Mid Stay

Eight-day stays from £64.99 without leaving the airport footprint

Mid Stay at East Midlands (EMA) sits on-airport between Short Stay and the long-stay fields, with headline pricing from about £64.99 for 8 days when booked in advance. It’s signed as a remote car park, but most bays are only a 4–5 minute walk from T1’s terminal doors. That makes it the middle-ground option for leisure trips where saving a bit over Short Stay still matters, but you don’t want a 10–15 minute bus ride.

Walk time comes in around 5 minutes on foot, or roughly 6–7 minutes including the short internal shuttle in some areas, according to regular users and EMA’s own timings. The route is flat, paved and lit, so rolling a suitcase from your bay to T1 is straightforward with standard cabin bags. If you’re dropping off kids or heavier bags, you can still do a quick loop via the terminal and then park back in Mid Stay within the same few minutes.

Pricing splits into two tiers: from about £64.99 for 8 days when pre-booked, versus roughly £205 for 8 days on the day at the drive-up airport tariff. That gap is why frequent EMA flyers often lock in space via brokers instead of paying the gate rate. Advance bookings through sites like ParkAndGo or Holiday Extras also tend to allocate you to Mid Stay 2, where multiple reviews mention “plenty of spaces” and that same 4–5 minute walk.

What regulars do: they book a date-specific Mid Stay deal weeks out, sometimes in a package with a nearby hotel or travel insurance, then treat it as set-and-forget on departure day. They aim to arrive 20–30 minutes before check-in opens, park once, and walk straight to T1 security without waiting for a bus. Tip: if you’re price-checking, always compare the airport’s own pre-book rate against third-party quotes for an 8-day stay; the spread can easily cover a family breakfast in the terminal.