Disney Resorts to start charging parking fees....

[Kevin355]

It does make one curious as to why they extended the perks to those outside the bubble. Any theories?

Nope.

 

[little_orange_bird]

@Kevin355 me neither, lol.

 

[Colleen27]

It does make one curious as to why they extended the perks to those outside the bubble. Any theories?

Because the more people have access to those "perks", the easier it is to upsell paid experiences above and beyond standard EMH & FP+. When EMH start feeling too crowded and 60 day FP are impossible to get, Disney can helpfully offer to sell you something (like Early Morning Magic and Disney After Hours) to give you a leg up on the masses. Opening the perks up to more hotels makes the whole system more crowded and in turn increases the number of people who will reach the tipping point of willingness to pay for those extras.

 

[disneyholic family]

Well that is an interesting development, I am not sure how I feel about that since now many will "borrow" a placard to get free parking and this will make it more difficult to secure a spot in the limited HC parking at the resorts.
We always drive down because I have my ECV in a carrier on the rear of my vehicle and I literally had just written to Guest Services with a complaint/question about accessible parking at EPCOT. Short story on that, was there 2 weeks ago and parked at EPCOT at 0830 and they were parking all vehicles with a placard/ HC plate in the overflow spots which are NOT accessible for anyone using a ramp to unload mobility equipment.
The lot with the accessible spaces in front of us was virtually empty, maybe 4-5 cars in it with dozens of empty spaces, but they insisted I needed to park in the overflow. The CM and I had a nice long discussion about it and I ended up being allowed to park in an accessible space, but it should not have come to that.

and what happens to those of us from overseas who have disability placards not accepted in the state of florida?
this means that i won't get free parking even though i have a disability placard from a foreign country (that by the way is MUCH harder to obtain where i live than pretty much any state in the USA).

 

[SmithSmith]

If schools book their resort rooms as convention rates (I don't know if they do) then they will not pay the parking fee. At least for now, convention rate resort guests do not pay the parking fee.

Thank you so much for pointing this out. I have no intention of ever paying this absurd fee, so it’s nice to know there’s a workaround... if needed.

 

[Farro]

Are we the same person? completely agree on all points. I even thought the Caribbean beach was still fun, even with all the construction!

It is always nice to meet a kindred spirit!
I belong to sci-fi film groups, horror film groups to share my love of the genres...I haunt museums here at home as they have that "feeling" I love.
It's nice to have a little corner in the world where oddities are the norm. Believe me, friends/family do not understand it, ha!
If you met me on the street, you'd never guess any of that about me!

And staying on-site fits in with all of the above - it's part of my (imaginary) world for a week! Stupid Disney...you still got me...

 

[Linkura]

Makes complete sense. Part of the Magic for me is being in the bubble. But now that many perks are being offered to those out of the bubble at a lesser cost, I am just wondering what the overall perks are for staying on-site. I can't really determine any.

DME and Resort Airline Check-In if you fly. Free $13 Magic Bands. That's it. So if you drive, the ONLY perk you are getting now as opposed to a DS area hotel is a $13 Magic Band per person. Pathetic.

As someone who flies and is often solo, DME and RAC are nice perks. But really, I could grab my own luggage and hire a car if I wanted to without much hassle.

 

[MicroBeta]

By doing this as publicly as they have, Disney will make some people think about other options (offsite hotels, Uber, etc.). That will reduce the number of cars, or if nothing else, drive the more price sensitive out of the onsite hotels. During peak periods they are looking at filling their hotels with guests that they can get a higher conversion rate from. The average revenue per guest will go up. Disney would rather the sold out hotel be filled with people who are shopping and dining onsite rather than swinging over to the closest Walmart for groceries. It's hard to fault them for that.

I would expect the reaction here and on social media is exactly what Disney was expecting, and likely plays into what they would want to see. When you book, they don't know if you'll be a high revenue guest or low revenue guest. By implementing the parking fees, they get the lower revenue guests to self-identify and steer themselves towards other hotels.

This entire play is not about the revenue of the parking fees themselves. It's about filling hotels with customers that will spend more money. It's about weeding out the price sensitive. The "backlash" on social media actually helps Disney with that.

I'm not sure I agree with you. First off, it's not that public. Unless you're a WDW forum reader or a local you probably don't even know about the parking fee. AAMOF, I'll go so far as to say there is probably an order of magnitude+ more people who are considering WDW this year who don't know the fee exists.

