Pop Century bus is there when we get to the bus stop, we'll just hop on that bus and walk back to AoA. It's about a 20-25 minute bus ride from MK to AoA depending on traffic. We've made it in 18 minutes but also had it take as long as 30. Our rule of thumb is that if we're heading back to AoA for an afternoon break, we budget a minimum of 4 hours for the total travel/break time. We always assume an hour from the time we're walking under the Main Street Train Station at MK until we're back at our room. And we assume an hour from the time we leave our room until we're walking through the gates of MK. We like to have at least 2 hours back at the room to make it feel like its "worth" taking a break. If we have a dinner ADR, we absolutely leave our room at AoA a minimum of 90 minutes before our ADR time...you just never know when you're going to have an unusually long wait for a bus. Also, it seems that when a park has evening EMH, there are a lot of people heading to that park right around dinner time -- so that can mean a longer bus wait time.
In general, we've always found the bus service to and from AoA to be very good. I tend to keep track of our bus wait times and they're rarely more than 10 minutes (even though they often feel longer because we're anxious to get where we're going. ). and usually are less than 5. While the ride to MK can feel long, all of the other parks are less than a 10 minute ride. Personally, with your kids ages, I'd stick with AoA (but I'm a little biased -- we love the resort) because I think they will really enjoy the atmosphere. Now, if you plan to spend several days at MK, it might be worth switching to Poly if you can find a good deal...but I would expect the rate to be a bit higher than what you'll be paying at AoA -- and that will be for 1 standard room instead of a suite (though I understand paying a premium for convenience). I know there have been times that I could have gotten a garden wing room at CR for the same price as a suite at AoA but we've always stuck with the suite because our kids are teens and we need 2 bathrooms, the extra space is relaxing to us, 2 TV's is a must (I can only take so much of Teen Disney), and we like having a private master bedroom. If our kids were little, I'd be ok with 5 of us being in one standard hotel room with 1 bathroom; but with teens, 2-3 nights is all we can tolerate being in one standard hotel room with 1 bathroom.