I just thought I would offer a little background behind parking fees at hotels. Many assume it's just simply a cash grab especially in an area where land and parking is plentiful, it's really a little more complex (not that there isn't some cash grabbing going on). It all comes back to valet. In order to offer valet service at a hotel there are obviously expenses (labor, supplies, training, liability etc.) Wether the hotel chooses to do this themselves or take the popular option and outsource it to another company these expenses need to be covered. Currently the going rate is $20 - $30 per car depending on volume to make this practical. Most people will not pay this rate for valet, the only way to get people to pay these rates is to make it effectively less. If standard parking is $25 and valet is $30 then valet is effectively $5. In this scenario a good volume will use valet and in turn keep it busy enough to make it work. Disney currently charges $25, as you can imagine the business is pretty low when you have the choice of $25 versus walking a few steps to park your car for free. This in turn creates a situation where the valet company is in some cases losing money and the valet employees sometimes don't even make minimum wage. Of course that makes it difficult to keep quality people employed. The valet company at Disney can justify these losses a little more than other companies at other hotels because they are making good money off airline check-in. They've definitely reached if not passed some time ago the tipping point where self parking needs to have a charge to maintain the right volume to keep valet functioning. This is/was inevitable, I can tell you from first hand experience Disney has dragged their feet on this for some time.