I get what you're saying but I disagree it's been so public and if that's not accurate then the rest of your post falls apart.

My 2¢ FWIW.

Mike

 

[usnuzuloose]

The Disney facebook page is heavily censored. None of the complaints about this new fee will make it to the page. Though I haven't looked lately, so I guess I'm not sure if they are still heavily censoring the comments.

I did take a look and there are complaints....

 

[disneydreamer781]

I have paid to park in several Boston hotels. In January I paid to park at a hotel in Bayonne, NJ, where I stayed the night before starting a cruise. I parked at the cruise port for the cruise, and of course paid for that.
Denise

Yeah hard to believe any hotel in Boston has free parking. Maybe outside of the city itself.

 

[Linkura]

Yeah hard to believe any hotel in Boston has free parking. Maybe outside of the city itself.

Yeah, in the suburbs they do. But getting free parking anywhere in Boston has to be like finding a needle in a haystack.

My husband pays $200/mo for parking at his work in Cambridge, and that's with a deep discount. My bosses where I work near Govt Center pay over $400/mo. My husband makes a good salary, and my bosses make a lot of money as law firm partners, but it's a huge squeeze for a lot of people.

 

[disneyholic family]

I’m a DVC member. Bought in in 2004 and have been coming two to three times a year since 1999.
The parking doesn’t even affect me but when I saw the parking fee to regular guests it made me angry. I thought to myself Seriously a parking fee??? People already pay a premium to stay at Disney. This is crazy to me. I truly feel bad for people that scrape to do a Disney vacation and now have this added. Disney to me is supposed to be magical no matter what your budget is.
I was just at Disney for 12 days. Five at Port Orleans for my daughters dance team and seven at The Boardwalk on my DVC. There were alot of issues that I haven’t seen in my twenty years. Dirty rooms, trash around, cast members that were not the typical friendly people we have usually dealt with. Main pools closed at 8pm, some really terrible food and service. The last five years quality has dropped at an alarming rate. I thought to myself what is going on. This is not the Disney I fell in love with.
Many parents from the Dance team said if our studio wanted to come again they weren’t coming back.
My parents stayed at the Beach Club for 10 days and said they will never go back. My father has a bad back (8 operations) and his bed was really sunk in. He asked if he could change rooms and was told no because all the mattresses were the same. The woman at the desk told him to try using the pullout couch. Seriously??
I was going to renew my annual passes when we were there only to be informed it went up over 30 a person. I said forget it and put it on hold.
( I hadn’t been on here in a couple weeks leading up to our vacation and missed the posts over tickets going up again.) I am still really on the fence about renewing them. I have gone every September for my daughters birthday since she was 5 as a special daddy daughter trip and now I’m not so sure. We might start a new tradition. Thinking about trying universal and going to Harry Potter since she’s a big fan of the movies.
Like I said it’s not the parking fee because it doesn’t even affect me. Fortunately its not the money for my family. I’m just very disappointed in all the price increases and lack quality over the last five years.
Honestly I just wish the Magic of Disney would find its way back.

.
we have visited WDW every year since 1974.....bad service was something we had never encountered in the resorts until now..

we stayed in a 2 bedroom villa at SSR this past summer...(as paying guests, not DVC)...
the rate for that room is insanely high...
until this past august, the quality received was pretty good, plus there was the disney magic (towel animals, friendly CMs, etc).

but in august? both the kingsize bed in the master bedroom, and the two queens in the second bedroom weren't just in bad shape - they were actually broken...
we were going to be moved after two days anyway (as they'd placed us about a 15 minute walk from my son's two bedroom villa even though the reservations were linked)..

so we spent two nights on broken beds (waking up with serious back pains each morning)..

fortunately the villa we were moved to had brand new beds, so that issue was taken care of...

but we were shocked by the low quality service from both mousekeeping and reception (the manager in reception was downright rude)...

mousekeeping was not only bad this time (they simply left the room dirty - the kitchen floors sticky, etc, towels not replaced - in a two bedroom suite that had 4 adults, they left two towels....really?)
but not even once during our 24 days, was there even one towel animal....sounds stupid i know, but this was the first time we didn't get one - not even on arrival day ...not even the three circles (hidden mickey)..

and then on the day my son left the questionable service quality went to a whole new level...
he and his family left several days before us...
i drove them to the airport early, leaving a "do not disturb" sign on their door (this was back in august, when those signs still existed)..
check out time was at 11:00...
i returned to his 2 bedroom villa at 10:00 AM - an hour before checkout....
and he hadn't checked out....i was going to check him out once i got the rest of his stuff out of that villa..
we were going to move all the stuff that was left to our villa..

