Hello everyone, We have a 7:40am reservation and Chef Mickey on Wednesday (5/31) and then plan to stay the day at the Magic Kingdom leaving sometime that evening.
Been searching on if we can just park at the Contemporary for the day or if we’ll need to move the car tot he main lot after eating breakfast. In my searches, the latest reply I found here was in 2017 and then on the Disney site from Feb '22, but sounds like policies change often. Even the person on the phone at WDW said to park there and “no one will know” if we were longer than 3 hours.
Our plan is to go there and try to park, but interested in if anyone has actually tried something similar recently and what the results were.
Looking forward to our trip! First time for my son (7) and been something like 15 years since my last visit!! Going all in with touring plans recommendations. Wish us luck!
Oh yes, cars happen to be towed from time to time. But I’m not sure anyone has ever had information that says it was related to parking vs perhaps a car that was broken down and in need of service, towed for that reason.
And yes, security was busy telling anyone who asked that they had “overstayed their welcome”. But it was at Christmas, at the Contemporary.
We got free valet parking one day and parking in the CM lot another because of the parking situation, and we were in s steady stream of guests in the same position. Probably sucked for those wanting to rope drop the next day, since someone had to go and get the car for us and bring it to the parking lot when we returned to Bay Lake in the evening.
That could explain why they decided to take action. Maybe.
Honestly? I would go to the contemporary and just ask the security guard. You’re not going to make rope drop with a 7:40 ADR anyway, so worst case they say, “yep - move it after your breakfast,” in which case one of you can do that while the other two monorail/walk over if preferred. Best case, they’ll say, “sure. You can keep the car here today but be out by 8pm” or some such.
I don’t have any insight on how successful you would be at trying to park there the full day BUT we’ve done CM two times, once in 2016 & once just in March of this year & both times I made specific plans for us to arrive by monorail since I saw that as such a cool aspect of the experience: riding the monorail INTO the hotel, then debarking & going to eat breakfast within sight of the in-hotel monorail platform.
With a 7:40am I’m not sure if there is a super easy way to get to the monorail to execute that., especially since it doesn’t seem like MK parking will be open until 7:30. So definitely not enough time for you to make it to breakfast. Both times we have had Chef Mickey’s planned as brunch specifically to have the flexibility to take a leisurely (less efficient) route that included the monorail.
I do think though if you really wanted to drive & just park there, you could. And most of the days (Christmas or Easter aside) you’d probably make it out ok. If that kind of stress all day will eat at you wondering if your technically not officially legally within the rules parked car is going to be a problem waiting for you to deal with at the end of the day & that will hamper your day (like it would for me & my DH), you could move the park to MK parking after breakfast. Or considering an Uber/Lyft. If MK parking opened at 7am, I would totally encourage you be ready to park right at 6:40-6:50am and then take the monorail. From the TTC you could take the MK express & then resort monorail back to the Contemporary (you will stop in the Contemporary on the ride over to the MK express but won’t let off or take on any passengers & so will overshoot your destination & have to backtrack) OR take the resort monorail (that will be a longer ride as it will go the opposite way and stop at the other monorail resorts: Poly, Grand Floridian, then MK & then finally Contemporary).
On our most recent trip to Chef Mickey’s we parked at MK (10:15am for a 10:45am reservation), rode the Tram at 10:22am, then took the monorail (express line to MK & then backtracked on the resort line to Contemporary) and were pulling into the Contemporary at 10:47am & hustled a few minutes late to Chef Mickey’s. I had tried to plan leaving our hotel (POP) an hour before to have a little bit of buffer to not be rushing to the restaurant but we didn’t pile into the car until 10am so got a little bit late of a start. So ideally you want to be able to park 50-60 minutes before the reservation.
Best of luck & hope you & your family enjoy both the brunch and the day at MK!
I’ve done this at Contemporary, the Poly and the Riviera. I had TS resi’s at all of three of these resorts on my last two trips and parked my car for the whole entire day and I’ve never been towed! Never even thought about it, actually!
Thanks for the replies everyone! With it sounding firmly in the “most likely ok” and “unlikely to get towed” zone, we’ll plan on trying it. Definitely not trying to rope drop that day but are trying not to waste too much time with the car vs time in the park.
