ECV questions

[09disvac]

Hello disney experts,

Making a trip to disney in November, 2010. My father with MS is going. He will need an ECV. Trying to decide between off-site rental or park rental. He can walk with a cane and we will only need the ECV for the parks. We will be driving our own vehicle...a Town & Country minivan...and we can't put the back seats down. My questions are...

1. Would the offsite ECV, broken down, fit in the space behind the rear seats of the van? We will also have a double stroller, for the kids, to transport.
2. At this time of year, when we go, will ECV's be available from the parks if we do any park hopping in the afternoon?
3. Can you get a wheelchair for free if you present a receipt for a park ECV and they are out?

Thanks for the help.

 

[Tiggerish]

I also have MS and I get by with only a cane or ocassionally a walker at home. But I found out the hard way that the walk from the parking or bus stop to the front of the Magic Kingdom where you can rent the ECV is a long, long, long ways. Also, if you think it was a long way to get the ECV, wait til the end of the day when you have used up all your energy and then must walk (or in my case stumble) back to parking lot or bus stop. For that reason, renting off-site became the clear answer. I also loved having it at the resort because then I did not care how far away the room was from the pool or gift shop or food court because I could drive myself around.

I do not know how well everything would fit into your vehicle but as my father says, "I will make it fit! Even if some of it ends up on someone's lap!"

 

[chaoslobster]

I can answer the second question: will an ECV always be available if you park-hop in the afternoons. The answer is definitely NO. You need to get to the park before 10am to guarantee an ECV will be available to rent. They start to run out around 10:30, 11am. Some ECVs will come back and be rentable as people leave for the afternoons, but there will also be a line of people waiting for that to happen so you still may not get one. Later in the afternoon around 4 or 5pm there should be some available, but there's never a guarantee, so if somebody needs an ECV or their Disney experience will be ruined, you MUST either arrive early every day to rent one and don't hop, or rent offsite. You may well have rental ECVs available whenever you need one, depending on when in November you go (the Thanksgiving week is one of the busiest times of the whole year) but it's not worth making your trip miserable if you guess wrong and there isn't one. I've had that happen to me more than once and been forced to literally sit outside the park on a bench and wait for 2 hours because I can't walk well enough to get to any of the rides and then come back to the entrance.

 

[09disvac]

Thanks for the answers so far. Does anyone know the policy for getting a wheelchair if they are out of ECVs and you paid for and had one earlier in the day before park hopping?