The Car...It is the problem

I haven’t looked at my countdown since ADR. Yesterday, I peeked and it was 99 days! Yikes, I better get moving on my TPs because FPP opens in about 6 weeks.

I need help with my Resorts’ Christmas Decoration Touring. We will go to MVMCP on December 10th and 12th. On Wednesday, December 11th, we are strongly considering a full day to tour the resorts’ Christmas Decoration. We may do some resort touring also on Tuesday, December 10th in the morning and Friday, December 13th in the late afternoon.

We will be staying off-site and will have a car. The car… it is the problem. There were a couple of posts on Lines last week on the subject of parking at resorts to shop, tour, and eat. There was no definite conclusion on parking at the resorts when shopping, touring, and eating, when not staying on-site.

There are two parts to each of my question below: (a) Can we park at the resort we are visiting? and (b) Do we need to pay to park at each resort?

Question #1 – We want to tour AofA around 11 and then have lunch at Sassagoula at 1. Is parking going to be an issue at either AofA or Sasagoula at PORFQ for an off-site visitor?

Question #2 Can we park at the WL around 11:30 AM to eat lunch at Roaring Forks, tour WL; and then tour the resorts on the monorail loop, mainly GF?

Question #3 – Can we park at BC, YC, Swan & Dolphin, & Boardwalk to tour?

Question #4 – Or, would it be better park the car around 10 AM at DS and bus to WL and do the entire tour using Disney’s buses, boats, and monorail? We would rather drive because it seems like it would save time.

Question #5 – We have ADR at Maya Grill at 8 pm. Can we park at CSR, say beginning at 6 pm, to have drinks and appetizers at The Three Bridges?

Question #6 – Can we park at BC, YC, Swan & Dolphin, & Boardwalk to tour?

Question #7 – Can we park at AKL to for the Culinary Tour and then have dinner at Sanaa Lounge?

Question #8 – Or should we ditch the car at DS and start by taking the bus to WL?

Any advice on my resort touring plan below?

  • Drive to Wilderness Lodge about 11:30 AM for lunch at Roaring Forks first
  • Boat to MK
  • Walk to Contemporary
  • Monorail to Polynesian Village Resort
  • Monorail to Grand Floridian
  • Bus to Wilderness Lodge
  • Drive to Yacht Club
  • Walk to Beach Club
  • Boat to Boardwalk
  • Walk or boat to Swan
  • Walk to Dolphin
  • Walk or boat to Yacht
  • Drive to Coronado Springs by 5:30 PM

Sorry for such a long post! Thanks in advance for all suggestions!

In general my advice would be that parking at the values or moderates is unlikely to be an issue, even without an ADR at the specific resort.

As for the deluxes, that is where you could find you are not allowed to park.

That doesn’t mean you won’t be able to, but it totally depends on how busy each resort is. If you have an ADR you should be fine for a few hours.

Personally I wouldn’t want to plan on being able to park at the resorts. I guess staying offsite makes it harder. It seems an awful lot to do all in one day. However, regardless, I would break the resorts down by area to begin with.

WL and monorail resorts - To be safe I would park at TTC, walk or monorail to Poly, then onto GF and round to the Contemporary and finally over to WL by boat. You could do that on a party day in the morning.

To your specific plan, if you start at WL then just take the boat direct to the Contemporary (one colour boat goes to MK, the other goes around Bay Lake in either direction). And you would need to go back to MK to bus or boat to WL, no buses between GF and WL.

Just be aware that at every monorail resort, you go through security to board the monorail.

The Epcot resorts - personally I would plan a break of say 90 minutes from Epcot and walk to BW, Beach and Yacht. Those resorts are all fairly close, little more than a mile all around the lake. Parking at those resorts can be as tricky as the monorail ones. You could ask if you can valet park, but even that can be refused if there is no room. Or park at DHS and get the boat down if you don’t want to to walk.

For AKL, an ADR and/or the culinary tour should be fine to park.

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There is not much point in taking the boat between any of the boardwalk resorts unless the boat is right there when you walk up. It’s about a 5 minute walk for any of them. As far as parking, I think there is generally plenty of space at dolphin/ swan if you can’t park at yacht. Not sure if they’d want you to pay or not.

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Thank you for your detailed evaluation. We will rearrange the resort touring based on our park schedule.

Getting around on the bus can be so much of a hassle.

Just a general comment - last week we had a mostly resort trip staying at AS Movies. We did a bunch of resort exploring and drove up to AKL, WL, CBR, no problems at all. Just told security guard we had hoped to eat and explore at each. They scanned our band and off we went.

On the last day we had already checked out of Movies when we showed up at WL, so that guard just wanted to see my driver’s license. As @Nickys said - only issue I’d be ready for is Deluxes during busy times or near MK being more strict about parking.

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Was the sign up at WL saying that parking was only for resort guests or guests with an ADR? I think that might only be for holiday times?

Oh, didn’t notice any signs at all.
Think the license thing was just because we had checked out an hour before - only glanced at it and sent us in.

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