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Inside Walt Disney World’s new Slinky Buses

slinky-buss

Call it what you will a slinky bus, wiggle bus, caterpillar bus, accordion bus, or vestibule bus, the new articulated buses at Walt Disney World add a new dimension to travel around the resort. Disney even built a whole new loading and unloading area at the Magic Kingdom just to accommodate these larger vehicles.

Walt Disney World itself is an area about the size of San Francisco (or twice the size of Manhattan). It uses over 290 buses to transport guests around the property making it the third largest mass transit system in Florida. Even with all those buses, getting guests where they need to go on a timely basis is often a challenge. That’s why Disney has decided to expand its fleet with these new higher capacity accordion buses.

If you watch the video you’ll see a lot of poles and hanging cords to grasp. What you won’t find a lot of in the new slinky bus is seats. Almost all the seats are aligned against the windows leaving a majority of the space open for standing passengers. That increases the capacity of these buses, but means you’ll likely be standing on your journey. It may be uncomfortable to be squished in with no where to sit, but it also means more guests can reach their destination in a timely manner during the rush times.

Given the choice between timeliness of transport or comfort from Disney Transportation, which would you prefer?

8 thoughts on “Inside Walt Disney World’s new Slinky Buses”

  1. I’m a huge fan of disney transportation. We never rent a car and use Magical Express with each trip. However, my least favorite part is standing on the buses going to parks and the resort. It never feels good to stand after walking all day in heat and crowds. I wish they would have included many more seats for passengers.

  2. I am all about saving time and getting there QUICK in first thing in the morning! However, come park closing….I would prefer a place to sit ;) Mostly, I think we will like them!

  3. The only problem I see is there are lots of small children, and especially at park closing they may be asleep, and trying to stand and hold on to your sleeping child and stay upright is hard. I wish there were more seats

  4. If I’m gonna be standing in line at park closing waiting for a bus, I might as well be standing in one and be on my way to my resort. That’s the way I see it.

  5. Less Seats!!!! Sounds to me like Disney is looking at their bottom line and not the comfort if their guests. If I’m going to have to stand in a bus packe with people I will wait for another bus.

  6. that’s crazy. As the guys on Top Gear have shown, bendy busses are terribly unsafe – not only for other vehicles on the road but also for passengers. I can’t imagine riding through WDW (where everyone’s an out-of-towner and 90% don’t know where they’re going and therefore the roads are dangerous enough already)… especially not with most of the passengers being forced to stand. Unsafe – crazy unsafe — this is an accident and lawsuit just waiting to happen.

  7. I don’t mind standing – but my issue is the lack of places for short people to hold on. At 5’2″, I can’t get a full grip on the hanging straps, much less overhead poles. There have been times when I’m among the last on, so I can’t get to a wall or to one of the veritcal poles to hold on…

  8. I would rather stand on the bus than stand at the bus stop…at least standing on the bus gets you somewhere! These sound really good to me as long as the air conditioning is working! ;-)

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