Transportation Options and Tips for Disney’s Yacht Club

This article discusses transportation tips for Disney’s Yacht Club based on our experiences visiting the resort.

Can you imagine sitting at a bus stop at Walt Disney World and waiting for a bus that’s not coming? I would be willing to bet that scenario happens daily at Disney’s Yacht Club.

Since I’m at the resort reasonably often, it’s common to witness guests waiting for a bus to Epcot or Hollywood. Sometimes they’ve been waiting a while. Other times they get to the bus stop, start looking at the wait signs, and realize immediately they’ve made an error.

Time is precious at Walt Disney World, and while we can’t control how long we have to wait for anything, we can learn how to use transportation to our advantage.

So below, we’ll go over how to get to various destinations from Disney’s Yacht Club. If you have an upcoming stay at the resort, these directions and tips will help get you off on the right foot.

Disney’s Yacht Club Transportation Options

When staying at Disney’s Yacht Club, you’ll want to know the best transportation modes to get to and from the resort. Here are a few of the routes we’ll look at below:

How to get to Epcot from Disney’s Yacht Club
How to get to Hollywood Studios from Disney’s Yacht Club
Traveling from Disney’s Yacht Club to Magic Kingdom
Visiting Disney’s Animal Kingdom from Disney’s Yacht Club
How to get to Disney Springs from the Yacht Club
Getting to a Disney Water Park from the Yacht Club

The following forms of transportation are available at Disney’s Yacht Club:

Friendship Boats
Disney’s Bus Service

Additionally, Disney’s Yacht Club is within walking distance of the Disney Skyliner. You can also walk to two theme parks from the resort, which we’ll discuss in more detail below.

How to Get to Epcot from Disney’s Yacht Club

Most importantly, you have two modes for visiting Epcot from Disney’s Yacht Club. Since Disney’s Yacht Club is part of the Epcot Resorts Area, you are within short walking distance of Epcot.

How short is the walk? Most will be able to walk out the back door of the Yacht Club and arrive at Epcot’s International Gateway in less than 10 minutes.

You’ll want to take a left at the lighthouse and continue straight until you reach Epcot. As you can see from the picture below, it’s a gorgeous walk along stunning Crescent Lake.

However, there’s an alternative. When you exit the Yacht Club, you can continue straight to the lighthouse.

There, you can board one of Disney’s Friendship Boats and take it to Epcot. However, the boats will take longer than walking.

When the boat departs Yacht Club, it continues across the lake to Disney’s Boardwalk. There it will stop and unload before continuing to Epcot. This route will take approximately 15-20 minutes.

You’ll want to board on the left-hand side of the dock if you decide to take the boats. Additionally, you can use this method to travel to Disney’s Boardwalk. You’ll want to exit when you dock across the water.

Transportation to Hollywood Studios from Yacht Club

Similar to traveling to Epcot, guests can walk or take a Friendship Boat to Disney’s Hollywood Studios from the Yacht Club. However, this walk averages 15-20 minutes, depending on your pace.

It’s approximately a 1.25-mile walk between Disney’s Yacht Club and Hollywood Studios. We recently stayed at the Yacht Club to walk to Disney After Hours at Hollywood Studios.

For taking the boat to Hollywood Studios, you’ll want to board on the right-hand side of the dock. On this route, you’ll stop at Disney’s Swan and Dolphin Hotel to load and unload. Then, you’ll continue to Hollywood Studios.

Disney’s Friendship Boats are a pleasant way to travel. There is one row of exterior seats on the back of each boat, but most of the seating is inside. So if you get in line early, you might be able to snag a seat outside.

Traveling to Magic Kingdom from Disney’s Yacht Club

For Magic Kingdom, you’ll want to take the bus. Yacht Club’s bus stop is conveniently located outside the resort’s front doors.

Disney’s Yacht Club shares its bus service with Disney’s Beach Club, its sister resort. So when you board the bus at Yacht Club, you’ll stop at Beach Club. After that, you’ll continue to the park.

However, Yacht Club is the first stop when returning to the resort.

Transportation from Yacht Club to Disney’s Animal Kingdom

Like Magic Kingdom, you’ll take the resort’s bus service from Disney’s Yacht Club to visit Disney’s Animal Kingdom. It takes approximately 15 minutes to travel from the resort to Animal Kingdom. However, loading and unloading can take extra time when you stop at the Beach Club.

