Disney World Airport Luggage Transfer Service Expands to American and United Airlines May 19 2026

27 days ago in "Walt Disney World Resorts"

Posted: Monday May 18, 2026 3:04pm ET by WDWMAGIC Staff

Disney World has confirmed its Airport Luggage Transfer service will expand to include American Airlines and United Airlines beginning May 19, 2026.

The expansion adds two major carriers to the service, which has been available for Southwest Airlines flights.

Walt Disney World Resorts overview

What Is the Airport Luggage Transfer Service?

The service, operated by BagCheck, lets guests at five Value Resort hotels transfer checked luggage between Orlando International Airport (MCO) and their resort. You can use it on arrival, departure, or both — meaning you can skip baggage claim when you land, or head straight to security when you leave without stopping at the airline check-in counter.

The service is currently available at:

Disney's All-Star Movies Resort
Disney's All-Star Music Resort
Disney's All-Star Sports Resort
Disney's Art of Animation Resort
Disney's Pop Century Resort

Disney confirmed the expansion to travel agents with the following:

"Beginning May 19, Airport Luggage Transfer at Disney will expand at select Disney Resort hotels to include American Airlines and United Airlines, in addition to Southwest Airlines, for eligible arriving and departing domestic flights at Orlando International Airport (MCO)."

Disney added: "As we continue to test and learn, this latest addition is designed to make travel to and from Walt Disney World Resort even easier for Guests, while creating opportunities to grow the service over time."

Southwest Airlines

The confirmation follows an interesting sequence of events. At the end of April, Disney's Airport Luggage Transfer page briefly listed American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and United Airlines as participating carriers — along with a note that additional airlines could be added soon. The page then quietly reverted to Southwest Airlines only, with no explanation. Today's formal confirmation suggests that earlier update was posted ahead of schedule.

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larryz25 days ago

You mean the (n)Esq(uick) guy?

HauntedPirate25 days ago

Some of the numbers are known. But also several of those conversions/removals were a decade or more ago. IIRC, there was a bump when Gran Destino Tower opened but the converted rooms never really “dropped off” the room night total.

lewisc25 days ago

I don't know the exact numbers. Parts of AKL, CBR, GF and Poly were converted to DVC. I don't know how many rooms were added net with the tower at CSR

Fido Chuckwagon25 days ago

I will say this, and take it for whatever you will: There are a lot of attorneys (myself included) who post on these forums. There is only one attorney who felt the need to put that biographical detail in his username…

monothingie25 days ago

Wow projecting much Penguin? Scheme is your word not mine. People planning their trips get so caught up in the FOMO and have to have everything in place at the opening planning window, that it's often overlooked that in the immediate 1-2 days out there is as much if not more availability than there is 60 days out for ADRs. Similarly while not 1-2 days out, additional discounted hotel inventory is always available beyond the initial opening day of any promotion. Have some mackerel and chill.

HauntedPirate25 days ago

According to their financial reports, even rooms out of service are included. The number of room nights actually jumped during Covid, then declined as things reopened. I think the peak was 1.1 million room nights, which was a 10% jump due to DVC rooms not being occupied by members.

MisterPenguin25 days ago

Disney regularly has well-known schemes in which some 'inventory' is held back to give others who aren't APers, or Resort Guests, or mega-planners a chance. Like when Virtual Queues that sold out in the morning were made available again at 1 PM. It was done very clearly out in the open on the Genie app. Thus, it really should be no surprise to learn that there is some inventory held back to be released over time. Thus it shouldn't be a scandal to guests as you may think it is, since it isn't a super-secret.

Dranth25 days ago

I don’t think they remove rooms from those numbers if the resort is down. 2020 and 2021 for example show about the same number of available nights as other years and they were fully closed for a chunk of one and slowly reopening shuttered resorts the other. It does however show an occupancy in the 40% range for both which would line up with the various resorts being closed. As for DVC, my understanding is they don’t count if booked with points. Additionally, any resort not fully declared still has cash rooms based on the points Disney still owns.

easyrowrdw25 days ago

And a toaster!

larryz25 days ago

I find it hard to believe that you can take half of, say, Wilderness Lodge out of general circulation without having a major effect on hotel occupancy availability/rates. They have to remove DVC rooms booked, and I'm sure they've got the numbers on how many DVC reservations to expect over the course of a year. Unless, of course, they're double counting DVC rooms as available for general resort guests AND DVC owners...

HauntedPirate26 days ago

They can be booked for cash, yes. Studios have only a mini-fridge (at best), coffee maker, and microwave.

DCLcruiser26 days ago

Are any of those rack rate hotel rooms if not reserved by a DVC member? Without kitchenettes etc.

DCLcruiser26 days ago

I wish they had park ones too. I found the 2016 park planning video on YT. That will have to do (frankly, everything will be new to her).

HauntedPirate26 days ago

DVC offers studios that sleep 4 which are basically slightly larger standard hotel rooms. And since Riviera was built they also now have smaller “Tower studio” rooms that sleep 2. I think Lakeshore Lodge calls them “pods”.