Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a bus service that offers convenient transportation for millions of riders each year between the Disney Parks and area hotels in will abruptly end service with no planned replacement. Okay, it’s not quite the demise of Disney’s Magical Express: Anaheim Edition; history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
One important distinction here is that it isn’t Disney doing the “demise” part. It’s the governing board of the Anaheim Transportation Network (ATN), which provides public transportation services to Anaheim residents and businesses (not just Disneyland Resort or the third-party hotels), that make the decision to wind down services.
For those who are unfamiliar with it, ATN provides multi-modal public transportation services throughout Anaheim and beyond. For our purposes, there are two services that are really relevant. Anaheim Regional Transportation (ART) is a public shuttle system designed to connect the Disneyland Resort area with local hotels, dining, and entertainment venues. ATN also offers airport transportation through a specific on-demand service called EVE (Everyone Ventures Everywhere), primarily serving John Wayne Airport (SNA). Here’s the latest on these services ending operations.
Here’s the message that ATN posted on its official website:
Anaheim Transportation Network Announces Wind-Down of Operations
For nearly three decades, the Anaheim Transportation Network (ATN) has supported mobility in the Anaheim Resort—serving residents, employees, and millions of visitors.
After an extended evaluation of our current and future financial position and exhausting all options, ATN will begin an orderly wind-down of operations, with conclusion of service on March 31, 2026. This transition will be implemented in a manner to allow for coordination and transparency as services are responsibly concluded.
The ATN Board of Directors appreciates the community’s continued support of the service through the conclusion of operation.
As first reported by the Orange County Register, ATN’s governing board, made up largely of hoteliers and other resort interests, voted unanimously to “conduct an orderly wind-down” with service ending March 31, 2026. Board chair Matthew Hicks made the announcement after a closed session meeting.
ATN moves more than 8 million riders a year, mostly through its ART bus system that connects the Disneyland to hotels in the resort district, which is a defined area of Anaheim. City leaders have previously claimed that the public transportation service is critical for area tourists and employees.
ATN has long faced budget deficits. The transit agency receives money from hotels that pay into the system based on the number of rooms and from rider fares, which is partly why the Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) is higher in the Anaheim Resort District and Platinum Triangle than the rest of the city.
Annual hotel contributions have increased, but with the amount capped at 5%, the increases have not been enough to offset rising labor costs. More than 70% of the transportation provider’s operating costs go toward labor, according to officials. In essence, it’s a simple numbers game.
Last year, the City of Anaheim signed a letter of understanding to explore taking over the ATN, in hopes of solving the financial shortfalls without asking hoteliers to pay more. For whatever reason, the city is no longer interested in such a move. Maybe the “exploration” revealed just how dire the financials are for ART.
“Businesses in Anaheim’s visitor economy are preparing options. Hotels that have utilized ATN are also looking at their options,” city spokesperson Mike Lyster told the OCR. “No one should be concerned about any upcoming visit to our city. Anyone who’s been to our theme parks knows the high level of service getting from parking to the gates. We have every confidence that will continue.”
Last year, ATN formally requested the Anaheim Tourism Improvement District, which is funded by a fee collected on hotel stays, to provide it with added funding. The request letter described a monthly shortfall of $730,000.
The district approved $5.7 million between contributions in July and September of last year. Another request was just approved this week for an added $2.5 million.
As a long-term solution, Anaheim will “continue to look at innovations in transportation and options to connect our transit center in the Platinum Triangle to the resort area. That exploration, while in early stages, is ongoing,” according to city spokesperson Mike Lyster.
Our Commentary
Something doesn’t quite add up here. Per the OCR’s reporting, the ATN just requested and received $2.5 million from the resort district to cover a financial shortfall. And yet, only a few days later, they’ve voted unanimously to dissolve the ATN and discontinue shuttle service? What changed during those few days?
It’s also odd that the City of Anaheim explored the idea of taking over the ATN to fix the financials, but now has backed away. Maybe they’ve become obsessed with the (completely implausible) aerial gondolas to connect the Platinum Triangle with the Anaheim Resort District in preparation for the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics, and plan on doing that instead. (Lol.)
My guess is that there’s more to the story, and it’ll come out eventually. One thing I’ve learned in my experience with Anaheim and beyond is that these cities are basically like the dril candles meme when it comes to money. They spend with reckless abandon on things that absolutely do not matter, and then somehow don’t have sufficient funding for the fundamentals. But you’re probably more concerned with the guest impact here.
