Lyft and Uber makes more sense now?

[xipotec]

So...we used to us WDW transportation.
We then went to a car rental.

But now, for our family of 4, it makes almost no sense to do neither of those.

Why? Parking fees....

If you stay onsite at a deluxe or moderate your paying 20-25 for parking....THEN on top of that, your paying another 25 to park at the Theme parks?
So 50 dollars A DAY to park? (plus the cost of a rental and gas?) This is just excessive and ridiculous.

We had found that driving to the parks yourself is much quicker and less of a hassle then the Monorail or Buses, (with the exception of Deluxe resorts and MK.) So we used to just rent a small car for the trip, and drive to all the other parks. Even at Epcot the end of day craziness at the monorail station made driving back to a deluxe worth it. but now?

Uber estimates the cost of the ride from the resorts farthest away from MK to be about 20 dollars. I was hard pressed to find a combination that produced a higher fee than that. So basically your saving 10 dollars a day, plus have door to door service to the parks. The buses , while free, are a huge PITA to us.

Am I missing some thing?

 

[mom2rtk]

I don't disagree, but parking at the parks is free if you're onsite at least.

 

[PixieT78]

I could be wrong, but I don't believe you have to pay at the theme parks if you have paid via your hotel.

That said, for DH and I, we finally gave up the car rental last trip and were quite happy we did. We did a mix of Uber and Disney transportation and it worked out really well. Definitely spent less than the car rental would have cost.

 

[DLgal]

You don't pay to park at the theme parks as a Disney Resort Guest.

 

[loves to dive]

I really just depends on your personal wants and needs. As others have pointed out, if you are staying on site you don't pay for parking in the parks. So taking that cost out of your numbers, you are now just paying to park at the resort over what you used to pay by renting.

I guess you have to do the math and factor in convenience for your family costs. How many times would you be going back and forth to the parks each day. Even if it was only once and your trip cost per way was $15 (I was just averaging if MK was 20 and that was the farthest), that would be $30 per day. That is less than the parking fee at the resort but you are still paying to rent the car. If you go back and forth to the parks more than once a day you are now talking a possible $60 per day for Uber.

Personally, we drive down so we have our car. We have been staying at Swan/Dolphin for a number of years now so are used to paying parking fees, and frankly there are very few hotels we stay in outside of WDW that don't charge a parking fee that it's kind of normal for us. However, we don't use our car once we arrive at the resort. We park that puppy and use Disney transport the entire time we are there. The only exception is if we are doing a late dinner at a resort, we might Uber back to the resort and if we are doing a split stay, on move day we might drive to the park before we check into resort two if we know we are only going to spend a few hours in the park. Since we stay in Swan/Dolphin we walk to Epcot and HS. We can take the monorail to MK if we want to, I don't like the monorail so MK tends to be our day of arrival park and we just bus there. We bus to AK. We really don't have any problems with Disney transport. My son used to take the campus buses at UGA, which most of the time were standing room only so if he has to stand, he really doesn't think a thing about it. I don't like to drive on Disney property and just don't like the whole having to deal with parking. Adding bonus for us, my son is an adult and we like to enjoy refreshing adult beverages and don't have to worry about driving.

 

[OKW Lover]

If you stay onsite at a deluxe or moderate your paying 20-25 for parking....THEN on top of that, your paying another 25 to park at the Theme parks?

Not correct. If you are a Disney resort guest you do not pay for parking in the Theme parks.

 

[Krystal659]

Like @loves to dive stated, it depends on how many times you plan to leave the park or change parks. Last year we used Uber quite often as my grandmother was with us and waiting for Disney transportation in the heat was not ideal. Once we got home I was shocked to see how many $20 trips we took. It can add up quickly.

 

[xipotec]

Ah thanks for the clarification guys! The math then sort of evens out......convenience maybe not....

 

[Disneyhanna]

We've had some sort of Uber or Lyft promo during at least half of our trips (such as 25% off rides). Even AKL to the Contemporary (aka MK) was only $13 pre-discount. We tend to use the resort buses but will call a ride if we're too tired to wait for/on a bus. The Skyliner is awesome if you're staying at a connected resort, and can also make it easier to quickly pop to a resort from Epcot/HS to call a ride from there rather than from the parks at close when it's hectic.

