Originally Posted by ZenFlyer

-- Total time between disembarking from the plane in T1 to sitting in T3 was about 90 minutes. The arrivals area was much quieter than I've read about, which may have been related to the fact that our flight arrived at 6:15 am rather than the 7:00 scheduled time. Or perhaps Monday is not a popular international arrivals day. As US passport holders we were also fortunate to able to use the "Smartgate" passport scanner which saved time. (Note: we struggled with this at the beginning, until we figured out that US passports must be put in the machine in a different orientation than the Australian passport that's shown in the instructions).

-- The path to get to the transfer desk is well-signed in the terminal. There was a line of people out the door when we arrived but it shuffled forward at a steady pace.

-- We flew on United to Australia, and it was no problem for us to use the Qantas "Seamless" transfer service to get to connect to our domestic flight on Qantas. It is true that 90% of the people around us seemed to be doing a QF-to-QF transfer, because their bags were already tagged by Qantas for their onward flight. The fact that our bags weren't yet tagged meant that we were referred to the "Service Desk" rather than the "Bag Drop" queue. There were not many people waiting, and there were 2 additional service desks for reserved Platinum (and I think Business class).

-- Once our bags were tagged the security line moved relatively efficiently. The subsequent wait for the bus was 10-15 mins. The bus ride took longer than expected because a plane was parked on the tarmac blocking the lane for motorized vehicles. That was another 10-15 minute pause before moving on.

-- Ironically, the airside bus seemed like the biggest potential point of failure in the whole system. It seemed liked they should have been running the busses a bit more frequently given the number of people. The bus is not particularly large, and a number of people who had been waiting 10 -15 mins for the bus to arrive were not, in fact, able to get on that bus. The stop on the tarmac was presumably unusual, but no one seemed to be addressing it with any urgency.

-- But as I said at the top, the service worked well for us overall. I'm relieved our 2.5 hour layover turned out to be sufficient. There are enough different stages of the process though that it's easy to imagine how a delay at any one of them could lead to a less happy result.