Advice on car rental/transfer to airport

[ascardino]

Question: what advice would you give me on getting from the port to MCO?

We are renting a car/van from MCO to use prior to cruising. We will drive to Port Canveral and then should we return the car and book a transfer to return to MCO after the cruise or park and drive ourselves? Dos anyone know what car rental agencies are best for this scenario?

TIA!!

 

[PrincessShmoo]

Question: what advice would you give me on getting from the port to MCO?

We are renting a car/van from MCO to use prior to cruising. We will drive to Port Canveral and then should we return the car and book a transfer to return to MCO after the cruise or park and drive ourselves? Dos anyone know what car rental agencies are best for this scenario?

TIA!!

How many people are you?

If you book DCL transfers from port to MCO at the end of the trip, and you're flying domestically, it's super convenient to use the Onboard Airline Check in. You pack up your bags and set them out the last night, and the next time you see them will be at your home airport. But it does cost $35 per person.

If you opt to rent both ways, check into prices, it may be more economical to do two one way rentals. Or just a XX day rental (long enough to cover your whole trip) that includes parking at the port.

 

[FigmentSpark]

We used Alamo and just kept and parked the van. We got the van for 12 days for $293 (maybe because we were renting on a wed. night?) + $128 parking and it was cheaper than renting and returning and renting again. But I had to keep checking those prices (on the Costco site and the Alamo site with the Costco discount code) every day for 10 months. I got the price two weeks before we were to fly. But the prices fluctuated all the time from that price to as high as $1100 about 4 months before our trip.

So keep your options open, keep checking the prices. Book when there's a price you like and cancel what you don't need when it gets closer to your trip. As long as you don't put money down, there's no penalty to booking and cancelling.

 

[ascardino]

We are a family of five. We did not prepay for our bags on the return flight home so if we did do the transfer, how do we pay for the checked luggage on the return flight?

 

[PrincessShmoo]

We are a family of five. We did not prepay for our bags on the return flight home so if we did do the transfer, how do we pay for the checked luggage on the return flight?

If you do the onboard airline check in, it'll be charged to your onboard account.

 

[cedricandsophie]

If you decide to return car and get a new car the day you return from the cruise make sure you have a later flight so you have time to get off, go thru passport control, get bags, wZit for shuttle to rental car, drive to airport and drop off car begotten you get in line to check in for flight and then get thru security. For all those reasons we've chosen to always take the transfer from Disney. We are going on a June cruise with 7 of us and even at 35 a person it's just easier with less heartburn.

 

[bumbershoot]

We are going on a June cruise with 7 of us and even at 35 a person it's just easier with less heartburn.

Wow, really?

We send one adult to get the car at Alamo/National while the other two hang out with the bags (so we don't have to tip the shuttle driver per bag that he touches), the adult gets the car and zips on back to pick us up, and we're gone.

Though we have never booked a flight that leaves so close that we're sweating all that you wrote above. Instead we have used our Universal APs to go there, get free parking in the garage, hang out for a few hours, drink a butterbeer, have a nice time, then casually head on back to the airport.

 

[carolina_yankee]

At the end of the day, I think it's a trade-off between cost and time. Different people have different thresholds.

We were seconding dining, so late walk-off (opted not to do Express). From the time we walked off the ship to the time we left the Alamo location was one hour - 35 minutes of which was waiting for shuttle, boarding shuttle, and getting car. The Alamo location is nice - covers Alamo, National, and Enterprise. Plenty of room for family to wait in chairs, restrooms, etc. Other than that, it's bare bones. No online check-in, and not gas on premises so if car come back empty you get it on empty. (Happened to us, so they told us to bring it back to the airport on empty).

We would have done one rental from MCO to WDW to PC to WDW to MCO, but a 2 week rental on top of port parking was another cruise. Next time, I honestly would consider Disney transport. For a longer cruise, and having cruised before, getting to the terminal early isn't as important anymore, and using Disney to get back would have gotten us to our resort 30 minutes earlier (though we got the room ready text as soon as we parked our rental, so I guess the timing worked out just fine for us, after all).

Run the numbers - you can get very good prices from PC to Orlando, far better than the same time period with Orlando pick-up and drop-off. If you're just going to the airport, unless cost savings is huge for renting a car, I would opt for comfort and take Disney. But that's my choice for us. YMMV.

Dirk