Car Rental HELP!!!

[Cruiser1969]

I need some help finding car rental companies with a drop-off near Disneyland. This is our first West-coast trip

The plan: Rent a car at LAX for the first leg of the trip (non-Disney) and then drive to Disney and drop off the car. Do the second leg of the trip (Disney- 5 days) and then take a shuttle back to LAX at the end of it all.

Any and all advice based on your past experiences in this area would be so greatly appreciated!!!

 

[avalon451]

There's an Alamo car rental right in Downtown Disney.

 

[jlmarr]

There's a National/Alamo mini-lot on Katella about 100 yards west of Harbor Blvd. Also, go to Google Maps and enter "car rental anaheim" for some other leads.

 

[Cruiser1969]

Thanks for the info . . .

Any car places to stay clear away from, or am I safe no matter where I rent (known names, of course!)

 

[jlmarr]

I don't rent often enough to know one from the other. Mousesavers has some good general advice on their WDW pages: http://www.mousesavers.com/rentalcar.html#general

 

[hlbtimes2]

Most of the big names are going to be fine. I would, however, recomend you price out your plan including the shuttle back to the aiport vs just keeping the car the entire time. In my experience it costs a lot more to rent a car in one location and return it to another. You can get codes from costco or entertainment book if you have either one.

I just plugged some random dates in to the alamo.com site to give you an idea of how much more it costs to use a different drop location.

I used the dates of May 15-22 (from a thursday at noon to a thursday at noon).
lax to lax- $158 plus taxes
lax to downtown disney $280
lax to lax with costco discount $105
lax to to dtd - no costco discount available.
lax to lax from may 15-29 (2 full weeks) with costco discount $201

So, as you can see it might not be worth if for you to return and car and then pay for a shuttle back to the airport.

 

[stacymomof2]

I would also price the other places also...and call them to see if they will bring you to your hotel.

Maybe drop off luggage, etc first!

That way you can shop around to find the best prices.

My DH gets a pretty good discount through Avis from his work, so we are going with them. They will pick us up and bring us to the office to do the paperwork.

 

[hbailey]

What we are doing is picking up a car for 24 hrs from LAX to DTD alamo. Then we are going to rent a car again at DTD alamo and drive it back to LAX for our return. It is only $4 more than taking the cheapest shuttle that I could find. I used Costco coupon codes. On our trips I almost always pick up at one location and drop at another and its either cheaper or the same price 99% of the time.

 

[Cruiser1969]

Thank you for the detailed explanations!! It is very helpful!!!