Need advice on cost efficiancy

[Brian Noble]

So if I had a ressie at Chef Mickey's and drove we'd have to pay to park?

Not at all. In general, you are allowed to self-park at any resort for nearly any reason, with one significant exception: you may not park at a resort at which you are not a registered guest in order to visit a theme park. So, you would be able to self-park for breakfast at Chef M's, but you would have to move your car before continuing on to the Magic Kingdom if that was your morning destination.

If you'd like to eat breakfast at Chef M's and continue to MK, you can park at TTC, take the Resort monorail to Chef's, and walk to MK, or you may valet park (for a fee) at the Contemporary. At a place like Cape May (headed to Epcot or Studios) your only real option is to valet park or take a cab, as there is no convenient alternative---you could park at Studios and boat over, but I don't think the boat starts that early.

Any restrictions on self-parking (i.e. the three-hour limit) are only applied during times of high demand for the parking lots. In my many resort meals (including at the Poly and CR), I think I was only given a three-hour dash permit once. There was a *very* brief time when the CR lots were only available to CR guests, but that was during BLT construction when a good chunk of the parking lot was walled off for the work.

 

[ErinInCT]

Very good to know! Thanks all!!

 

[castleri]

Just checked into BWV today and decided I wanted eggs for breakfast so went to the store on the boardwalk and paid $2.08 for a dozen - less than I paid at home last week. Depending on what you want I think you could buy a fair amount of items for the $217 you are planning on for groceries and a car. My DH is having a fit about the parking situation here - we are used to staying at OKW or SSR and it is not convenient here unless you like long hikes just to get the car or want to pay the $12 a day for valet parking. We have the car only because we combined this WDW trip with a couple of days on the gulf coast to check on our winter house there. It cost the same to keep it for the entire time as it would have for just the 3 days we really needed it. I would check out the shopping list on the member web site if I were you and see what your total might be. i have a feeling our car may just sit in the original parking spot for our entire stay unless I decide I want to go to outlets to check out the character warehouse.

 

[ErinInCT]

Just checked into BWV today and decided I wanted eggs for breakfast so went to the store on the boardwalk and paid $2.08 for a dozen - less than I paid at home last week. I would check out the shopping list on the member web site if I were you and see what your total might be. i have a feeling our car may just sit in the original parking spot for our entire stay unless I decide I want to go to outlets to check out the character warehouse.

I am renting points from a member. Can you explain this? Or, maybe I should ask at DVC. Is there a shopping list I can do thru the DVC member? Just give them a list of my groceries and they can see if they are available and what the cost would be?

 

[castleri]

I tried to copy part of the list but am unable to copy and paste it and since I don't have access to a scanner here I can't do that either. Maybe the person you are renting from can help you out. I was in the store this evening and the only fresh fruit was oranges, apples and grapefruit and of course I wanted a banana so it doesn't always work out. They have some frozen food items as well as breads, entemans pastries, milk, oj, cereals, gallons of water if you prefer to use that for coffee or tea(some people don't like Disney water). I didn't check out things like pasta and sauce, soups etc. Many people use wegoshop or garden grocer if they have enough to make the delivery charge worth it or if they want adult beverages since it is much cheaper to get those almost any place other than Disney. Our only cooking this trip has been my eggs and some raisin toast so I haven't really investigated what i could get if I wanted to cook a real meal. Since we fly Southwest I usually pack some snacks, coffee, coffee filters, tea, zip lock bag with sugar, laundry supplies in one of the pieces of luggage. Then since it is usually used up we have some extra space for those items we end up buying to take home to the grandkids. Hope you have a great trip once you get it all sorted out.