New Overnight Parking Fees for Disney World Hotels
Walt Disney World has announced that it will charge hotel guests for overnight parking. Rates will vary by resort tier, with Vale Resorts charging $13/night, Moderate Resorts will be $19/night, and Deluxe Resorts $24/night. Valet parking at Deluxe/Villa resorts will increase to $33/night. Disney Vacation Club guests staying on points or paying cash at Deluxe Villas will not pay for overnight self-parking.
Note that this does not impact free parking for Annual Passholders at the theme parks, nor does it impact those visiting a resort hotel for dinner or shopping. (Although we wouldn’t be surprised to see purchase validation soon required for resort visitors.) Guests staying at campsites in Fort Wilderness will not pay for overnight parking. It’s presently unclear whether drivers with valid disability parking permits will be charged (we’ll update the post later about this once we receive clarification).
The new Walt Disney World parking charge applies to guests who book reservations on or after March 21, 2018. The one positive in this news is that if you book a reservation today or in the next week–even for a trip in December–you won’t be subject to the new parking cost. So that’s at least one way to postpone the sting of this new fee for a little while longer.
Walt Disney World has indicated that this change is to bring their Florida hotels more in line with industry standards. Disney Springs Resort Area Hotels, the Swan & Dolphin, Universal Orlando on-property hotels, and most Orange County Convention Center area-hotels charge for overnight parking.
During our recent stays at the Disney Springs hotels, we noticed pricing around $20/night (+/- $5), which was fairly surprising given the surplus of space. The swamps of Florida are not exactly San Francisco or New York City, where the space is limited and has a high per square foot real estate value.
Known for its “blessing of size,” Walt Disney World fans have long thought that there are certain lines Disney wouldn’t cross, with parking and resort fees being one. We can empathize with the many fans who are frustrated by this, but to them we’d also say that it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge is basically a license for Walt Disney World to print money. We’ve said that before, but perhaps it needs to be reiterated. It will draw historic crowds to Florida, many of whom will be first-time visitors or lifelong Star Wars fans willing to pay just about any price to live out childhood dreams. As demand is about to soar, you can expect prices for just about anything at Walt Disney World to increase.
This is particularly true with supply-limited items, such as hotel rooms, parking, and theme park capacity (tickets). Obviously, we’re not fans of paying more to visit Walt Disney World, either, but it’s a reality we all must face.
While we’ve historically been quite averse to Walt Disney World’s various cash-grab up-charge offerings, we’re actually becoming a bit amenable to them, as they represent optional ways to pay more, rather than necessary ones that impact all guests equally.
If Disney management has certain revenue projections that they are attempting to hit (and they certainly do) through a mix of optional and mandatory price increases and upcharges, we prefer the ones we can avoid. This is sort of where we’re at with the parking fee: it makes us cringe, but at the same time, if it’s in lieu of an across the board hotel rate increase of, for example, $10/night, we’ll take it.
Since Walt Disney World operates by the same laws of supply and demand and consumer price sensitivity as every other business, it stands to reason that this fee will impact both future rate increases (slowing them slightly) and guest behavior (pushing more people off-site or causing them to skip rental cars). The latter means a decline in hotel demand–but that will be more than offset by the coming increase in demand once Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opens.
As such, we’re sure there are still significant hotel price increases coming between now and 2020, but minimizing those to the greatest degree possible via optional fees (in other words, not resort fees, which are anti-consumer and really should draw more scrutiny from the FTC) would be our preference.
We’ve written articles (here on page 2 and here) that delve into the current hot economy and its impact on Walt Disney World, so we won’t rehash those here. Suffice to say, record-high consumer confidence and new projects that will be huge guest draws is a perfect storm for higher prices at Walt Disney World.
Interest in those additions is unlikely to subside until well after Walt Disney World’s 50th Anniversary in 2021, but the same cannot be said for the economy. That cooling off has its own set of negative ramifications for guests, but one silver lining is that it will also cool off Disney’s pricing trends.
Other than that, we don’t really know what else to say about this news of overnight parking fees for Walt Disney World guests. It’s understandably frustrating, especially for long-time fans who have experienced a noticeable shift in policies and practices. While Disney has always been a business, there’s was a time when it felt like a responsible one that tried to balance shareholder interests with guests ones, adding value that was commensurate with added costs. Maybe that was never the case, and maybe it still is.
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
Your Thoughts
What do you think about the new overnight parking fees at Walt Disney World? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing feedback about your experiences is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
I think they finally jumped the shark.
I feel like Disney (which I’ve loved) is becoming a monopoly bent on taking people’s money for any little thing. It’s sad to see this happen. This is one of the reasons I will not be returning to Disney anytime soon. Note: I don’t drive, I fly there but that’s not fair to people who drive there, in my opinion.
