Has anyone rented strollers when they have visited the parks? (Disney strollers or from other companies). Is it a problem managing the stroller to/from the park (we live on site) and in the park (because of the lines etc)? Does people just leave their strollers if they take a ride with their child?
My youngest is 4. Not sure if she needs a stroller, but from experience the gets tired.
We did not rent a stroller; we brought our full size one from home. At age 4, if you have an umbrella stroller at home, I would recommend seeing if you could bring that with you. You can gate check them for free. We rented a car so did not have any issues transporting it. An umbrella stroller shouldn’t be too bad to bring on the busses though.
Using the stoller is quite easy, there are “Stroller Parking” areas that are pretty clearly marked. With a 4 year old, you could easily park the stroller in one land while you experience the area and then only go back and get it when you are travelling a longer distance. Even with our toddler we would leave it and come back. Some of the “parking” locations are busier than others, so it’s worth a minute or two to strategize where you are going to leave the stroller so you don’t have to back track too much.
The in-park strollers are very expensive. If you want to have it for your whole trip, it would make the most sense to bring one or rent one from a 3rd party. That way you could also use the stroller within the hotel if it is a long walk to the pool or something. However, if you think your 4 year old might only need it on SOME days (i.e. at Epcot) then it might be worth it to just rent one in the park for that day. Coming off of our child-free “commando” days, I will have to say it was pretty nice to have someplace to store all of our stuff!
We rented a double stroller from Kingdom Strollers for our trip last summer. It couldn’t have been easier or worked better. Price was well worth it and even though our kids hadn’t used a stroller for anything else in years (they were 6 at the time of the trip) it was a life saver. We were also able leave all our stuff in the storage compartment below the stroller so had to carry very little ourselves. Highly recommend them. We are going back this summer and even though our boys are more than capable of walking a lot for long periods of time there is no question we will rent a stroller again. It really helps them do the long days of walking and us with our stuff. I think negotiating the crowds was also much easier with them in the stroller than it would have been otherwise. We never forced them to ride but they almost always chose to going from one ride to another. They could sit back and talk about what they loved about the ride we finished while we all made our way to the next adventure. Parking the stroller close to rides was never a problem for us last year and we took it on the monorail, buses and boats without incident. Bring something to tie to your stroller so you can quickly identify yours in the sea of strollers.
I rented from Kingdom Strollers too. I picked a stroller that had “one finger set up”. The process to rent and to use the stroller was so easy!
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We used Apple Strollers last time. They delivered right to our resort and it was ready when we arrived. We got a double and found that even our 7 year old was glad for a break from time-to-time.
The only difficulties were:
-You have to plan extra time in your Touring Plan to park and pick up your stroller before/after attractions (sometimes they’re hard to find because cast members have moved them).
-Late at night when we were taking the long bus ride back to our resort, it was difficult to get the kids out and get them packed up into the bus.
-One day the bottom opened up and everyone and everything got soaked. The stroller never quite dried out after that.
All that to say, it was definitely worth it having a stroller with us even outside of the parks. We learned to navigate it quickly.
Did the stroller come with a free rain cover? I know it would take a while to put on- just wondering!
We ended up buying a $75 stroller for our 5 year old. It was cheaper than renting and I could give it to family after. Her old stroller was too big to easily carry on and off the bus.
I actually can’t remember if it came with the rain cover or not. Apple strollers are really cheap (you actually only pay a cleaning fee) so a lot of the extras you get through places like Kingdom strollers don’t apply.
Honestly I don’t think it would have mattered, because the day it rained on us (our HS day), it was such a torrential downpour that even our ponchos did not hold up.
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