When Is Disney World Going to Fix This HUGE Hotel Problem?

Wanna know a secret? Some of the best dining in Disney World isn’t in the parks…it’s in the resorts!

Many of our favorite Disney World restaurants are located at the various hotels on property, and there’s a wide variety of cuisine to choose from. But sometimes, it can be complicated to GET to those restaurants if you’re not staying at that hotel. And for one resort, things are really complicated right now!

If you have a dining reservation booked, Disney World will allow you to park at the hotel where you’re dining. To do this, you’ll typically have to show ID and give the name of the lead guest on the reservation. Most of the time, there aren’t any issues with this system.

However, Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort has been presenting a BIG problem for visitors with dining reservations recently. On our past few visits to dine at the hotel, we’ve been required to park across the street from the resort in a Cast Member parking area.

How did that work? During a recent visit to Narcoossee’s, one of our reporters was turned away at the entrance of the resort and told that they would need to park in the staff lot. They were given a slip of paper noting that their parking was valid for three hours and directions to the parking area.

As we mentioned above, the staff lot is across the road from the hotel. Since it’s a Cast Member area, it’s gated, and you’ll likely need to push a call button to be let inside. Luckily, our reporter arrived in plenty of time for their reservation, but this could add significant time to your commute.

From there, you’ll need to cross the road and walk to your dining location of choice. From the staff lot, it was a 20-minute walk to Narcoossee’s — and it’s not a pleasant journey to make if you’re dressed up for your dining reservation (especially if you’re wearing heels!). Overall, it was incredibly inconvenient, and we weren’t warned ahead of time when making the dining reservation.

So if you’re heading to the Grand Floridian for a restaurant reservation soon, keep in mind that you may have to deal with this problem! We’re hoping that things change soon for the resort and that we’ll be able to park in the proper lots again soon, but things can get particularly busy at this hotel as we head into the holiday season, so it’s possible that we’ll be dealing with this issue for a while longer.