This will be our third giant trip: same ten people, four generations… it’s going to be fun.
We’re staying at an Airbnb that we’ve stayed at before. It has nine bedrooms and a heated pool. About $530 a night and we can cook our own food which really helps with the kids.
Anyways… here comes the crazy idea.
I can book a tent site at Fort Wilderness, which for some crazy reason allows up to ten adults, for $106/night.
I could “check in” and just sort of hang out for a little bit and then leave.
This would let us take advantage of Early Park Entry… which honestly $10.60 per person/day for Early Entry sounds not that bad especially when Genie+ would probably be $35!
People have been doing this for years. It’s why the campsites are so expensive now. They are trying to discourage this “use” of the booking. But there’s technically nothing wrong with it. It’s your money and you can use the site how you see fit.
In addition to EE you could get access to genie+ at 7 days in advance as well.
Not sure if this is easier or not, but you could also absorb some of this cost by driving to the camp ground and parking and taking their transportation. Would save $, but also may be a pain and add time, dunno.
i don’t think it is crazy, you’re paying for the space, how you choose to use it is your call.
The parking is free at the theme parks for those with an on-site reservation. Just have your magicband or other admission media scanned as you enter the parking lot. That’s true for every vehicle your group may have. No need to make effort to use FtW buses.
Honestly, I would probably be doing Genie+ either way. We did it last time and I don’t think it’s necessarily worth the money, but we don’t go to Disney that much and it’s definitely something I did enjoy using. It helped us get a few extra rides for my (at the time) three year old… like the Safari and Buzz Lightyear Spin, and the memories are making me tear up a bit haha.
So… not worth the money, but I’m probably going to do it regardless.
We are planning on having two minivans. I know the campsites allow for one free car… does that mean we could get two free cars?
That would drop the additional cost down to about $6 per person-day which would be incredible.
Edit: I just looked it up and the campsites will give you two free parking passes and parking is more expensive than I remember. So this would only be an additional $46/park day.
No, not two free to park at FtW. (I see you edited your info). But you can drive them both to the theme parks and park for free. The free parking is not based on your vehicle, it is based on the people in the car - at least one of them can show a MagicBand or other media to the CM for them to verify you have an on-site reservation good that day.
It’s based on the people listed on the campsite reservation.
When the Kid had their big birthday bash one main birthday request was to ride the Disney busses. So I rented the campsite and put on the reservation all the names of the drivers in our group - 9 - and added the Kid’s name mostly for fun.
But all the folks in our group could ride the bus. We parked the cars in the big lot at the Outpost.
We didn’t care about Early Entry - a good third of our group didn’t qualify anyway. And we didn’t care about the parking fees - they’re not even a % of the whole trip cost.
Our offsite condos were less than 15 minutes from Fort Wilderness, so driving there and then getting the bus ride the birthday Kid wanted was easy peasy.
Then the hurricane happened and the subsequent “move” from the campground messed up the drivers’ magic bands for the last few days of our stay.
I’ve done throw away campsites twice during FPP+ years. Got us free parking, early access to FPP selection and our magic bands. Also EMM or whatever it was called. It used to be about $75/night.
I don’t know what you get for it now, but I’m impressed it’s only gone up that much.
Agreed. I meant that the car itself does not matter, it’s the occupant who must have the campsite reservation. Now whether that is the driver or a passenger should not matter, I think.
You don’t even need the campsite for all the nights.
You can do every other night.
Or do two smaller reservations if you have break day in the middle.
I dont know the ins and outs of the new fast lane thingy so I don’t know all the ways it helps, but the parking savings and early arrival alone would convince me.
The sites vary a lot now depending on season and campsite type. I was astonished to see a preferred site at $247/night recently. Probably December. I was also surprised that this site was in loop 800. Preferred now apparently due to proximity to the Meadows Trading Post.
Very glad it wasn’t preferred when we stayed there.
