Parking Your Car at the Parks

[livabeth]

We will be driving from our disney resort to the parks each day. With two young children, we plan to hit the parks early, return for some afternoon downtime by the pool or in our room to nap, and then venture back to the parks in the evening for dinner.

Where do you park at the parks? Is there preferred parking for resort guests?? Are the parking lots a far walk to the park entrances, and if so, should we bring our own stroller?? When parking at MK, do you have to park at the TTC and take a bus/monorail/ferry to MK??

Thanks.

 

[kaytieeldr]

There's no preferred parking for resort Guests, but it is free with the card you'll be given to put on your dashboard.
If you get to the parks very early, you should be able to park close enough to any entrance to walk EXCEPT Magic Kingdom (see below).
If you're not within walking distance, all the parks have trams to get you from the parking areas to the park entrances.
There's no parking close to Magic Kingdom - you need to take the monorail or ferry to the park entrance, and it's a pretty good hike from the so-called 'closest' parking spaces to the Ticket & Transportation Center. It's ALWAYS more advisable to use the Disney bus to go between your resort and the Magic Kingdom.
If you do park more than walking distance from any park entrances, you'll have to fold up the stroller.

 

[4formickey]

take the bus. The walk from the bus stop to the magic kingdom is very close. Don't set in the wheelchair seats because you will have to move but you can bet the odds of finding a seat by remenbering the seated load on their buses are about 36. the front fill up first but seating near the back and you can get off faster.

 

[bicker]

And the busses run frequently enough that if there aren't any seats left you can just wait for the next one.

 

[drogerstn]

... It's ALWAYS more advisable to use the Disney bus to go between your resort and the Magic Kingdom...

This has been our normal way of doing things. For the most part, we drive to all parks except MK. However, during our last visit, we were near the MK one afternoon, so we parked at TTC. We were close enough to walk to the monorail without need of the tram.

One other night, we rode the bus (staying at POR) and it was very slow. We waited 20 minutes for the bus to arrive at the MK, then took 12 minutes to load and it was packed. We also had long waits to offload and reload as we made the rounds to our stop. The big delay in loading and offloading was from the motorized scooters having to be positioned and locked down.

We used the car the next time we visited MK it seems like a toss-up as to which is better. The parking lot trams and monorail run every couple of minutes, while the buses seem to run about every 20 minutes...

 

[Brygida]

We will be driving from our disney resort to the parks each day. With two young children, we plan to hit the parks early, return for some afternoon downtime by the pool or in our room to nap, and then venture back to the parks in the evening for dinner.

Where do you park at the parks? Is there preferred parking for resort guests?? Are the parking lots a far walk to the park entrances, and if so, should we bring our own stroller?? When parking at MK, do you have to park at the TTC and take a bus/monorail/ferry to MK??

Thanks.

In general I believe you have the best plan (using your car to the parks each day from the Disney Resort). It is the one I use with my son (now 2) on all our trips.

I book my travel through AAA (this was the same exact cost as through Disney Central Reservations), but I get the AAA diamond pass which has up-close parking. The AAA lot is near handicapped parking. At EPCOT, the AAA lot is much NEARER than the Disney bus parking. At Animal Kingdom it's a wash. At Magic Kingdom, you still have to park at the TTC and take the monorail or ferry. To avoid the TTC, I often book a meal at a monorail resort, park my car at the resort and use the monorail to get to MK. If I can't park at a resort near MK, I will use the Disney bus for the trip, but that is my only exception to using my car vs Disney bus. Every other trip, the car will be faster! (The Unofficial Guide has a detailed breakdown of these travel times, check it out at your local bookstore.)

The AAA lots are the nearest available parking. If you don't have the AAA diamond pass, then yes you could have a very, very far walk to the entrance.

Either way, I take the stroller and load my toddler into it at the car (whether I've parked in AAA lot or not!) He is too big to carry more than a couple feet!