Visiting Disney World resorts has gotten more tricky as they put more rules in place since reopening, but it’s totally doable if you know the rules.
Here’s how things are actually working right now:
Using onsite Disney transportation
Using onsite transportation is a guarantee – whether it’s monorail, boat, bus, or Skyliner. This is the easiest way to visit any onsite resort. Nobody will be checking anything or looking anything up.
You just…show up. Easy.
Arriving by car
Arriving by car (whether it’s your own, an Uber/Lyft, or friend dropping you off) – you’ll need to give the guard at the gate something to look up to verify that you can be there.
Here are some of the options at the guard gate:
- a dining reservation at the resort
- let them know you’re an onsite guest at another Disney resort (this works at almost every resort – we even had a guard tell us “those are the magic words!”) but resorts like The Contemporary will often be a bit more strict and likely require a dining reservation
- the room number and name of somebody staying at that resort that you plan to visit
- mobile order at a restaurant at that resort (works at most resorts, but a few resorts like The Contemporary may or may not accept this)
Although this is a great time to consider offsite stays since so many onsite benefits have gone away for now, the inability to easily visit an onsite resort is 1 of the biggest frustrations with staying offsite. Sometimes you just want to run over and see the animals at Animal Kingdom Lodge, ya know?
- Where to find Epcot Flower and Garden Festival topiaries (pics, map, checklist) - March 7, 2022
- Sarah C.’s February Trip – PREP299 - February 26, 2022
- Randi’s trip of breakdowns (WDW, Universal, DAS) – PREP298 - February 21, 2022