I wanted to share my experience taking the LYNX to Sea World. This was on January 26, 2017. We were three adults and two children (3&4). We decided to take the LYNX to Sea World for reasons I’ll describe below. Sea World opened at 10:00am. Our goal was to be there 20-30 minutes before opening. Our original plan was to take a resort bus from our hotel to DS and catch the LYNX there. But after reading the Disney bus page, they state that buses to DS from resorts will begin 45 minutes (9:15am) before DS opening (10:00am). This was too late for us, so we decided to catch the LYNX at the TTC.
7:45am – We hopped on a resort bus to MK from our hotel (Boardwalk).
8:00am – We arrived at MK and walked to the monorail station. We just missed the resort monorail and realized when we got there that the express loop was not working.
8:15am – We hopped on the resort monorail. We had a delay because they were adding additional trains.
8:25am – We arrived by monorail at the TTC. We walked down the ramp and made a left towards to bus pickup area. There was a Bus Information window, and the clerk told us what spot the LYNX would pick us up (I don’t remember the number, but the clerk was nice and helpful).
As mentioned elsewhere, bus #50 is the Sea World bus. It was a double length bus with the accordion middle, so plenty of room. The scheduled departure times were 0:05 and 0:35 based on the official LYNX route map. So while we were planning on catching the 9:05 bus, we were hopeful for the 8:35 bus. However it didn’t show up at 8:35. About 20 people were waiting and wondering, so it must have been an anomaly it was late.
8:50am – We hopped on Bus #50 to Sea World. We paid $2 per adult each way and the kids were free. We just put dollars in the machine as we got on the bus. The bus stopped at the DS west side bus terminal before heading to Sea World.
9:30am – We arrived at Sea World. The stop you take is the one right in front of the main entrance to the Renaissance hotel directly across from Sea World. Very easy to see. It drops you off on the Sea World side, so all you have to do is walk through the parking lot to the entrance.
The return trip was fairly straightforward. We caught Bus #50 going back to DS directly across the street from the stop we got off. Both are in front of the main entrance to the Renaissance hotel. Very easy to see. We got off at the DS west side bus terminal and walked around DS before catching our resort bus back to the hotel. The walk from the west side bus area to the resort bus area is about 10 minutes.
The primary reason we took the LYNX was because of our children (3&4). We paid $12 round trip for the adults. I figured this whole process added an hour to our travel plan in the morning but to us it was well worth it.
If we rented a car, we would have spent that hour going to and from the car rental agency. It would have cost us approximately $50-70 per day plus $10-15 per car seat plus Sea World parking. We saw no benefit there.
The Uber option didn’t appeal to us because of the car seat issue. We would have had to find a car with not only one car seat, but two. Because of the idea waiting to find a car with two car seats or the added expense and time of finding two cars with one seat each, we didn’t want to deal with the hassle and uncertainty. However if it were just adults, I would have gone this route.
Overall the taking the LYNX worked, and we didn’t have any problems.