Have you used the buses recently? Obviously it varies based on a lot of factors, but we've hardly had trouble on our past few trips. We did six park days on our last trip, and park hopped and took mid-day breaks every day, and we probably waited an average of 5-10 minutes for a bus. That's around 24 trips and we only waited more then 15 minutes 2-3 times. Totally understand if you have your own reasons for not using the buses of course. We just love not having to drive at all during vacation, it keeps the trip so stress-free for us!

 

[Disneyfan754321]

We've had some sort of Uber or Lyft promo during at least half of our trips (such as 25% off rides). Even AKL to the Contemporary (aka MK) was only $13 pre-discount. We tend to use the resort buses but will call a ride if we're too tired to wait for/on a bus. The Skyliner is awesome if you're staying at a connected resort, and can also make it easier to quickly pop to a resort from Epcot/HS to call a ride from there rather than from the parks at close when it's hectic.

Have you used the buses recently? Obviously it varies based on a lot of factors, but we've hardly had trouble on our past few trips. We did six park days on our last trip, and park hopped and took mid-day breaks every day, and we probably waited an average of 5-10 minutes for a bus. That's around 24 trips and we only waited more then 15 minutes 2-3 times. Totally understand if you have your own reasons for not using the buses of course. We just love not having to drive at all during vacation, it keeps the trip so stress-free for us!

We did the same with the discounts for lyft...... then we switched to the other halfs account so more discounts. You can also rent a car just for the day, we used the Alamo at MK so we could go to the beach and some other places.

 

[Scubadaddy32]

We Uber period.
It's take less than 5 minutes to any park other than MK via Uber from just about any of the resorts not located around MK.
I looked up my Uber account from our last 10 day and we spent about 200 including tips and we are all over the place during our trips. We took the buses on occasion when they were convenient.

 

[Nancyg56]

We use a combination of WDW transportation and Lyft, and find the little bit spent on Lyft transportation is worth the money for the convenience. It is still less than renting a vehicle and paying resort parking on top of the resort cost, and so convenient. TBH, we never rent a car in WDW, but even taking that out of the equation, the cost of Lyft for resort to resort transportaion is well worth it to us.

 

[UK2K]

Use Lyft and Uber during your trip. Trust me the stress level with kids is worth it in itself.

 

[Ed Campbell]

I agree that if you are onsite parking is free, although we tend to Uber because it is so efficient. When you add in the cost of the rental and walk time to your car (or boat ride)!, it's a small price to pay to save that much time. Time is everything at Disney, you are already paying a good amount for the tickets and room, a few extra bucks to save 30-45 minutes is small beans...

 

[DVCjj]

We fly and do not rent a car. We now use Uber/Lyft 3/4 of the time and can't live without it. For us, it has been absolutely wonderful. The time it saves is phenomenal. And it's cheap.

 

[AngiTN]

We use Uber even when we had a rental for a couple of days for other reasons. DH hates driving on property plus we enjoy adult beverages
We opt to use it to the parks but will normally ride the buses back
That way, when we are going to something at the park we are in control of time rather than guessing with a bus
Going back we are rarely in any time crunch

 

[AngiTN]

You don't mention kids ages but do remember car seat requirements
In FL anyone 6 and under needs one

 

[xipotec]

KIDs = 15 and 17

The October trip is a graduation present.

 

[GeorgiaHoo]

We plan on primarily using Uber/Lyft/Minnie Van. I had two bad experiences using Uber last trip--one of the rides had chicken wing bones in the floor (that was gross) and the other driver got lost TWICE taking us from Animal Kingdom to Yacht Club. But they generally are pretty good. The Minnie Van trips have all been great, but I understand they now charge per mile or something and it's significantly more than Uber/Lyft?

 

[MakiraMarlena]

Yep, no parking fee at the theme parks if you stay onsite. So that’s not a factor.

I use the WDW transportation unless time is tight, I’ll call for a Lyft if it is.

Yes, Minnie vans are now considerably more expensive than regular Lyft or Uber service.