It will take Disney losing profits for them to change their monopolizing ways, but that would mean people would have to boycott and go elsewhere for vacation. I doubt that will happen, so they will continue to increase prices on everything on a basis of sorts.
Don’t get me wrong when I say this but why do drivers who have disabilities NOT have to pay the parking fee? How is that fair if they also have a car parked on the premises of said hotel. It should be all or none pay, enough of this pandering to people. In a way, that’s discrimination to none disabled people (who will have to pay, and have the less ideal spots). Personally, they should NOT be charging anyone to park what with their outrageous prices already.
Love reading your posts!!! Very informative. Thanks again!!
We Disney fans love the “Disney Bubble” and it’s easy to overlook the fact that the bubble is created by a company that has to operate outside it, just as a house with comfortable air conditioning has outside walls that are out in the summer heat. When I visit, I’m not actually going to Neverland, I’m buying a week in the bubble from a for-profit company that makes and sells it.
I supplement my income with some investments; I don’t turn down higher returns when the economy provides them. I don’t begrudge Disney choosing to benefit from a better economy (while it lasts) either– especially when a big chunk of that is currently going to construction that I mostly expect to make the experience even better (I don’t like every proposed change under current construction, but I like more of them than not).
Waiting for the next WDW commercial showing how “affordable” a Disney vacation can be for a family of 4. Just don’t rent a car, don’t buy the dining plan, don’t do character meals, don’t buy any extra experiences, don’t buy the memory maker. Just great.
We will just take our swagger wagon for a little drive and eat a meal off site. Should save a couple hundred bucks since it costs my family of 5 $250/meal on property. We will put the food savings towards their asphalt charge. Way to push us off site, geniuses.
It’s hard enough for the average person to even go. My family loves DIsney and we were lucky enough to go several times. But there is a point where enough is enough. There is aways empty huge lots at all the resorts they have never been full. The extra fee is just asking too much they hiked park tickets too. It is just pricing the avarage family out. Maybe just a differnt way like $20.00 for a 5 day stay. They way they are going to do it would cost almost $100.00 just to park.We are very disappointed more money.
Hey Tom, any word on if this is going to expand into on-site guests getting charged for daily parking when viisiting parks as well? We stay on site but rent a car….still free?
Thanks 🙂
No matter what Disney does to suck every penny out of a guests pocket, they will continue to do so because guests keep pouring into the resorts and parks at unprecedented rates. As long as Disney can gouge guests, the gouging will continue. I’m really starting to hate the company. It’s not the awesome company that I joined in the mid eighties. It’s now just a money making machine disguised behind happy character heads. It’s a damned shame. Guests will continue to flood in regardless of how much Disney charges for the privilege to stay in their hotels and parks. People are crazy.
The thing about parking costs is that they are charges that have a negligible impact on say a family of four ($5/person/day – hardly noticeable, if we’re honest, at Disney), but a major impact on a couple or solo visitor.
More than ever, it makes no sense for small groups to hire cars to visit Walt Disney World. This parking charge alone would fund a couple of Uber rides per day, to say nothing of the base charges, fuel costs, insurance, risk of being in an accident, etc. I actually enjoy driving to and around WDW, but it is becoming prohibitively expensive.
The guests I empathise with are those for whom driving (in their own cars) is the only real option. Maybe a future blog post can cover some trusted long-stay parking garages near Disney to work around the parking fee.
By the way, I don’t think this will happen instead of a room rate increase, any more than I think the gate price would be $20 more if they weren’t able to charge day guests for parking, or if Epcot festivals were suspended, or if MNSSHP/MVMCP attendance fell off a cliff. There is a natural limit to what people will pay in terms of baseline pricing.
I hear your argument about this being a fee paid only by those who use it. And at a non-Disney hotel, I would totally buy that argument. But in this particular circumstance, I’m not sure I do, and here’s why: there are two kinds of people who bring cars to their resort, the ones who drive the whole way from their front door, and the ones who drive from the airport in a rented car. People in either category are not using Magical Express, and for those who rented a car they are also presumably not making quite as much use of the resort to parks transportation (because otherwise why not just go the ME / buses route). I’d be surprised if the costs of ME and the other transportation don’t figure into the room cost somewhere, and assuming that is correct what it means is that people who pay for parking are paying twice: once for the car that they are parking, and once for the transportation that they are paying for — but not using — because they have a car on site.
Your argument assumes that Disney’s pricing is based upon their costs that they are passing on to the consumer, which is definitely not the case.
I probably should’ve made this more clear, but I think that’s a valid argument for parking fees in New York or San Francisco, but not Florida (where land is cheap).
