Help - which hotel & to rent a car or not

[dknyc1]

Going on cruise Dec 12-16th with my wife, 3.5 year old daughter, wife?s friend & her 3.5 year old daughter.

Per everyone?s advice here we decided to fly in the day before ? so we are arriving in Orlando airport at approx. 1:00 pm. Sat 12/11

Plan is to get a car service to take us to Port area Hotel. We are debating between Ron Jon & Radisson ? what do you think? Doesn?t look like we would have much time for anything before the cruise the next am anyway.

As far as hotels go, I like to get some kind of suite so that my daughter is sleeping in a different room than wife & I.

Then, I guess Sun am we would get some kind of shuttle bus to the port.

One other option is that we could rent a mini van at the airport that would hold all of us & drive ourselves to hotel & then leave the van at hotel or port when we cruise.

Any opinions or advice would be great.

 

[din]

Never stayed at the port so cannot tell you which is better. We however did rent a car and and dropped it off at the port. Picked up another rental upon our return.

Dave has a list of rentals that have drop off location mear the port:

www.dcltribute.com

 

[DrCavin]

We rented a SUV from Budget, dropped it off at there PC office. Then rented another SUV to get us back to MCO.

Dave's website has all the details on where to stay and things.

 

[buster478]

I believe it is about $210 (plus tip) round trip for van service to and from airport and PC. www.happylimo.com I imagine a rental would be a lot more than that. However, I know that Radisson will let you leave your vehicle at their hotel if you stay their the night before you sail. We always arrive at the PC about 10:30 am to check in. I know most of the hotels have shuttles that take you to the terminal.

It is very nice to have a car though. My DW got a double ear infection the day we arrived and had to go to urgent care. Wouldn't know what we would have done if we didn't have the car.

Good planning on getting there the day before. You never know if your flight will be on time.

 

[inkkognito]

We have used Happy Limo many times and have also done a rental car, although we stay at a hotel by the airport rather than Port Canaveral (we get hotels cheap via Priceline). We have used Budget and it's pretty painless. Their shuttle has always been prompt for us, and they tend to upgrade us from economy (we've ended up with a big ol' Taurus twice).
Barb

 

[mickeyfanmom]

A few of us on the 1/22 sailing are staying at the Quality Suites Cocoa Beach. It is a two room suite, which you said that you wanted and is $108/night with shuttle service and parking included (plus two Hawaiian shirts, and a coupon for 15% at a surf shop they must also own or otherwise be affiliated with.) It is the "sister" resort of the Radisson and you use their parking and shuttle.

I originally wanted to stay at the Radisson, but they only had smoking rooms available (since my daughter has asthma this was not an option for us) and were more expensive. Someone else going on our cruise then told us about the Quality Suites.

The ambience isn't as good as at the Radisson and they don't have a pool though, which doesn't bother me since we are getting in around dinner time the night before the cruise.

Dave has pretty good things to say about it on his tribute site and the Passporter recommends it, so it can't be that bad. Plus someone on these boards PM'd me that stayed there and said that it was very clean and newer than many others in the area.

So you may want to check it out.

Hope this helps.