Preferred parking is supposed to be closer than regular parking. It is usually in Jurassic Park parking lot on the 3rd level. At 3rd level you don't have to ride an escalator up or down to get to the moving walkways that lead to the parks. I truly don't see an advantage to paying an extra $4 for preferred. If you really don't want to do much walking then you should do valet parking. I parked in "preferred" only once and didn't find it any quicker to getting to the parks and have actually parked closer sometimes with regular parking.
Note to Damo: I think the poster was asking about preferred parking not preferred annual passes. But Damo is correct; with Preferred annual passes, regular parking is free.
Hi, could you tell me what we do when staying at Portofino Bay, do we park in the normal carpark, then go to port of entry then get a boat to the hotel to check in & get our keys? I guess I should of asked when I booked our room but didn't think about it at the time.
No. Go to the hotel and park your car there. Go into the hotel and check in and from there you can either proceed to your room (if it is ready) or to the parks with your new front of the line passes (your room keys).
FYI - we checked in to the Royal Pacific at 9:30am (they held our luggage) and the Hard Rock at 10:00 am. When we came back to the room at the RP at 5:00 pm (we were staying at CL) we had the bellman move our bags up to the room then - this was in November; they told us the policy had changed and they would not move "unaccompanied" luggage to the room. When we stayed at the HR back in October, they just delivered the bags to the room for us while we were gone.
But in both cases, we just pulled up to the hotel (follow the signs - they are well marked), unloaded the luggage, and the bellman loaded us up and took us in to the hotel. We got our FOTL room keys, then caught the boat over to the parks.