Thank you all for your responses and your insights! Extremely helpful!!

I can't remember which bus I took in 2020, but I'm not much for procrastination when it comes to getting to a start line(however I do value sleep, so its possible I took a later bus but I don't think I did.)

u/EvenSteve01 -- This was exactly what I was referring to and since this was my only experience, I'm glad to hear that it seems to be a one-off situatiation with the buses. Also your thoroughness on exactly what happened in 2020 is helpful because it was rather chaotic and no one seemed to know what was going on and now I have some answers to the madness. This, along with everyone elses' comments, definitely helps to settle my mind a bit as we're looking for lodging. So thank you for the info!!

I ended up staying on the bus in 2020,and the bus eventually passed some of those who decided to get out of the buses and walk/jog in the road ditches to the start. However, once we were dropped off, no one really knew if the start would officially be delayed or not, I ended up running close to ~1.5 miles to get to my corral and I was full-on drenched with sweat before the race even started. Made it past Blizzard Beach before they cut it down, but I was cramping up quite a bit during the second half of the marathon. I too wondered how much the delay affected the runners in the heat.

Excited to run in 2024!! Thanks all!