dash says my car isn't in park

Your newer BMW was an electronic shifter. This means that there are no cables connecting to the transmission. When park position can not be attained - that usually means a sensor is malfunctioning. Often these malfunctions can be caused by coffee spills in the general area of the shifter or just a plain old failure of a component. Bottom line, your going to have to get it to a shop that can access the computer and run diagnostics on that system.

Shift transmission into park.