Alamo question

[MortimerMouse75]

Do you get to pick your car at any alamo location? I just did that for the first time at MCO and we are booking a mini vacation in Sept to Tampa so curious if they do it also.

 

[nacho113]

Do you get to pick your car at any alamo location? I just did that for the first time at MCO and we are booking a mini vacation in Sept to Tampa so curious if they do it also.

Alamo at TPA uses the same system, but the aisles are much smaller and the selection is not as good as MCO

 

[MortimerMouse75]

Oh man.. I've never rented at TPA before. Does anyone have any recommendations for car rentals there?

 

[nacho113]

Oh man.. I've never rented at TPA before. Does anyone have any recommendations for car rentals there?

All of the major players are onsite at TPA (Alamo, National, Enterprise, Avis, Budget, Hertz, Dollar, Thrifty etc).

We still prefer Alamo because of the online check-in/bypass the counter and picking a vehicle from the aisle.

The airport is much smaller and a lot quieter than MCO, unfortunately this translates to a much smaller rental car fleet and usually higher rental costs than at MCO (but not always)

As an example, the Compact, mid-size and full size aisles at MCO usually have 15-20 cars in each to choose from, at TPA you are only looking at 4-6 cars to choose from in each of these aisles.
We rented a Convertible from MCO and had 5 to choose from, when we rented a convertible at TPA, we had to wait 20 minutes for one to be brought over from the offsite garage (none available onsite)

FYI: TPA has one of the highest "facility charges" in the country on rental cars at $5.95/day so the taxes and fees can add up fast especially on longer rentals (this applies no matter which company you rent from).
For example a 14 day rental at TPA will have over $83 of Facility charges + the rest of the taxes and fees + the actual cost of the rental car.
By comparison, MCO has a $2.50/day Facility Charge (14 day cost = $35, if all other costs are exactly the same, the same rental at TPA will cost $50 more than at MCO)