EV Chronicles #63 - Charging an EV at Walt Disney World

For those of us that travel frequently in our electric vehicles (EVs), you might be able to relate to the following statement:

Traveling in an EV (in 2025) from point to point is pretty easy, but living with an EV once you get there can be quite challenging.

For many EV owners, when at home, living with an EV is amazing, because many of us have access to the L2 charger we have installed in our homes. But living with an EV at just about any other location is so dependent on the location of L2 or DCFC chargers in relation to your nightly accommodations. The travels my wife and I have done in our EVs has been well documented in the many previous posts in this blog. While we have been able to easily travel to places like the Finger Lakes region in central NY, Deep Creek Lake in western MD, Gatlinburg, TN, and Walt Disney World, staying in those places and driving around and touring and exploring the area for several days to a week can be rather challenging at times.

This is because even in 2025, most hotels and rental properties STILL do not have on-site L2 charging. Many of them don't even have functioning or accessible 120V outlets which might be enough to sustain us day to day. But when doing a ton of local exploring, you need to have either L2 charging access near your accomodations or DCFC chargers within a reasonable driving radius (less than 30 minutes), which makes taking an EV to some of these locations very challenging to nearly impossible at times. Deep Creek Lake and the Finger Lakes both fell into this category until just the past couple of years with more L2 chargers being installed and recent DCFC installations (in McHenry MD and in Watkin Glen NY). I will note that along I-95 in the mid-Atlantic states (VA through SC), it seems like more hotels are adding L2 charging. They understand that having this charging available gives them an advantage over other hotels.

But I wanted this post to be about our trips to Walt Disney World and in particular, our experiences charging our EV in and around Disney once we get ON Disney property, and what we have had to do on our way there or as we are leaving to charge up the car.

My wife and I LOVE Disney. Our first trip there in 1995 was during our honeymoon, and our second trip was in 2004 when we first signed up to be Disney Vacation Club (DVC) members. We have been to Walt Disney World close to 20 times since 2004. We have almost always flown into Orlando on every occasion until 2022 when I convinced my wife that it would be an "adventure" to drive our 2021 Model Y LR down and back (short post here). We have driven down 3 additional times since then and we just returned from our 4th driving trip (posts - Trip 2, Trip 3, Trip 4). I have to say:

Disney doesn't seem to get this EV adoption thing!

I guess I shouldn't be surprised by a company whose resort WIFI, a service provided reliably by hotels globally now for 20 years or more, was basically useless until just a few years ago. Even on last week's trip, the quality of the WIFI signal was so questionable at times that achieving a reliable connection into my company's VPN wasn't about a 50/50 endeavor...but back to EVs.

I just want to send Disney THIS video when it comes to my thoughts on what they are doing with EV charging on their properties.

In summary, Disney just doesn't have enough chargers on property. For starters, they have 32 different resorts in the Orlando area, and only 3 of them have on-site Level 2 (L2) chargers. If you are staying at a resort that doesn't have one, your options are to try to go to Disney Springs where they have a dozen or so chargers (which are packed unless you are there in the morning), find a local DCFC site for 30 minutes or more, or make a dinner reservation at one of the three resorts that does have chargers AND get lucky that one is actually available. Good luck though, they are often full because they only have 2-3 plugs at each of those resorts. They also have chargers in each of the parks (4 or 5 at each), but if you are like us, we rarely drive to the parks and rely on Disney Transportation. Also, according to PlugShare, these chargers are nearly impossible to get unless you are at the park well before opening each morning, or blocked by people who run out of the parks to unplug their cars to not get hit with idle fees, but refuse to move their cars because the parking spot is better than the one they would have to move to. Sadly, many of the reviews from this summer and fall indicate many of them are currently broken and now PlugShare is reporting these sites are now under repair or under partial repair.

So, unless you happen to be staying at one of the three properties with charging, AND you are lucky enough to be able to actually get to use one of the chargers, then you are just going to have to rely on one of the many DCFC (probably Tesla, there aren't many others in the area that are working at this time) to charge up when you arrive, during the week, or just before you depart. This has been my experience the last 4 drives to Disney in our EVs:

• Riviera - 2022

  • On-Site Charging: 2 ChargePoint L2 Chargers

  • Experience: The chargers were constantly being used and it was difficult to get access. Thankfully we were there for an entire week and I was able to monitor availability in the ChargePoint App when we were at the hotel, and I was able to get the car charged up once early in the week and again late in the week before we departed.

  • Recommendation to Disney: Need to have at least 6 chargers here, probably 12 in the next 2-3 years.

