We were flying into Florida a few weeks back for what was scheduled to be a “leisurely” trip—a Disney Cruise bookended by short Disney World stays. I didn’t really want to stress much (I bought Lightning Lane Premier Pass for the first time), and just about the only thing I was stressed about heading into the trip was the annoyance of getting from MCO to Port Orleans French Quarter. I opted for Mears Connect, the most popular of the paid shuttle options between MCO and Disney World.
This is a tad surprising. I have a post specifically covering various ways to get from MCO to Disney World, and in that post I say my preference is for Uber. The post isn’t wildly out of date, and it definitely reflects relatively strong feelings I had for a while.
The reason this site doesn’t have a review of Mears Connect is because the first time I used it I simply didn’t enjoy it and didn’t care enough to write a review. For me, it was a straightforward non-starter. I mostly opted for Uber in the years after that.
But recently, I’ve found myself opting for Mears Connect more and more. We used it for three of the four airport-MCO legs in our last two trips. And if I’m being honest…I think I’ll do it next time, too. So, why do I keep winding up on Mears Connect? And, what does that mean for my feelings on the long-lost Magical Express? Let’s dive in.
Why Do I Keep Using Mears Connect?
Here are six factors that, when considered together, have me gravitating toward Mears Connect.
The Price Isn’t So Bad
On our last Mears Connect trip I paid $49.50 for the three of us to get from MCO to Port Orleans French Quarter. An UberX for that trip costs $35.95 as I type this sentence. Generally, I go with UberXL when we have a car seat, and that costs $49.82.
These are about the lowest prices I’ve seen for this trip on Uber. Lyft, for example, starts at $43.86 for that same trip right now (and 5 minutes later, Uber was up to $41.96). In case of surge pricing, you’d pay more. I tend to tip well on Uber, particularly when luggage and time installing a car seat are involved. I tip less for a shuttle bus.
Looking at those figures, at worst, our Mears Connect trip is going to cost us about $10 more than Uber. And with UberXL and typical Uber pricing, I’m probably coming out ahead much of the time I use Mears Connect. In any case, when you’re talking about a trip that will usually run you in excess of $5000, we don’t need to spend any more time on this point—it’s pretty close to a wash, aka, not “so bad.”
The Time Isn’t So Bad
It’ll vary by your specific hotel and moreso by traffic, but the drive from MCO to Disney World takes around 30 minutes. My last two Mears Connect trips took just under an hour from check-in (that is, arriving at the Mears podiums) to getting dropped off. On neither of them were we the first hotel. When you factor in some time you’d spend waiting for and getting into an Uber, as with price, that’s not the worst.
Of course, my very first trip on Mears Connect, the trip took 73 minutes and we didn’t even make it to our hotel. I just couldn’t be on the bus anymore, so we got off at BoardWalk Inn (which was the fifth stop) and walked to Yacht Club. That experience definitely had me staying away from the service for a while, but my recent experiences have been better.
It’s One-Half Less Thing to Stress About
I’m a seasoned traveler. Zoe’s a seasoned traveler (80 flights!). But I’m just still not a chill traveler when traveling as a parent. When I’m going to Disney World and trying to figure out how I’m going to fit all the fun in, I just don’t need to stress about the details of airport pickup and dropoff.
My general preference for these sorts of things is Uber, which I’ll talk more about next. But overall, I find Mears Connect to be the least stressful of the ways to get to Disney World from MCO. Does it require patience? Definitely. But overall I’ve started to find the trade off to be worth it.
I Don’t Always Want to Deal with Uber
While I’m a frequent user of Uber, I sometimes find it to be a bit much when traveling with Zoe. I have to coordinate pickup at MCO, which isn’t often a huge challenge, but still can take some time. Then we have to get the car seat set up and get Zoe into it.
By this point in the day I’m usually a bit worn, or at least more focused on mobile ordering my lunch or grabbing some Lightning Lanes, and I’m often not in the mood for the (very reasonable and polite) chit-chat the drivers want to make.
It’s also not super fun to try and keep a toddler engaged while a driver is doing their best to focus on the task at hand. Zoe doesn’t love cars, and while we’ve got a few roadtrips in our bag, they involve 8 hours of the non-driving parent pretty constantly talking with or entertaining Zoe. FWIW, the Mears buses have screens that play some animated shorts and informational videos.
Plus, while it hasn’t happened in an Uber yet, Zoe has a decent track record of, well, making a bit of a mess on long drives (we don’t have a car).
We Can Travel Without A Carseat (Sort Of)
We travel with a travel car seat, but it’s still an extra thing to carry around (and fit on the plane, where I am a stickler for the carry on and personal item rules). Using Mears Connect allows us to skip the car seat…sort of.
