Over the past few months, select resort hotel bus stops around Walt Disney World have had LCD displays installed that should tell them the estimated wait until a particular bus is going to show up. While not fully functional as of yet, Disney is now testing recently-installed long range readers to see how long it takes for buses to travel between two points, in order to give accurate bus wait times to resort guests.
The readers are tracking guests’ MagicBands, at least reading when the guest leaves the bus station at one point and then arrives at the next point.
The test is currently taking place between Disney’s Port Orleans Resort and the Magic Kingdom. Should the test be successful, a widespread roll-out of the system will take place, giving guests resort-wide accurate bus wait times.
nice.. one of the benefits of their big investment with magic bands. it will really improve the guest experience as waiting for buses and not knowing when they will come is probably one of the least favorite activities when at Disney. I enjoy the technology and can’t wait to see how they use it in the future.
oh wait, they are tracking me with my magic band? hate it.
Will it only be at the Port Orleans Riverside main bus stop, or at the rest of them and the French Quarter too?
Interesting concept and I knew the MagicBands were being used to track our every move (honestly I don’t mind as long as I can get on my rides faster :-))
I still miss the idea of them building the transportation pods and getting rid of the buses all together! For those who don’t know about the concept of the transportation pods, the idea was to have pods on a track constantly moving around resorts and parks where the rider just get in and select next location and the pod takes you there. Little to no wait for other Disney transportation (boat, ferry, monorail, or bus). An expensive concept but an interesting concept and the MagicBands could come in handy of tracking people to know where to send many of the pods when needed.
im staying at port orleans in 3 weeks
Agreed with Mike above. Solving and optimizing resort bus routing has been a consistent and largely unsolvable problem for Disney. Magic Bands can actually help solve this with 1) giving real data on people at the stops and their wait times and 2) maybe even setting up kiosks (like the FP+ ones) that allow you to scan you MB and put in where you what to go. Again, real and timely data. That’s what they have been lacking. You plug that data in the right software…job done.