Yacht Club to Disney Springs

Guests visiting Disney Springs will also need to take the bus. On our last visit, this was the longest route because the bus stopped at Yacht Club, Beach Club, and then at the Boardwalk.

While this isn’t always the case, I wanted to mention it because the resorts may share buses during slower parts of the day.

Yacht Club to Typhoon Lagoon

At the time of this article, bus service to Typhoon Lagoon requires taking a transfer bus. You’ll first board a bus from the Yacht Club to Disney Springs.

Then at Disney Springs, you’ll board a transfer bus to Typhoon Lagoon. You will also return this same way.

However, when you get back to Disney Springs at the end of the day, you’ll have to locate the bus stop for Yacht Club.

In the past, Disney has offered direct bus service to and from the resorts to the water parks. If this changes, signage at the bus stop will indicate which bus to take.

You may notice in the photo below under Typhoon Lagoon it says, “Take the Disney Springs bus and transfer.” You’ll want to confirm this when you arrive at the Yacht Club’s bus stop.

Yacht Club to Blizzard Beach

You’ll also take a transfer bus to Blizzard Beach. However, you’ll take a bus to Disney’s Animal Kingdom for this water park. When you exit the bus at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, you’ll board a transfer bus to Blizzard Beach.

At the end of the day, you’ll take a bus back from Blizzard Beach to Disney’s Animal Kingdom. From there, you’ll have to locate the bus stop for Disney’s Yacht Club.

Side note: When we stay at Disney’s Yacht Club, we typically like to spend an entire resort day at Stormalong Bay. So we rarely visit the water parks.

However, I find it much easier to drive to the water parks or take a car service over using the buses. While the transfer buses aren’t the end of the world, they are a pain. That’s especially true at the end of the day when everyone is tired and you’ve got wet swimsuits in tow, among other things.

Other Transportation Tips for Disney’s Yacht Club

Additionally, there might be a few other places you’ll want to visit at Walt Disney World. We’ll try to touch on a few of the more popular locations.

As we discussed earlier, you can walk or take the boat across the lake to Disney’s Boardwalk or Disney’s Swan and Dolphin. In addition, you might want to plan a dining reservation at one of their restaurants.

Often, guests will want to visit the resorts in the Magic Kingdom Area. Several resorts are located on the monorail, like the Polynesian, Grand Floridian, and the Contemporary.

We usually take a bus from Disney’s Yacht Club and then board the resort monorail to visit these resorts. You will have to go through security at Magic Kingdom, but you won’t have to walk through the ticketed area to board the monorail.

If you would like to visit Fort Wilderness or Disney’s Wilderness Lodge, you can also take a bus to Magic Kingdom. Instead of taking the monorail, there’s a boat dock at Magic Kingdom that travels to both of these resorts.

Of course, these are not the only ways to travel back and forth to the above-mentioned resorts. You could always take a boat or walk to Hollywood Studios and then board a bus to any of those resorts as long as it’s within the park’s operating hours.

Additionally, at some point, you might want to ride the Disney Skyliner or visit the Skyliner Resorts. There’s a Skyliner station near the entrance of Hollywood Studios and at the International Gateway at Epcot.

Epcot will be the nearest location to Disney’s Yacht Club. From there, the Skyliner travels in this order:

Epcot International Gateway
Disney’s Riviera Resort
Disney’s Caribbean Beach

At Disney’s Caribbean Beach, you must exit the Skyliner and reboard another line to one of the following:

Disney’s Art of Animation and Pop Century
Disney’s Hollywood Studios

Or you could always return to Disney’s Riviera and Epcot.

Lastly, for visiting Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge, we usually take a bus from Yacht Club to Disney’s Animal Kingdom. We’ll catch a bus to the Animal Kingdom Lodge from there.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully, this article gives you a good idea of how to get to and from your desired destinations. Walt Disney World is a tremendous place and can be overwhelming when unfamiliar.

As for Disney’s Yacht Club, we have a guide that lists all of our articles for the resort:

Disney’s Yacht Club Resort

Or you might enjoy these individual articles:

Related: Disney Transportation Options

In the Comments

Did you find this transportation guide for Disney’s Yacht Club helpful? Do you have any questions about the transportation options at this resort?

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