With all the necessary caveats about safety in travel, car seats aren’t required on Mears buses, and I generally have no problem riding in buses without Zoe in a car seat.
The “sort of” caveat comes from the fact that sometimes your Mears service will be in one of their shuttle vans. Whether you book “Standard” or “Express” service, you can wind up in either a van or a bus. These vans do not legally require car seats (FL Statutes 316.613(6)), and, per Mears:
“While we are not required to offer a car seat in our small vehicle fleet, limited car seats are available in our shuttle vans should there be an on-demand need.”
We wound up in a shuttle van on a recent visit and were happy we had our car seat with us. In the case that we weren’t traveling with one, we’d probably request one. If it couldn’t be required…I’m not sure what decision I’d make in the moment, but there’s a few options I’d consider before going without one.
It’s Even Better Going to the Airport
I’ll close this section with a quick note about why I’m even more of a fan of Mears Connect when going to the airport. When you’re leaving the airport, you have to (1) wait for a bus, and then (2) possibly make multiple stops before your hotel. At this point you’re also probably either eager to get to the parks, in the pool, or to bed.
On the way to the airport, you’ll be picked up at a scheduled time, but you might still have to make multiple stops on the way to the airport.
Now, some readers are going to be quick to point out that Mears can be ridiculous with how early they pick you up. The default is around 3 hours before departure time, but earlier is possible. If you have TSA PreCheck or CLEAR, you probably don’t need that much time (as an aside, MCO can have awful waits, particularly in the morning before PreCheck and CLEAR are open).
If you’re unhappy with that schedule, you can just put in flight information for a flight later than your scheduled time. (Note that Terminal C is a different pickup / drop off, so try to use a JetBlue flight number if and only if you’re actually flying JetBlue.)
Last visit, I used a flight time an hour after our scheduled time. We were picked up 2.5 hours before our actual flight time (so 3.5 hours before the departure time we gave Mears), at the airport 37 minutes later (after a stop at Terminal C), and in the gate area 1.5 hours before our flight, an hour after we were picked up.
Of Course Disney World Should Bring Back Magical Express
This post isn’t a plea to bring back Magical Express, but I think it’s worth closing with a discussion of this issue. I’ll say right off the bat I was a little inspired to write this section by a post I saw in my inbox from Tom Bricker. I didn’t read that post (general policy against reading other site’s posts before writing my own), but in the email blurb he mentioned the idea of bringing back Magical Express. I was already planning the rest of this post, so it’s a natural fit.
Disney axed Magical Express—their complimentary MCO - Disney hotel shuttle service—back in early 2021. While my personal usage had probably bottomed out by that point, in favor of rideshare, I felt then and feel now that the service makes a ton of sense. Let’s look at the “small” and “big” picture cases for Magical Express.
The small-picture case for Magical Express is everything I mentioned above, with some additional notes about the finances thrown in. This isn’t a service no one needs, and it isn’t something that is fully replaced by options like rideshare.
But just because some people need it doesn’t mean Disney should provide it. Magical Express costs money and it’s probably hard for Disney to value it. If something gets cut, as Magical Express did, it means people who are at least decent at business made the decision that the value to the business wasn’t worth the cost of operation. But sometimes they’re going to get it wrong.
Of course while rideshare doesn’t fully replace Magical Express, the marketplace more or less has. If Disney pays for the bus, then guests who don’t use it are subsidizing guests who do. (A middle-ground option I won’t discuss here would be Disney operating and charging for Magical Express.)
But we’ve already seen the two competitors—Sunshine Flyer and Mears Connect—merge into a single service. As a result, people are naturally skeptical about how profitable the service is for Mears. A bus service that connects guests from MCO to Disney World benefits guests, MCO, and Disney. If some significant amount of that benefit is going to Disney, it only makes sense that it might be more efficient for them to be operating the service.
This brings us to the big-picture case for Magical Express. The big-picture case for Magical Express was that you could enter the frictionless Disney bubble before you even left the airport. We’re a well-traveled family, but when we go to Disney World I just don’t use the travel part of my brain once I arrive at the hotel. That’s particularly helpful because Lightning Lanes and park touring already take up a lot of brainpower as-is. It’s nicer to be able to shut off that part of your brain even earlier.
With Epic Universe debuting in May down the street from Disney World, the Mouse needs every edge it can get. “Trapping” people in the bubble is a decent edge. If I have to use Uber or rent a car anyway, I’m honestly not sure that a June trip to Universal plus a day at Magic Kingdom doesn’t sound better to me than a trip to Disney World.
Mears Connect has made it this far. It’s made it to the post-closure era where commentators are once again fixated on the question of whether Disney is leaving the middle class behind. Disney already brought back free parking for hotel guests, a wise decision. Of course I’d like to see them bring back Magical Express—restoring the Disney bubble to something of its former glory—too.
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