so my husband and i came up to his room and were SHOCKED to find the door open, the mousekeeper inside, with bags and bags of our stuff in her purse and her personal bag....yes, she was stealing everything...
we hadn't checked out yet..
it was 10:00 AM....
somehow this mousekeeper never managed to properly clean the room, but when it came time to steal what was left, she had plenty of energy..

anyway, i could go on.....i didn't report her, because no matter how much she sucked at what she did and was a thief to boot, i wasn't willing to get anyone fired.

bottom line, the $550 a night that we paid for that room was not at all justified by the service we received this time around (and as i said, the CMs in reception were not 'disney' either)..

now on top of that you're going to add a parking fee? in august i would have had to pay $576 for our rental car, on top of the $13,000 i paid for my room (and another $12,000 for my son's room)....

nope...

i have a reservation for this august....it's not affected by the new parking fee, but i'm going to cancel it on monday, and send the cancellation confirmation to all the bigwigs on that list someone provided.

of course, they won't care....i know that....but i'll feel better..

and i'm rethinking our 2019 DCL and DLP trip....the DCL segment will cost $20,000.....do i really want to give an organization i'm angry with another $20,000? i'm not so sure.... and DLP? we can stay home and go to a hotel for several months at those rates....we live on the Mediterranean....people pay big bucks for that...so maybe i'll save mine and stay home...

.

 

[Iya]

Do you doubt their ability to keep track of the rate you agreed to when making a reservation? We all pay different amounts due to seasonality and discounts.

Yes. LOL

 

[Linkura]

.
we have visited WDW every year since 1974.....bad service was something we had never encountered in the resorts until now..

we stayed in a 2 bedroom villa at SSR this past summer...(as paying guests, not DVC)...
the rate for that room is insanely high...
until this past august, the quality received was pretty good, plus there was the disney magic (towel animals, friendly CMs, etc).

but in august? both the kingsize bed in the master bedroom, and the two queens in the second bedroom weren't just in bad shape - they were actually broken...
we were going to be moved after two days anyway (as they'd placed us about a 15 minute walk from my son's two bedroom villa even though the reservations were linked)..

so we spent two nights on broken beds (waking up with serious back pains each morning)..

fortunately the room we were moved to had brand new beds, so that issue was taken care of...

but we were shocked by the low quality service from both mousekeeping and reception (the manager in reception was downright rude)...

mousekeeping was not only bad this time (they simply left the room dirty - the kitchen floors sticky, etc, towels not replaced - in a two bedroom suite that had 4 adults, they left two towels....really?)
but not even once during our 24 days, was there even one towel animal....sounds stupid i know, but this was the first time we didn't get one - not even on arrival day ...not even the three circles (hidden mickey)..

and then on the day my son left the questionable service quality went to a whole new level...
he and his family left several days before us...
i drove them to the airport early, leaving a "do not disturb" sign on their door (this was back in august, when those signs still existed)..
check out time was at 11:00...
i returned to his 2 bedroom villa at 10:00 AM - an hour before checkout....
and he hadn't checked out....i was going to check him out once i got the rest of his stuff out of that villa..
we were going to move all the stuff that was left to our villa..

so my husband and i came up to his room and were SHOCKED to find the door open, the mousekeeper inside, with bags and bags of our stuff in her purse and her personal bag....yes, she was stealing everything...
we hadn't checked out yet..
it was 10:00 AM....
somehow this mousekeeper never managed to properly clean the room, but when it came time to steal what was left, she had plenty of energy..

anyway, i could go on.....i didn't report her, because no matter how much she sucked at what she did and was a thief to boot, i wasn't willing to get anyone fired.

bottom line, the $550 a night that we paid for that room was not at all justified by the service we received this time around (and as i said, the CMs in reception were not 'disney' either)..

now on top of that you're going to add a parking fee? in august i would have had to pay $576 for our rental car, on top of the $13,000 i paid for my room (and another $12,000 for my son's room)....

nope...

i have a reservation for this august....it's not affect by the new parking fee, but i'm going to cancel it on monday, and send the cancellation confirmation to all the bigwigs on that list someone provided.

of course, they won't care....i know that....but i'll feel better..

and i'm rethinking our 2019 DCL and DLP trip....the DCL segment will cost $20,000.....do i really want to give an organization i'm angry with another $20,000? i'm not so sure.... and DLP? we can stay home and go to a hotel for several months at those rates....we live on the Mediterranean....people pay big bucks for that...so maybe i'll save mine and stay home...

