Car Rentals near GCH?

[WDWLinda]

Hi...has anyone rented a car from National, or any other rental place, near Disney/GCH? If so, how do you do it - take a cab to the rental place, or do they deliver the car? We're going for 9 days - flying in to LAX, driving up to Santa Barbara for 2 days, back down to Anaheim, then down to San Diego for 2 days and flying out of there. Since our car will sit in the lot at GCH for 5 out of our 9 days, I was wondering if it would be cheaper to rent the car only for the 2 day trips to SB and SD...I'd appreciate any advice or ideas anyone might have.

Thanks,
Linda

 

[bumbershoot]

There's an Alamo place right in DTD.

 

[WDWLinda]

Thanks so much Bumbershoot - you just saved me about $250! I thought it was going to be a big hassle with dropping off/picking up the car, taking taxis, etc. But I called Alamo, got a coupon code off of Mousesavers.com, and now we'll drop off and pick up the car right by DTD. Thanks for the help!!!

Linda

 

[bumbershoot]

Yay!

 

[dismsn]

I don't know how the DTD Alamo will be but we reserved a minivan from the LAX Alamo last week and they were out of minivans (or anything bigger than a Chevy Impala) when we arrived (there were a lot of families in the same situation as we were). We made our reservation in January. We had two adults, three teenagers, three large suitcases and two smaller suitcases and five carry-ons. We were told we could take the Impala at that time and then come trade it in the next day OR we could wait until someone brought a minivan back but there were already other families ahead of us waiting for minivans or SUVs. Needless to say, we were angry (I've NEVER had that happen with a rental company before). We took the Impala and actually fit (after carefully packing our luggage in the trunk). We did not have time to go back to Alamo to exchange the car but saw the Alamo at DTD and wondered if we could make the trade there. The kids ended up being fine in the Impala so we decided to keep it and we did receive credit for taking a smaller class car than we paid for but we had to get that taken care of AFTER we returned the car--they wouldn't adjust the price when we took the car.

The DTD Alamo looked rather deserted so I would assume they are much better managed and they don't have mobs of people upgrading or not returning their cars on time. I just wanted to let you know about our experience in case you are depending on a large vehicle and might possibly get stuck with a smaller car.

I will never rent from the LAX Alamo again and will be sending a complaint to the manager so the problem can be corrected for future customers. BTW, the staff at drop-off (during the day shift) seemed competent and helpful (that was NOT the case when we picked up our car at 9 p.m. on a Saturday night).