How We Build Our Transportation Data

Theme Park Compass exists to answer one question honestly: *how do I get from here to there at Walt Disney World, right now?* To do that well, we're careful — and specific — about what we can guarantee and what we estimate. Two different things go into every route we show, and we never blur the line between them: - **The route network is verified.** Which modes connect which places, in which direction — that's checked against Disney's official sources and kept current. - **The travel times are estimates.** Careful, transparent ones — but estimates, not stopwatch measurements. Here's how each part works. ## What we verify: the route network The hard part of Disney transportation isn't the minutes — it's knowing which options actually exist. Does the Skyliner reach Animal Kingdom? (No.) Can you walk from the Polynesian to Magic Kingdom? (Yes, via the Grand Floridian path — which was closed for years and reopened in 2024.) Which resorts have a *direct* boat to a park versus a transfer? Most guides get some of this wrong, because it changes and it's genuinely confusing. So the backbone of everything we publish is a **structured map of the Walt Disney World transportation network** — every connection between resorts, parks, and transfer points, with its mode (bus, monorail, Skyliner, boat, walking) and its direction. That network is: - **Verified against Disney's official sources** — not scraped from other blogs, and not assumed. - **Version-controlled and continuously re-checked.** When we write about a route, we re-confirm that slice against a current, authoritative source. If our map and a trustworthy source disagree, we don't quietly pick one — we log the disagreement, flag it, and **hold the disputed claim (hedging or omitting it) until it's resolved.** That's how we caught and corrected the reopened Polynesian–Grand Floridian walkway within a day of a data gap. - **Dated.** Every route page carries the date its network data was last confirmed, and the site flags its own data if it ever goes stale. You can see when we last checked. This is the part we stand behind without hedging: **if we say a connection exists and runs a certain way, we've checked it.** ## How we estimate the times The minute values are a different kind of claim, and we treat them differently — because Disney does not publish official point-to-point travel times, and conditions change every hour. Nobody has a verified, measured number for "Pop Century to EPCOT on the Skyliner at 4pm on a rainy Saturday," because there isn't one. So we **estimate**, and we do it methodically: - **Base times come from standard, real-world speeds** — typical walking pace over the actual distance, typical in-transit ride times for each mode — chosen to be **realistic and slightly conservative** rather than best-case. - **The estimate is in-transit only** — the walk, ride, or float itself. Door-to-door in the real world adds the time to reach the stop or dock, plus any wait and transfer, which is why the app (below) matters. - **We hedge when we should.** Where sources or real-world reports disagree, we show a range, not false precision, and say so. What we **don't** do is dress an estimate up as a measurement. You won't find "we timed it at exactly 8.4 minutes" here, because that would be made up. A transparent estimate you can trust is worth more than a precise number you can't. ## Where the app takes over A static page can't know that it's raining, that the Skyliner just paused for lightning, or that it's park-close and every bus line is 30 minutes deep. The [Theme Park Compass app](/app/) turns the estimates into live answers: it **adjusts for the time of day, the weather, and crowd levels**, flags when a mode is down, and works backward from an arrival time ("leave by 11:30 to make your 12:15 reservation"). The website gives you the honest building blocks — a verified network with sensible time estimates — and the app assembles them into the fastest real route for your actual moment. ## Our honesty commitments Because trust is the whole point, a few standing rules we hold ourselves to: - **Verified means verified.** We reserve that word for the route network, which we actually check. Times are labeled as estimates. - **No invented precision.** Ranges and "typically" where the truth is fuzzy; specific numbers only where we can support them. - **We date our work and admit staleness.** A "last checked" date on route data, and an automatic warning if it ages out. - **We correct in the open.** When we get something wrong — like a route that reopened — we fix it and note it, rather than hoping nobody noticed. ## About Theme Park Compass Theme Park Compass is an independent Walt Disney World transportation tool — a free iOS [app](/app/) (no account, no ads) plus this hand-built reference site. It isn't affiliated with the Walt Disney Company. Its whole reason to exist is getting you around Disney World with less friction and more honesty than the alternatives. You can find it on the [App Store](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/theme-park-compass/id6757342622) and [Instagram](https://instagram.com/ThemeParkCompassApp).