At present, Disney charges $17 per day for parking when going to one of their 4 major Parks (Magic…read moreKingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom) unless you are staying in an official Disney Resort or unless you have an annual pass which includes parking. $17 per day is a bit steep, then again, what at Disney isn't?! One way around having to pay the astronomical parking fee is to park at Downtown Disney and take one of their buses to one of their Resorts and then head to your Disney Park of choice. If you're heading to Magic Kingdom or Epcot, a good choice is to take a bus going to the Contemporary Resort because you can then take the monorail. If you're heading to Hollywood Studios or Animal Kingdom, a good choice would be Port Orleans. They are in the process of building parking garages at Downtown Disney. When those are finished, they will start charging the public to park in them. So take advantage of the free parking and the buses to the Parks while you still can. Of course, after the garages are finished, the buses will still be running from all of the Disney Resorts to Downtown Disney. Also, while all of this construction is going on, they have only been having one of the two bus stops open at a time. Either the Marketplace Bus Stop or The Pleasure Island Bus Stop. As of now, November 2014, The Pleasure Island Bus Stop is closed. There are signs marked with which stop number to wait at for the bus you want. There are also Cast Members around to answer questions and help get you where you are wanting to be. The Disney bus transportation is great. The buses are comfortable and air conditioned. The drivers are safe and are generally very nice and friendly. Keep in mind the buses aren't going to go directly from the Marketplace to the end destination. They often have to stop at Typhoon Lagoon or Blizzard Beach and they will often have to stop at another resort as well. So just sit back and relax. There are times when the buses get extremely packed. It depends on the time of year, the time of day, and the resort you are staying at. The "economy" resorts are usually always packed and sometimes you may have to wait for a second bus to come because the first one may fill up. The buses do run very frequently. On average, you'll never have to wait more than 20 minutes for a bus, but sometimes, I see buses heading to the same place show up within minutes of one another. Finally, I'd just like to remind all you men to have manners. If you see an elderly person, a pregnant woman, a mother holding a sleeping toddler, etc., then please, please, please, get your tail up and give the person your seat so they don't have to stand! I get so damn irritated on these buses because I see perfectly healthy young men sitting on their lazy, rude a$$es while some poor mother is holding a sleeping child in one arm and trying to hold on to the bus straps with her other hand. So, for goodness sakes, do the right thing!!

So, my husband and I went to Disney Springs the other day to renew our Tables in Wonderland Card…read moreand grab lunch. TWC is a card that you pay for, currently $150 for a DVC member, but you get 20% off food and alcohol at tons of restaurants all over property and free valet parking at the resorts if you use it when dining. At $30 to valet, the thing pays for itself in no time. Anyway, we arrived at Disney Springs around 1pm. We waited in line and were greeted by a woman with an ipad who wanted to know how they could help. We told her we need to renew our TWC card. She said they had a 45 minute wait, but that we could leave our number and they would text us when someone was available. Ok, does anyone else think a 45 min wait for Guest Relations is ridiculous? So we go to lunch and they don't text us till almost an hour later. We return and I check in with the guy at the back and then I sit there for another 25 minutes! Are you kidding me? So, all in all it took nearly 90 minutes to get assistance. That's crazy. They need to hire more people and have more people working at a time. They used to have GR on Marketplace and West Side and now they just have this one in the middle. Maybe they need to go back to having two locations here. When I asked about the delay, the lady said they were busy because of the holiday. It was Dec 1. I know we had Thanksgiving last month, but it was 2 weeks ago and Christmas is still 3 weeks away. We were very close to the start of Hannukah, but is the entire month of December now considered a holiday? Ugh! So we waited in line to give them our phone number so we could wait and hour and come wait in another line for a half hour so that we could get help.