• Star Cruiser - 2023

  • On-Site Charging: NONE

  • Experience: You don't even park your own car for this experience. You just leave the car at the door and they park it for you. Thankfully we had planned to stop at Disney Springs for shopping and lunch before arriving at the hotel and got a pretty decent charge there. We still had to hit a Tesla charger in the Orlando area before we started our drive home through which basically added 30 minutes to our day of driving that could have been avoided if we had a place to charge the car overnight.

  • Recommendation to Disney: N/A, this attraction/resort is now closed.

• Saratoga Springs - July 2025

  • On-Site Charging: NONE

  • Experience: We stayed in a Marriott near Disney the first night in town before heading onto Disney Property. Zero access to L2 charging throughout the trip. At Disney Springs, ALL L2's were in use, and there were no L2's at the Marriott or at Saratoga Springs. I had to rely on local Tesla SuperChargers in the middle of the week to top off before we departed at the end of the week.

  • Recommendation to Disney: Add 4-6 chargers near each of the bus stops throughout this resort.

• Animal Kingdom Lodge - Nov 2025

  • On-Site Charging: NONE

  • Experience: We stopped at a shopping plaza in Celebration, FL for lunch and a trip to the grocery store when we arrived in town. We were able to charge up to nearly 100% at that stop and then didn't do much driving all week. We were able to use the L2 chargers at Disney Springs for a couple of hours one morning, but only because we arrived there basically when it opened at 10am. I was also able to top off a bit at Riviera on the morning of our departure because we had a breakfast reservation at Topolinos.

  • Recommendation to Disney: Add 6-12 chargers in the main parking area.

This is what you will find on the Disney Website about their charging infrastructure (note that the rate on property is generally about $0.35-0.40/kWh which is consistent with Tesla member rates on the East coast):

• Theme Parks: ChargePoint stations are located at the entrance to the parking lots for all four theme parks.

  • Magic Kingdom: 5 spaces (1 in Medical Parking Lot, 4 in Zurg Parking Lot)

  • EPCOT: 4 spaces at the front of the Journey Parking Lot

  • Disney's Animal Kingdom: 4 spaces in the Medical Parking Lot

  • Disney's Hollywood Studios: 4 spaces at the front of the Mickey Parking Lot

• Disney Springs:

  • L2 Chargers are available in the Orange, Lime, and Grapefruit garages (3 in each)

  • Slow DCFC is available in the Watermelon Lot (4 total)

    • The 4 chargers at the Watermelon lot are new (I think added in 2025) and are 50-60 kW units. This is what Disney Springs really needs to be honest. In fact, these might be TOO fast as individuals would have to return to their vehicles after an hour or two at most. We are generally at Disney Springs for 3-4 hours typically.

    • They get a decent score in PlugShare and might be the best chargers for anyone to use if you can get them.

• Resorts: Charging is available at the following Disney-owned resorts:

  • Disney's Coronado Springs Resort (3 plugs)

  • Disney's Riviera Resort (2 plugs)

  • Disney's Wilderness Lodge (1 plug)

  • Note that the Swan and Shades of Green both have chargers on-site. These are not technically Disney Properties but they are located within the Disney property footprint.

Honestly, I question why Disney even bothered putting charging stations at their parks* at all, and their efforts everywhere else is half-assed at best. Disney Springs is probably your best bet for L2 charging access, but most people probably aren't spending more than 3-4 hours or so there. Depending on your EV, you are adding maybe 20-40% at most during your visit there. The new 60 kW DCFCs at Disney Springs might be the best chargers ON DISNEY property. I need to try them next time we are there.

The Resort and Park that shocks me the most is Animal Kingdom Lodge and Animal Kingdom Park. The cast talks about their efforts to have zero waste and saving the environment and all those things, yet they have installed ZERO EV charging infrastructure at the Lodge and an inadequate number of chargers at that park.

Finally, I should note that there are some DCFCs in the general vicinity of Walt Disney World, but they are all located around the perimeter of Disney's property and mostly to the east of Disney along I-4 (see PlugShare Map below). In my opinion, with the local traffic, I would avoid trying to drive to any of them during peak traffic times. Because on-site charging is so unreliable, my personal suggestion is to actually try to stop at one of these DCFCs as your are arriving into town. Our personal favorite right now is the one in Celebration Pointe just south of the Disney All Star Resort (bottom of this map below). It has a 12 stall Tesla V3 SuperCharger site with some great options for food, a Publix to grab some groceries, and a Walgreens for before checking into your resort.

*According to a Google search, there is an estimated 15,000-20,000 vehicles parked at Disney parks every day. It is currently estimated that 1.5% of vehicles on US roads today are EVs. My unscientific assessment while we were in and around Orlando was that the percentage of EVs there exceeded 5%. That would equate to OVER 600 EVs parked at Disney parks per day and they have provided less than 20 total charging plugs across their parks. I ask, what are they thinking?