Drive to the Contemporary, walk to the Magic Kingdom for rope drop, and move your car later in the morning once you've maximized the Early Entry time.
You can't park at the Contemporary without a hotel or dining reservation though.
He does have a dining reservation. Chef Mickey's breakfast. Parking at the Contemporary is entirely legitimate, but TECHNICALLY only for three hours.
I will have a dining res. But I am not confident that they will not tow the car.
Ah, now I see why you’re concerned about getting to MK on time.
) from the resort to the park to get there by early entry and then do Chef Mickey's on another day before a different park. A park that I can park close to the entrance. Maybe Animal Kingdom or Hollywood Studios. I have a walking disability so I will be parking in the handicap spots. I'm doing a lot of at-home physical therapy because I absolutely refuse to ride around on an ECV. But I would like to at least park in the handicap section.
Ain't nobody getting to the Magic Kingdom at 7:30 unless you're staying at the Contemporary and walking there.
As of our visit in August, buses began arriving at the onsite resorts, bound for the parks, no later than an hour and 20 minutes prior to the official park opening. (e.g., if the MK opened at 9am, MK-bound buses were arriving at the hotels by 7:30-7:40, and sometimes earlier, meaning the earliest anyone was getting dropped off at MK by Disney bus was just before 8am.) YMMV, and it's possible that the schedule has shifted even earlier to accommodate early entry, which hadn't started yet when we were there. Perhaps someone who's been there since early entry started can weigh in...
Why because you are not supposed to leave your car at the contemporary.
That rule is in place to prevent people from "stealing" free Magic Kingdom parking. OP is a Walt Disney World resort guest and is therefore not "stealing" anything. He has a dining reservation at the Contemporary and therefore parking there is entirely legitimate. I have NEVER seen the three hour time limit posted anywhere conspicuous, nor have I ever heard it mentioned by a security guard when arriving at a resort for a reservation. Disney does not expect their guests to go hunting through the fine print of every policy and procedure, or to participate in message boards like this asking every hypothetical "what if" scenario.
Except he's NOT parking at the Contemporary "for convenience" to the Magic Kingdom, he's parking the Contemporary because he has a dining reservation at Chef Mickey's.
Show me where the 3 hour limit is published.
Good thing he has one.
Not totally true, as we were just there a few weeks ago. We went to the GF to experience the Enchanted Rose, we just asked the guard, and he simply asked us to limit it to 2 hours. Yes, they had the sign out that only resort guests could park, but they do make some exceptions. We didn't abuse it, and we were gone in about 1 1/2 hours. The parking lot was still only 1/3 utilized.
This is where I could find it.
Great to know. I had just seen posts of folks complaining guards were not letting them in.
That's not really the question though. I agree, you're not supposed to park at a resort without a dining reservation. The question is, if you arrive at a resort and you DO have a dining reservation, how long is appropriate/allowed to leave your car? People say "three hours" a lot, but I've never seen it published anywhere official.
If it's not published how could it be? If they do publish a duration it should not be a definitive be a time, it should have to be worded like "1 hour after event ends". I have been at 6 hour events and I have been at character meals that took 4 hours becasue of their delays.
