I’ve left luggage in the car at both resorts and parks, I always assumed it’s extremely unlikely something gets stolen from a locked car in the middle of the day… I feel like there are countless places where it’d be more likely? So does this actually happen often in WDW?
1 Like
The first two times we went camping, we actually took two vehicles. Now we can get it all into our one large van. We realized that we don’t need a few things.
2 Likes
I live on 5 acres at the outskirts of a suburb. And we have our house locked up like Fort Knox even when we are in it. like I have to unlock the door to go outside. It’s probably because I read too many John Sanford novels in college.
Meanwhile, my friend lives in the heart of this suburb. She not only leaves her door unlocked at night, but she will go out of town and leave it unlocked the whole time she’s gone. It would be nothing to contact her and ask if I could borrow some thing, and find out she is out of town, and have her tell me just to go on in and get it out of the cupboard. Her husband is a federal agent and former parole official, too.
It has almost as much to do with personality as it does with location, I believe.
3 Likes
Personally if it was just clothes, I would totally leave my luggage in the car! I have been traveling at Christmas when we have brought all our presents into our hotel room, and we always bring in any electronics or valuables. But otherwise, clothing is replaceable and not worth stealing so if someone stole it I would assume they needed it more than I did.
2 Likes
Very true - but I’d hate to take the time out of vacation to fill out reports and shop for more clothes.
4 Likes
We try to not leave anything visible in the car overnight. And then we were driving home from California and I was tired and we left stuff in the car. DD18 (then DD16) had her clothes, shoes, Disney pins and her new droid from Droid Depot all stolen. Now I am obsessive about not leaving stuff in the car. Last weekend, DD20 and I drove down to Cali from Washington to get her back to her college. We had laid the back seat of the car down and had a bunch of tubs in there. Got to the hotel … packed all the tubs that weren’t in the trunk into the room, pulled the seats into position so the car looked empty and then put everything back in the morning. If you have space inside to store everything, my feeling would be why not invest the 10 minutes to take it out of the van just to be on the safe side?
4 Likes
@vcka, @popupcamper, we live in a rural county in central Missouri 7 miles from a town of 200, and 7 miles from a town of 600 in another direction. The county population density is about 0.5 persons per square mile. If it’s not cloudy or a full moon we can see the Milky Way. After 45 years here - and covid - I’m not sure I can live in a town. 
8 Likes
WONDERFUL!!! I remember growing up in Minneapolis (decades ago) being able to see the Milky Way but light pollution took that away. Then as a married adult our family moved to the middle of nowhere New Mexico and on our first night sky I screamed in delight, ran to get my kids to show them what they had never seen: the Milky Way 
4 Likes
As soon as we’re able to leave the house again, I dream of big night skies. There’s nothing more grounding, or humbling in my opinion. I love it!
4 Likes
That sounds amazing. I can hear my neighbors when they are talking in their house. That’s probably why we camp so much.
3 Likes
Oh. Wow.
This hits me.
As someone on 5 acres with not many neighbors I’ve been looking at houses with less property and in neighborhoods. I would love less yard work, but I don’t know if I can listen to other people’s kids or see people by their mailboxes again. 
3 Likes
Years ago when DH was teaching we went camping every summer for 5 to 6 weeks at a time - first few years in a popup.
We would always joke that we’d gone from seeing no one to cheek by jowl in some campgrounds.
But we wanted to show our youngest grandkids the country and camping is cheap. We had a Golden Age passport - half price for federal campgrounds. Usually stayed in Forest or Rec Areas. Not many facilities but we had tanks. One campsite was $3.50 a night. Can’t afford to stay home. 
7 Likes
100% my answer and also have the same but wait maybe I shouldn’t answer this qualifications ha.
Edited to add: we lived in the country in rural southern illinois much like you describe until last March and now we’ve moved to the middle of a small town in Alabama and our habits probably need adjusted but we haven’t done it yet.
2 Likes
If you haven’t yet, you may not need to. 
2 Likes
I would leave it in the van. I have not seen stories about break ins on Disney property and would think it would be safer there than normal hotels or areas in the U.S. I think the risk factor is like 1% at most and I would say the convenience factor of not having it in your way at BWV is like 90%. Leave it in the van and blame the liners if it is stolen. Ha
5 Likes
I still haven’t heard a mention of this happening (cars parked at resorts or parks being broken into), so curious if there are any stories of it even happening?
I simply do not believe there are opportunistic thieves roaming Disney car parks who are willing to smash their way into cars and steal property.
Show me news reports / police reports that prove me wrong.
1 Like
We left a packed van in the Contemporary lot on the day we had to check out (but still wanted to go to MK). It was fine. If you have a towel or something, you could put that over top, so nothing shiny stands out.
That reminds me that there is (was?) an old bit in the Unofficial Guide about how to differentiate your stroller at the parks - just tie a ziplock bag with a diaper inside to the handle. Extra points if you pour a little root beer in the diaper for color! 
Maybe you could do something similar to your luggage to make it look unappealing … 
4 Likes
We actually did this - maybe with coke - because a newbie traveling with us would not believe our stroller would be waiting for us after a ride. More for the shock value, and laughs. End of that discussion. 
And I did get the idea from Unofficial Guide. Maybe a reader tip?
Ah, fake vomit on the suitcase. 
1 Like