I never had a problem leaving that early. In fact, security at the airport was so backed up the one day we left because everyone had to walk by a police dog in training, that the 3 hour head start was certainly needed.
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We could rent a house with more space, a pool and a kitchen. We can take Uber or rent a car. Renting a car gives us the option of going to other attractions easily including Universal, Bush Gardens, Sea World, etc. We can also eat at many other restaurant choices and grocery shop for meals and snacks to use at our rental. If many of the perks that made us want to stay in the bubble don’t exist, then it no longer makes a lot of sense to stay at a Disney resort.
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I think that the big thing that has changed is that DME no longer really prevents this. With such ubiquitous rideshare options you aren’t “trapped” in the bubble the way you may have been back in 2005 when they introduced DME. Folks can easily take DME to their resort and still Lyft to Universal for the day or to an offsite restaurant for dinner or even have Uber-eats delivered to their on-site resort. So Disney has lost some (definitely not all) of the value for their “free” service. I know this makes off-site hotels more attractive in some cases, but pre-pandemic Disney didn’t really have trouble filling hotel rooms.
We always rent a car and in fact took our first DME trip this fall only because it was cheaper to rent from the CCC, so I don’t have tons of skin in the game, but just a point that DME wasn’t a factor in my decision to stay onsite or buy DVC.
This. If (when?) we go back to WDW, I’m leaning more and more towards staying offsite. I see very little value to paying way more per night than I would anywhere else when the perks keep disappearing.
This may be so for other crowds, but when you have multiple carseat needs it’s not the case. I haven’t been able to use Uber or Lyft because I had two littles in carseats, and no car service has multiple car seats. (I regret the loss of Minnie Vans!) The only options are to haul carseats along and get a rental car, or take busses/trains everywhere.
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I heard on a podcast, that bringing back Minnie Vans could be a good option. Sure we would have to pay. But I loved them! And it would solve the issue, for a price. I still have issues with this but if I’m going to be paying one way or another this would be pleasant. Who knows!
But if it is more expensive with less value for your money to stay at a Disney resort what is your incentive to stay there
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I am not arguing that Disney took away some measure of value from some of the customers, but I don’t think they were getting the “return” that they used to. But again, Disney has yet to have real trouble filling rooms!
As a member of the 2-carseat crowd I definitely understand your pain, but we are absolutely a small fraction of customers. And if I recall, 2 ubers with 1 car seat each was still cheaper than a single Minnie van!
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We don’t know what Disney resorts will look like post pandemic. Pre-pandemic, many incentives to stay on site still existed (60 day FP, EMH, DME, DDP, etc.). So yeah, they didn’t have issues filling rooms. Now they don’t even have all the resorts open and it seems that they are not filling rooms, at least according to what I’ve read. Who knows if the loss of onsite incentives will be an issue in the future. But I don’t think it is safe to assume that Disney will just fill their rooms because that’s what they did before.
We have taken DME since our Honeymoon in 2007. It is a great value and my DH loves not having to drive at all on his vacation. I don’t use every perk that Disney offers, but this is one that seems to be popular. I have a family of 5 and have no interest in taxis or ride sharing. If DME is gone, I don’t think we will be staying in a Disney resort again after this December, unless there is a huge incentive for staying there.
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When I first started to plan, I priced out different options. One-week stay on-site was about the same cost as two-weeks off-site. The hotel bill was the same since on-site is twice the cost of off-site for equivalent quality. The ticket was a bit more because of the extra days, but not much. We swore off airborne cattle-cars, so we’d either pay to park at the Disney park or resort. So that price was about the same. More meals, obviously, but since we’d have a kitchen and easy access to off-site restaurants even the food turned out to be the same. Of course, we aren’t foodies, one sit-down restaurant meal a day is all we’ll tolerate. So, the food was actually cheaper for two-weeks off-site then one on-site.
But, for those that flew, the math was different because the Disney transport was so valuable and convenient. And if they make it more convenient for people to rent a car at the airport? Once they have the car, they might as well use it, which means off-site.
