My son and I are coming to Florida for 5 nights in April and we have decided to book a room at RPR for Saturday night -- and we owe it all to you all on this board
After reading about all the advantages of staying on-site -- mostly FOTL, we think that a Saturday night stay would be perfect, especially since we are coming during a school break. So my question is, can we check in early Saturday morning to take advantage of the extra hour early admission to the park? Does it cost to park our rental at the hotel? After I check out on Sunday, will I have to move my rental car to the regular parking garage? Thanks again -- We are super excited about this change in plans
We just did this at Christmas so I can answer your question.
Yes, you can check in early. When we were there, they opened at 7 a.m. so we were there REALLY early to check in (before 6:30)!
They'll give you temporary room cards that will be good all day, and you'll have to change them later when you get ready to get in your room. You can either leave your bags in your car and go back and get them, or you can check them with the bellman (much easier to check them though).
You'll then either walk or catch the boat. We walked because the boat wasn't at the dock. In our case, they opened the gates at 15 minutes early.
As far as parking, it costs $15 for overnight parking, but it's good for both days (until midnight of the day you check out), so it's cheaper than 2 days parking in the garage would be.
One problem we had, the desk told me that the parking was good until midnight, but when we got ready to leave, our room key wouldn't raise the arm at the gate. (This is where my husband looked at me, because he had asked me a couple of times whether I was SURE that we could leave the car in the parking lot even though we had checked out earlier.
) All we had to do was push the button and give them the room number that we had checked out of (and our name), and they raised the arm for us.