Disney has a separate incentive to offer “free” bus transportation and Disney’s Magical Express (there are air quotes around free because even that is built into overall hotel costs–you’re paying for those services even if you don’t use them), and that’s to keep guests on-site. Guests who don’t have a car are less likely to venture off-site for meals or to visit other Orlando attractions, meaning more money spent at Disney.
Accordingly, there are two motivations for Disney to charge for parking: generate additional revenue and discourage rental car use.
I hope that makes more sense! 🙂
(Note that I’m not saying I agree with any of this from a ‘moral’ perspective–it just is what it is.)
Your statement doesn’t make sense. In one sentence you say that ME is not included in the hotel prices and then in another you say it is. Which is it? Jennie is right. They are charging people to park and charging them to use free transportation they may or may not use. Universal charges for airport transportation so the parking fee is not a double charge. Your statement even makes less sense in NYC or SF because that is a totally different situation.
Your argument that this will keep people from renting cars and leaving the property is not accurate. People who plan on leaving the resort will leave to go other places. There is Uber, Lyft, and taxis. Most people who rent cars are doing it to avoid the buses and wait times not to leave the resort. It is a pain to drive your car off site to go for dinner.
There really is only ONE motivation for Disney to charge for parking and that is to generate revenue. Everything else they say is BS.
Im sure walt Disney him self would not agree with this decision.
Yeah you’re totally right. He started the parks as a charity. They were never about making money. If you think Disney will stop adding fees, up charges, etc while there is money on the table you’re fooling yourself. People will just keeping paying.
I am a little upset about the extra cost–I drive from Canada about 2 to 3 times a year. I am a passholder, but this extra cost makes me wonder if I should be staying on Disney property. I usually stay 10 to 14 days per stay. That can add $200 to $280 a stay. That’s the price of a really good restaurant meal! I can stay off property for less, and many without parking fees. I do not pay parking at the parks because of my pass, but without a pass, I could simply do what so many already do…park at the springs and use a Disney bus to a resort, then a theme park. It is not like my parking spots at these resorts are close to my room–I usually can plan on a mini marathon just to check in, park and get to my room! Slowly Disney is moving out of my vacation spending bracket.
I long for the day when a respected blogger, such as yourself, simply calls Disney out on its abject greed and tells their flock the truth: they’re crazy for giving Disney their money. I get that it won’t happen. No matter how you or any blogger contort themselves, this is a business for you. And you take advantage of the addicts out there and are not going to shoot yourself.
But to be as anti-resort fees as you are and not attack Disney on parking fees, something quite akin to resort fees is really splitting hairs.
There’s also the alleged Disney Difference before anyone talks about UNI charging or the Disney Springs hotels charging (none of them did a decade ago, BTW). Disney was all about being an inclusive experience. They might as well be an airline now. Raise the prices of everything to absurd levels, discount like hell, and unbundle and upcharge for everything that was once included.
I’m sorry, Tom. I like you personally and respect your opinions a great deal. But not on this one. And I won’t be affected as DVCer and APer. Well, except if they start playing games at the gates to their resorts when dining, drinking, shopping or visiting. I know this was something in the planning for a few years now (just like the removing of theming and making all the product feel blander and more common — just take a look at the DVC half of the WL versus the original and tell me they weren’t going for Marriott Anywhere).
I should have known it was imminent by my experiences last week when twice I pulled up to the YC and told the different security guards I was there to dine (both true) and wasn’t asked for a ressie number or an ID. And, yes, I then left the car amidst plenty of empty spaces and went to EPCOT for hours through the IG. If they start making parking a hassle or pull a “two hour limit” deal, I will stop dining at said resorts and drinking at them and shopping at them. The WL benefitted with two meals bought by my party in one day a week ago by ‘allowing’ me to leave my car in their lot (I am an owner there) when I went to the MK in between.
The cost is insane and insulting. I won’t point out that 15 years ago, valet parking was free and then $6. It is $25 today and going to $33 next week.
Just as crazy as paying $119 plus tax for three hours extra at the MK. And I know YOU won’t give me the WDW is a business line …
One other thought for you to chew on. I know you keep talking about the huge and never before seen masses that are going to descend on WDW when SW: GE opens. I think you may well be getting ahead of yourself on that. Our economy isn’t nearly as great as the GOP says. The prices are insane now and people are openly talking about it at WDW. You don’t even need a Disney hating Spirit like me to bring it up. You hear them talking … normal regular Guests. Iger and Chappie think it is their license to print money and have sold the fans on it. They would be wise to be cautious, especially with the MAJOR delays the project is currently facing on both coasts and the MAJOR build/install issues the MF attraction is having. Despite what the bloggers and Disney Twitter believes, I think many people are going to hold off on SW when it opens to wait and see crowds, prices and read reviews, Just some thoughts.