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I was puzzled by this, too. But I wonder if Disney is playing the long game, here? A really long one.
I fully expect to see stay requirements because of this- say a minimum stay of three or even five days. That is what makes sense. They want to restrict the volume from the airport, and also from driving in (no free parking at the resorts). So the only way to compensate is to have the people who visit, stay longer. First they’ll encourage long stays by making transportation difficult, and if that doesn’t work, they’ll require it.
This is all part of the long game to entice people who come from far away, stay a long time and don’t care about parking fees or Uber charges from the airport. They want the visitor from China, not Chattanooga.
You can bet they know who uses DME, how much they spend, and where they stay, and they’ve decided it’s somehow more profitable to end the service and risk losing those guests.
But at one point in time Disney did indeed have difficulty filling all the rooms that they had built which was the impetuous for all the added perks that they are now peeling back.
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I suspect this is spot on. We’re in the UK and never use DME - I find it’s much more efficient to drive to the parks than use Disney’s transport so we always hire a car to make life as easy as possible. And we often fly into MIA since it can be $1500 cheaper for the five of us than MCO (in August anyway) - that’s worth the drive up if you ask me. (And I don’t understand people who don’t like driving in FL - the US is so easy to drive in - you want to try the tiny roads of Europe 
)
Plus we normally come for two or maybe three weeks, so losing DME is zero loss to us. On the other hand, the 30min early opening for staying on site is miles better than EMH - that just concentrated all the on site guests in the same park so we usually avoided it and didn’t use it at all - whereas 30mins with all the onsite guests spread out roughly equally sounds very attractive.
We tend to only do a park for the morning, then do the pool in the afternoon, so the early opening would probably mean 1 or 2 rides with minimal queuing, and if FP+ (or similar) returns we’d switch to that for the rest of the morning (plus the Lines app obvs!) and I wouldn’t expect to queue much at all.
I’d expect Disney to have a small army of people doing the numbers on perks. (Now I’m imagining Homer Simpson sticking a pin blindfolded into a list of options - maybe that’s more accurate…)
I have to say I feel for the off-site crowd though, with RD strategies looking almost dead.
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That works great for the early risers, but what about those of us who are night owls? 30 minutes in the morning is no incentive for my family. If they never add back the dining plan, that’s the last perk that keeps us in the bubble.
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In 2019 DME had about 3 million guests using the service.
Remember though this is all part of the strategy to save money. Unnecessary expenses are going to be cut everywhere. Disney know that once tourism picks up again post-pandemic that people will return to fill the rooms. But in the meantime they have to save where they can.
Plus before allowing 2022 bookings they needed to make sure that guests knew that DME would not be available.
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I LOVE nighttime in the parks too. If I’m there in summer we do morning, afternoon pool break (naps) and then after dark in the park (to reduce heat stress). We have really good memories of being in the parks at 2 AM.
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Thanks for the information. I’m a bit surprised that number is not higher. WDW parks drew about 58 million guests in 2019. Just estimating that half of the guests are on-site. So that’s 29 Million Resort guests. That would mean around 10% of resort guests actually use DME.
I’m in the UK and don’t like driving over there - neither does my dad who does a lot of driving in Europe for work. I persuaded my parents to stay onsite and rely on ME and buses last trip and they loved it, total converts.
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Without taking the future of fast passes into consideration as I have NO CLUE how that’s going to end up, I can say that this will almost certainly result in us staying off-site. 30 minutes early entry is not enough value to make up for the cost. We will be renting a car from the airport (and getting to Universal a lot easier, mind). Probably renting car seats from a rental company. And we will likely start buying park hoppers, whereas before we were always a single-park/per day family. It will still probably be cheaper than staying onsite, plus it will make up for missing out on the 30 minutes by having park hoppers. But the again will I want park hoppers if we’re not staying on site? Idk.
I’m sad about it.I’ll really miss the Disney bubble.
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I thought I read somewhere on these boards or on chat that most park goers at Disney are off-site guests, by well more than 50%. That includes locals, other time shares, and those who just don’t want to stay on site for various reasons.
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