When we have holidayed in Orlando, we’ve always stayed off-premises in a villa, rather than stay at a Disney hotel. As a family staying in a villa is much better for us – the ability to self cater, and to have your own private swimming pool. However, if you’ve got your 14-day Disney World ticket, it means you probably need to park in the official Disney car parks. Disney exploit this by charging you $30 (thirty… T H I R T Y dollars) a day for the pleasure. And thats just for standard parking. If you want preferred (read closer) parking, you’ll be paying between $45 and $55!
(As an aside, there is no point in paying for preferred parking. You’re saving yourselves a few hundred feet of walking at most. And at a theme park you’ll be doing 20,000 steps a day anyway – use the $20 saving to buy an ice cream or maybe two at a stretch).
Some people use Lyft or Uber to taxi in, and that may well make financial sense (or be your only choice if you’ve not hired a car). If you have hired a car, then you have to park in the official car park.
This year we managed to stumble on a way of parking free, well kind of. We booked at character breakfast at the Polynesian hotel’s ‘Ohana restaurant. By making a reservation at the restaurant, you were given free parking at the Polynesian hotel – when you pulled up at the hotel, we just informed the parking attendant. After breakfast we took the monorail to Magic Kingdom and spent the rest of the day there. At the end of the day we took a boat back to the Polynesian, picked up the car, and went home. So, a day at Magic Kingdom with free on-site parking. (Although we did spend almost $200 on breakfast to get this minor win…)
PS. I should add that I can’t guarantee Disney won’t tow your car for leaving it there all day, but I doubt they would!