Walt Disney World looks to close a free parking loophole

Yes Time is all we have and it is limited...

But if you live in Orlando area..... Just staying this is a nice way to stick it to the Man or Mouse.

There was a couple (husband and wife) years ago who lived in Orlando and went on an all day free rides around Disney transportation. The road the monorail, boat ride, bus rides. They mapped out a day of free rides to end up back where they started.

I believe the chronicled all of it here...

I am gutted. The boat ride to Port Orleans is something I do every time and genuinely is a highlight. We walk around the resort and have a couple of/few beers then Mrs Plum carries me back on to the boat as I slurring sing "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" to the annoyance of the other passengers for the return journey. I will tell them that I am going to make a hotel reservation. Hopefully, they will believe me.

This is not good practice by Disney.

In essence, resort-hopping as we know it is going away unless you have active reservations. No more bouncing between restaurants/bars/pools it would seem. I don’t think this is as much about closing a free parking loophole as it is about keeping the hotels exclusively for the people who are there to stay or eat.

I’m honestly surprised it took them this long to implement this. Right or wrong people have been using Disney Springs as an all-day parking hub for quite some time.

For once, I agree with Disney. I also agree with their upcoming bans on streamers creating monetized content in the parks, and the ban regarding professionally hired non-Disney photographers and tour guides.

This is what happens when Influencers post their "hacks and tips" in exchange for a few likes and subs. Of course, this has quietly been going on for years, but with numbers too small for Disney to really care about. And the more "Live like a Local" content that gets posted, the more things like this will be squashed. Who wants to post a video about the "secret entrance" to Poly so we can get that shut down as well?

I've never caught the bus from DS to a resort, so can't say how much difference it's going to make. But by all accounts the Easter trial run was quite the eye-opener, so seemingly inevitable.

My resort hopping via the buses is during the day, and more times than not I'm the only one on the bus. I can see the resort monorail being next, but I can't see Disney stopping non-guest bus travel ... unless they restrict it to a couple of hours in the morning and at night??

Another example of the K-shape economy. You have more $ floating around so plenty of people are spending whatever it costs to visit, so Disney's executives feel fine restricting access while raising prices. At the same time you have more people who are desperate to find anything affordable or free to do with their family, so the amount of people doing this has greatly increased.

Frankly, if you were trying to circumvent paid parking by taking Disney transport from Disney Springs to a resort and then to the parks, you were probably wasting over an hour just to save $35, which is a massive waste of time IMHO. Now, I can see the benefit of this strategy for getting to MK, because parking at TTC and then riding the monorail or ferry to the front gate probably takes a solid 20-30 minutes, so the difference from parking at Disney Springs is probably around 20-30 minutes (buses from non-monorail resorts drop guests off right at MK's front gate), but it's still a rather circuitous process just to save $35/day.

While I think part of the reason Disney is doing this are the people using Disney Springs as theme park parking, think more importantly Disney is trying to make resorts more exclusive, especially the Deluxe Resorts where it's become extremely popular for non-resort guests to hang out at resorts that have built in entertainment programs that some take advantage of to fill in non-park days of their vacation. In particular, I've found that you could probably spend a couple of hours exploring AKL, so by limiting those activities to only guests of those resorts it makes things easier for those actually spending the money to stay there and increasing the appeal staying at different resorts.

The biggest issue I see with this procedural change is in transportation delays from guests still trying to resort hop and drivers trying to enforce the new policy, as well as decreased interest in themed bars like Enchanted Rose Lounge, Trader Sam's, and Dahlia Lounge. I'm sure Disney has done the math here, but the I wouldn't be surprised if the money they think they're losing in parking fees from guests parking at Disney Springs is probably close to being offset by guests resort hopping and getting drinks at various theme bars.