.

That's an awful story. You have quite a heart to not report a thief.

You're thinking about cancelling your DCL vacation... heck, I was thinking of purchasing The Aristocats yesterday because I saw it for a good price while browsing. But then I thought to myself that I would be giving money to Disney and decided against it. That's how upset I am. I'm sure my anger level will subside a bit. But no more annual trips or going out of my way for anything Disney brand.

 

[bryanb]

Disney's calculations, I'm sure, are that these parking fees will be positive for them. But they should be careful about making the same mistakes that Starbucks admitted in the 2000s:

You can make hundreds of decisions, increasing prices here and there, cutting corners in small ways. Each one of those little decisions, on their own, may be perfectly correct and logical for the business. But when you add them all together, they devalue the brand and the experience.

I usually don't even drive at Disney, so it doesn't personally affect me, but I dislike business which nickel and dime. It just adds unpleasantness to paying a hotel bill when there are all these seemingly arbitrary fees are added on.

If Disney is using the excuse that other hotels charge it, does that mean Disney will also be starting a rewards program for frequent guest? Very doubtful?

Would put money on "Resort Fees" coming next and the comments on the boards will be everyone else does it.

Everyone needs to stop charging resort fees. And Disney shouldn't start. It's a horrible practice. Hotels usually say that resort fee includes things like "gym access, local telephone calls, and newspapers" -- things that most people don't use, yet the fee is still mandatory because all it is is a semi-hidden fee tacked on to the room rate. It makes booking engine comparisons difficult to assess.

LOL, if that's his excuse, then why do moderates have higher rates than values? Moderates certainly don't have "less" parking than values. What a crock.

Exactly! Because they can. There's no reason other than price discrimination. If each guest is willing to pay different prices for the same thing, it's every business' dream to charge the most each person is willing to pay.

 

[johnsgrl]

and what happens to those of us from overseas who have disability placards not accepted in the state of florida?
this means that i won't get free parking even though i have a disability placard from a foreign country (that by the way is MUCH harder to obtain where i live than pretty much any state in the USA).

You can apply for a temporary FL placard and get the free parking: but it will take a bit of your time.


If you are visiting from another country, you can apply for a temporary placard. You will need:

• A copy of your disabled parking permit from your home country.
• A form of identification, such as your passport.
• Payment for the $15 fee.

Take these items to the nearest Florida DHSMV tag office or tax collector's office.

 

[gratefulfred]

Hershey park is a peer to Disney? hmm. I'm going to go for Universal being a peer. I imagine SeaWorld is, too, though I've only been to San Diego, and they most definitely charge for parking there. And at Uni Orlando (and Hollywood).


I think Hersheypark is a peer. They have rides (some really good ones too) food, entertainment, themeing, a zoo, water park and even their own broken monorail. In the end they are all just amusement parks Disney included. For entertainment I spent a day last year at Hersheypark with my wife and seven year old daughter that ended with a Paul McCartney concert at Hersheypark stadium.

 

[Fldisneyfamily4321]

Our last trip to Ireland was for 10 days for a family of four! Rental car, accommodation, airfare, breakfast each day, free admission to many sites, right around $4500. (ps we're planning another Ireland trip this year rather than WDW)

I don’t think people realize how much cheaper the hotels ( good ones and even with currency change ) are and how many free things there are to do .. museums.. parks .. just tons of stuff !

 

[disneyholic family]

You can apply for a temporary FL placard and get the free parking: but it will take a bit of your time.


If you are visiting from another country, you can apply for a temporary placard. You will need:

• A copy of your disabled parking permit from your home country.
• A form of identification, such as your passport.
• Payment for the $15 fee.

Take these items to the nearest Florida DHSMV tag office or tax collector's office.

yes, i know all about this process - go to the UK trip planning board and you'll see tons of discussion..
as if i'm going to take time out of a holiday to go and deal with american bureaucracy (i'm an american so don't get me started on american bureaucracy)...
are you completely out of your mind??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
that makes sense?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
to have to go to the tax collector's office or the DMV in the middle of an EXTREMELY expensive disney holiday?????????????????????????

right...makes perfect sense...not..

.

 

[Iya]

It does make one curious as to why they extended the perks to those outside the bubble. Any theories?

Because once SWL opens, Disney won't have the hotel capacity.