Following Disney World’s announcement that it’s scaling back Park reservations and reintroducing the Disney Dining Plan, Guests are pushing for the return of another staple of the Disney bubble: the Magical Express.
In operation from 2005 to 2022, the Magical Express was a complimentary transportation service offered exclusively to Guests staying at Walt Disney World Resort hotels.
This provided free transportation between Disney-owned hotels and from Orlando International Airport (MCO). Upon arrival, Guests would check in at the Magical Express area, where Cast Members assisted with luggage and loaded it onto branded buses that departed to Disney property every 30 minutes.
The value of the Magical Express was long considered a huge perk of paying to stay on property. But on January 11, 2021, Disney announced that it would discontinue its Magical Express service at the end of the year.
Since January 2022, Guests have had to make their own way from MCO via a rental, Uber or Lyft, or the paid Mears service – something many fans believe Disney needs to remedy.
Following Disney’s announcement of upcoming changes at Walt Disney World, Reddit user Schwiftysolenya shared a post titled “Now we just need the Magical Express back,” in which they claimed, “If they bring it back I will 100% go back in 2024.”
This is a common sentiment if the responses are anything to go by. “Park hopping hours liberated + DME restored and I’ll be back in love with the WDW vacation again,” wrote sayyyywhat. Another user, sciencejusticewarior, agreed: “That magic don’t start till I see that bus.”
Disney regulars are reluctant to take a Magical Express alternative – mainly because it adds yet another level of planning to a Disney Park era already complicated by Genie+ and Lightning Lanes. As skelow401 wrote:
Yessss, I am dying for them to bring it back! Its all about the peace of mind and its why I love WDW to begin with – the lack of needing to worry and plan outside the bubble. I don’t want to have to rideshare or whatever to and from the airport because its stressful and less directed. We do Mears because it at least has a dedicated area still in the airport and is mostly reliable. If it were back to being official you could count on the timings and directions more, and feel less worried about missing a bus etc. (so much easier to grab a front desk cast member etc. than having to call Mears and all that jazz).
The big question is why Disney would ever eliminate the service in the first place. The Magical Express contributed to the illusion of the Disney bubble, enhancing the magic for Guests and benefiting Disney by keeping parkgoers (and their wallets) on Disney property. As user BZI wrote, it’s “Forever baffling that they ended the service that trapped people on their property, right as Universal is building a new park.”
And while Mears continues to operate a paid replacement service, it doesn’t live up to the magical reputation of its predecessor. “Having experienced the Mears service on two separate trips, I’m done trusting them to get me back and forth from MCO,” wrote cmfolsom. “Disney stopped paying them to operate it so they stopped caring about anything remotely magical. I’m fine with waiting, when necessary, but the general vibe has gone from ‘you’re now entering the Disney bubble!’ to ‘We’re just a bus company and we’ve had enough of this nonsense but we will get you wherever or something.’ There is zero interest in delivering anything resembling warmth to a customer base.”
As of now, Disney hasn’t indicated that a Magical Express return is on the cards – nor does it seem likely that they will any time soon. While it’s stayed relatively quiet on the reasons behind its discontinuation, the general consensus is that it was Disney that declined to renew its contract with Mears, with the company claiming at the time that the service was no longer necessary as “consumer needs and preferences change.”
The unspoken implication was that eliminating the service also saved Disney money at a time when its Parks were still trying to recover from its pandemic losses. If Disney World hopes to continue its Guest-pleasing streak, however, it might want to add a return for the Magical Express to the list ASAP.