For me, the distinction between parking and resort fees is clear: one only applies to some guests who choose to drive, whereas the other applies to everyone. Resort fees only exist to deceive consumers booking via Expedia, etc., and have drawn FTC scrutiny as a result. There is no compelling reason for them to be a separate line item. I think the case can be made for parking…but in the swamplands of Florida, it’s a tough sell for me. Again, it’s not NYC or SF.
I’m against nickel and diming of all sorts, but I have pragmatism (and selfishness) when examining them. Checked baggage fees also irritate me, but I have co-branded credit cards to avoid them, and that works for me if it means paying slightly less in base fares (and I absolutely believe that it does). I think the same applies here.
I certainly hope you’re right about expectations with Star Wars land. I’ve thought for a long time that consumer confidence was overly high, and not in line with the reality of the economy, and I think the same about the stock market. There are a number of indicators–from record consumer debt to auto loans, etc. that support this. Unfortunately, consumer confidence–which is primary drive of middle class spending–is more psychological than anything else, so I don’t think we’re in for an immediate change there.
In many cases, to drive isn’t a choice. When you compare the cost of four or five round trip airfares to driving for ten or twelve hours the clear choice is to drive. In fact, for many, it’s the only way to keep costs affordable. Disney needs to consider that in it’s assessment.
A “Disney hating spirit” with an annual pass and DVC membership? If the demand is there for even the likes of you, what do you expect from Disney? Stop paying them if that’s how you feel. I could use some more availability at WL during the holidays.
Civil Protest and Disobedience: Start a parking protest. If Disney is worried about the $$ then spend their money. Run the AC, call housekeeping/desk and request multiple towels basically jack up their costs as a protest. Be a persistent and polite.
Are you protesting Disney, or Mother Earth?
I openly chuckled at this response, Tom.
What’s next , charging to ride the buses from the resorts to the parks!
Just because Disney can charge for resort parking to align with “industry standards” doesn’t mean they should.
Exactly.
There was a time when WDW was considered unique in the world. Not part of any industry.
But if you look at today’s move of Chappie to head of both P&R and CP, you see exactly how Bob Iger views the parks.
Absolutely. Disney used to pride itself in setting industry standards, not following the lead of others. I think that’s part of why the recent shifts in policies and surge of up-charges bother so many long time fans. We know how things used to be–and not even that long ago.
Walt Disney World used to be different. It’s always been a business, but it sure seemed like it used to play by a different set of rules.
Tom- you are saying this a fee that can be avoided, but I drive from PA due to the super high air flare the last few years. And since I always stay deluxe (well not anymore) I get to pay double what a value does for a parking lot that is much, much farther away from my room than a value.
As an AP, it really bothers me that I can park at theme park for free and not at my resort – that I pay $600 a night for (CR). I am cashing in my honors points and going to the Hilton properties off of Osceola (no parking fee there). Good grief.
“I am cashing in my honors points and going to the Hilton properties off of Osceola (no parking fee there).”
That’s one way it can be avoided.
As a rule, I try not to be a hater. I love Disney and will happily pay for the experience, but I do feel that this is a bad move. I’ve always felt that free parking, at both the resort and the parks, was a perk of staying onsite. Unless the parking lots are full and they’re looking for ways to decrease demand, I’m not a fan of this. :-/
As an AP holder who lives in VA. (I fly SW and always rent a car.) The perks for staying on property are extremely challenging to find. The EMH are all but gone. (Mark my words, they will eventually be an extra charge to get them) Now I know several of you will say what about the busses? I can get from the Magic Kingdom to the All Stars in 10 mins. The busses, they take a minimum of 30-40. We’ve played that game, no more. Staying in the bubble means way less than it used to, and cheap hotels are everywhere. Our fam doesn’t represent the vast majority of Disney fans but we’d rather be at the Parks more than anywhere else. All we need is a place to sleep s***, shower, and shave. We’ve always stayed at value resorts, but not anymore. The values are sometimes more than 2 nights at a hotel right off Disney property. Plus, now with this parking charge, even if you arrive in Orlando and don’t have a car, stay for a week, and the parking charge will almost pay for your rental. (yes depending on the size of your fam and the car you need. We’re a fam of 4 and we always get the smallest, cheapest car.)
So take it for what it’s worth but right now Disney is a freaking construction zone, with 3 1/2 parks, and the prices keep soaring…
The only way to change it, is to vote with your feet!
Yes and hammer them on social media.
Interesting. I wonder if this will cause greater transportation congestion if people begin to rely more heavily on resort buses or other resort transportation. Presumably this would be upcharged eventually as well, though I certainly hope not.
I see this as another crude cash grab, and even though we pretty much only stay on DVC points at this point, it really leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Maybe it’s just bad timing, but I’ve got a young family and yet instead of being excited about sharing my love of Disney World with them, they seem to just be giving us one example after another where money trumps the magic.