I would never park at DS to go to the park! It is a waste of time. And DS doesn’t open until 9 am. For people freeloading parking, time is money at WDW parks!
But on rest days, when not staying onsite, I have often parked at DS and taken its transportation to enjoy eats. Last month, on our non park days, we parked at DS and used the transportation system to get beignets at POFQ, drinks and rib dinner at Ft. Wilderness, bread service at Sanaa Lounge, ice cream at Beaches & Cream to go window, and cake at The Cake Shop Bakery. At this point, I’m not ready to pay to park to just eat, yet! So, without an AP, I will unlikely eat at resort QS, for now. But I sense Disney may head towards paying for parking at DS eventually.
We pay $10 to park the first hour at Downtown Disney in DLR and spend at least $20 somewhere in Downtown Disney to park another 3 hours for free. Free parking for TS at the DLR hotels is strictly limited to 3 hours. Years ago, parking was free at Downtown Disney for the first 3 hours!
Paying to park to eat at QS or lounges at WDW when I am offsite, will cause me to pause and think. Like you said, there are plenty of delicious options offsite that are much cheaper!
But I do understand the need to cut way down on freeloaders: people who park for free to go to the parks, remote workers who hog Disney resources and space, and non paying guests who use resort pools. It’s appalling that non guests would throw pool parties at resort pools!
I’m beginning to doubt this 25% figure having much significance…at least not, as I mentioned above, without some actual numbers, just percentages. Also time of day.
So, let’s say, for the sake of example, that they checked the percentages at 10 am. Very few people would be at DS from the resorts. So, I would expect non-resort guests to make up a lion’s share, even if the ACTUAL number is only 400 people. 25% of 400 people is only 100 people. Not much really.
At 5 pm, I would expect a different story. Far more resort guests headed to DS for shopping, entertainment, and food. So, I’d expect the percentage to be much much lower for off-site guests trying to use the buses.
So, time of day the sampling was done, as well as TOTAL number of people trying to use buses so we can judge an actual number of people trying to use the DS buses who are turned away!
Maybe the issue wasn’t so much of parking at DS and going to parks to avoid the parking fee as it was parking at DS and then using hotel pools, playgrounds, etc. when you aren’t staying at the Disney hotel. This makes more sense to me as a reason for restricting bus use from DS.
Reading about birthday parties at Contempo pool and homeschool groups using the AKL pool on the regular blew my mind. Not to mention just following resort guests into the pool entrance and using the pool when you aren’t staying there. BUT if Disney would just police that access with wristbands like they use at Stormalong Bay, as they should have been all along, this maybe could have been avoided.
That’s fine, but that’s a you thing then. They have not said a thing about limiting bus transportation from the parks. Disney Springs is problem because of the free parking - parks don’t have that issue.
“The time that we were there, we noticed 25% of the guests who were attempting to get on a bus were turned away for not having reservations. And so my first question is, is like 25% seems high, right? One out of every four people trying to get on a bus does not have a reservation.
So we did some asking around, and that’s actually slightly high compared to what is being measured. So the number I heard is more like it’s 20% now. But that’s after the rules went into place.
And my understanding is that the media coverage of this helped get the word out that this thing was no longer possible and that before this crackdown, those numbers during the last implementation of this, were something like 40%. So 40% of the guests getting on, first of all, 20% is an insane number, right? One in every five guests getting on a bus doesn’t have a resort reservation.
Seems like a lot. The other thing, and I don’t want to, you know, let me show you, this is me speculating here, right? That number is so high that if the number of guests trying to get into[…]”
From The Disney Dish with Jim Hill: Luxo Jr. Takes a Rain Check at Pixar Place, Jul 6, 2026
I guess it didn’t paste the whole thing. This is where the 1200 is referenced:
“That number is so high that if the number of guests trying to get into resorts from the parks is a fraction of that number, it’s still a huge problem, right?
So, you know, let’s say 20% of the people at Disney Springs are trying to get to a resort where they don’t have a reservation. If that number is 2% at the Magic Kingdom, if that number is one-tenth of what it is at Disney Springs and there are 60,000 people a day on average at the Magic Kingdom, now you’re looking at 1200 people a day trying to get to a resort where they don’t have a reservation. It’s not the grandparents who aren’t going to a park and they just want to walk around the poly and they don’t have reservations.
That’s not the problem. The problem is the scale of Walt Disney World makes these kinds of things grow very fast. Right?
Like 2% doesn’t sound like a lot. 1200 people sounds like a lot.
It is.”
From The Disney Dish with Jim Hill: Luxo Jr. Takes a Rain Check at Pixar Place, Jul 6, 2026
The text quoted is making guesses. “…let’s say 20%…”, “If that number is 2%…”, “…if that number is one-tenth…” To get the number 1200, it is based on guesses/suppositions.
But how many ACTUAL people were turned away at the DS bus stop? Time of day? Percentages doesn’t tell us anything.
I admire Len’s statistical prowess. But I’m saying that the information we’re being told really doesn’t tell us anything at all.
ETA: Although, maybe we should treat Len like Spock from Star Trek IV?
I would be so annoyed though if I were paying a few hundred dollars a night and had to wear a plastic bracelet 24/7. I can hardly tolerate the ones for the MNSSHP or MVMCP. I suppose a work around would be to go to the desk each time I wanted to swim and ask for a new one, and then just wear it for the pool time and then remove.
When we stayed at VGF last year in March, trying to see the Easter eggs during the day was packed. We waited until an after hours night and saw them at 2 am. I don’t know how many of those people were staying at the resort, or another resort, or were staying offsite or were locals, but I suspect there have been plenty of complaints on surveys about people staying at a resort and not being able to enjoy seasonal decorations due to crowds.
This is what I assumed too, because it is exactly what I did when I stayed at the Hilton across the street, except we could walk to the bus lot back in 2015!
I was going to mention that on my December trip last year (staying at Wilderness Lodge) we went to Wailulu Grill and then went over to Grand Floridian to see the new birdhouse bar. IIRC there was no Gingerbread House because of other construction going on, but there was tree.
It was absolutely packed in there. I meet a group, when we were all scouting for a place to sit, that was there with a group from their retirement community doing a tour of the Disney resorts at Christmas. Which 1) seemd like a nice day trip and 2)blew my mind.
My favorite rooms on property at the Grand Floridian DVC resort studios, but I would never stay there at Christmas.
But I sense Disney may head towards paying for parking at DS eventually.