The guest impact is likely to be significant! As noted above, ATN moves 8 million people per year, and most of that is on ART. There are actually two components to this. The first is the ART network connecting the various hotels to the parks and beyond.
The second is the ART buses that service the Toy Story Parking Lot (that’s Pixar Pals above; I don’t have any photos of the Toy Story surface lot despite it being where we park most of the time nowadays). I have no clue as to how the numbers break down, but I honestly wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the Toy Story Parking Lot ridership is actually higher than the regular bus routes.
Selfishly, my big question is what happens to the Toy Story Parking Lot shuttle? After all, that’s all operated by ART/ATN, even if it’s (presumably) fully funded by Disney. To the best of my knowledge, those buses belong to ATN and the drivers are ATN. Without ATN/ART, there is (again, presumably) no Toy Story Parking Lot shuttle.
Then again, I would’ve had this question regardless. Construction is set to start on Eastern Gateway later in 2026, and that’s going to be disruptive to the arrival experience.
It’s our expectation that, as part of the new Eastern Gateway plans, the entrance to the Esplanade will shift about 75 feet to the north. This should mean that the existing Esplanade entrance will should be able to remain open during construction.
This should reduce the guest impact of construction, allowing for the current entrance to be utilized until the new entrance is ready, and then the old area to be decommissioned and closed after that. Far better for guests than a phased approach if Disney were trying to reimagine the current arrival experience.
However, we’ve heard more recent rumors that it might end up being more disruptive than that, with the rideshare drop-off and more being relocated to the opposite side of Disneyland Resort. (Not just the other side of the street–the opposite end of DLR.) One of the rumors I’ve heard is fairly wild, and I’ve learned not to believe everything I hear when it comes to Downtown Disney projects being paused, cancelled, etc., so I’ll just leave it at that.
But the rumors of the rideshare drop-off needing to move does pass the smell test a little more for me with this news! This area is already bursting at the seams, with traffic often backing up onto Harbor Boulevard. If you take ART out of the equation, a not-insignificant percentage of those guests previously serviced by the shuttle will opt for Uber or Lyft.
Let’s arbitrarily say that number is 25% (with the rest choosing to walk or the nebulous “other options” actually coming to fruition). Honestly, I don’t think that drop-off area can handle a volume increase of even 25%, and if anything, that might be a conservative estimate.
There are other second-order effects of ATN ending, too. One is that rideshare prices will likely increase. It’s currently relatively affordable to take an Uber or Lyft from one of the area hotels to Disneyland. If demand increases, so too do prices.
It’s a similar story with the walking distance hotels. A couple of our (once) favorites right across the street have already exploded in price over the last few years. I know that location is the first three rules of real estate, but it’s crazy to me that basic motels are commanding $300+ per night on a regular basis. Well, that might now be $400+ per night.
There will also be more crowded sidewalks (my biggest personal fear as a fast walker who doesn’t use ART but does have to weave around slow walkers taking up the entire sidewalk), as well as guests walking from farther-away hotels late at night when they should really be taking a shuttle (for safety).
Ultimately, some of this should be solved by the new Eastern Gateway, which will provide an entry point to Disneyland on that side of the resort. This will put more hotels in easy and safe walking distance, expand drop-off capacity, and more. But that doesn’t start construction until later this year, and is realistically an 18-24 month project.
That leaves a 2+ year gap between the discontinuation of ART and the Eastern Gateway coming online. That’s a big part of why this is so surprising to me. If this same announcement were being made 2 years from now, it would make perfect sense. I’d read between the lines that Disney didn’t want to continue (presumably) disproportionately funding a service they no longer needed, and the other hotels couldn’t pick up the shortfall. But in 2026-2027, this service is still needed–and I would’ve expected Disneyland to foot the bill in the interim.
Which brings things full circle and really makes me wonder what happened behind the scenes. Perhaps we’ll find out soon, and Disneyland will announce its own shuttle service or whatever the temporary solution is for April 2026 through 2028. I cannot imagine they’re just going to not have shuttles between Toy Story Parking Lot and the parks, among other things.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think about ART ending? Expect this to apply to the Toy Story Parking Lot shuttle, as well, or expect Disneyland to figure out its own solution? Think the replacement will be more buses…or an aerial gondola system to connect Disneyland Resort, ARTIC, and Anaheim Convention Center? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!