Hey everyone! Hope someone can give me advice or direct me to the answer. We are heading to Orlando for a car auction (for hubby) but I get the nighttime hours to spend with Disney and a day at EPCOT for the Festival of the Arts (my first time and I'm so excited!). I'm planning on a dinner or two at a resort restaurant and maybe a little resort hopping. If you have reservations at, for example Boatwrights, will we be allowed to park there? Same for GF- I'd love to go have a drink at the Enchanted Rose, resort hop the monorail resorts. We are staying near DS. I guess what I am afraid of is being turned away if we drive to a resort or parking at the TTC and not being able to get back there because transportation stops running.
Also, will you be doing a video for Festval of the Arts? Thanks for the help and the great videos!! PS. Rob, it was fabulous to meet you in line at the Skyliner back in September!
WE stay off property a lot and and use Uber/Lyft to avoid the parking issues quite a bit - we have also done a sit down breakfast at one of the epcot resorts just to be able to park there and walk over to EPCOT back entrance - so I know that if you HAVE a reservation you can park there but at night it might be easier to use ride share so you don't have to stress about getting back to wherever you parked.
Hi Diane! You are always able to park at a resort when you have a dining reservation for within the hour that you wish to park (note that it has to be a table service dining reservation, not a mobile food order at a quick service spot). Technically you have three hours to park there, though I have only ever seen that time limit enforced at Grand Floridian. That said, they could enforce the 3-hour rule at any time, so parking beyond that is a bit of an at-your-own-risk situation. You are always allowed to park at the TTC (or any park), though this costs money if you are not an annual passholder or have some other exemption. Disney transportation will run to that lot until at least one hour after the last park closes, though it may be limited to buses in some cases. So even if you park at Animal Kingdom and it closed at 7PM, you would be able to get a bus from MK to AK up until 1 hour after MK closes, which could be as late as midnight or even later (I've done it before, but I don't recommend it because it takes forever for a bus to take you there 😂). The catch is that buses don't typically run to a park from resorts after that park is closed, so you would likely have to go to a park that is still open and then transfer to a bus to that park that is already closed. Another important consideration is when parking at Epcot, you cannot take a boat or skyliner or walk from Epcot area resorts after Epcot closes and reach the parking lot because you have to walk through the park to reach the parking lot from the International Gateway (Epcot Resort Area) entrance, which is where boats and skyliners drop you off. Depending on your specific situation, you may find it easiest to avoid using a car and plan to take a Lyft back to your hotel at the end of the evening. Hope that helps and thanks for saying hello at the Skyliner!