Must I rent a car?

[bhsurfer]

We will be headed to WDW in about a month for a 10 day vacation.

The one oddity about our trip is that my oldest will have to be flying back by herself (11) halfway through. We will be doing the ME from the airport and back. However I will need to get my daughter to the airport and on her flight and then return to WDW in the midle of our trip.

Will I have to rent a car to do this, I'm thinking I will and I'm OK with that. Or is there another shuttle type option between the airport and WDW?

I'm a bit unsure what to do and my wife, the super planner, is trying to get the last minite details worked out.

 

[HappyCamperToo]

If she's a registered guest, too, wouldn't she qualify to take magical express back to the airport when she leaves? Perhaps they'd let you go along (round trip, of course) for free (considering her age) or for a small fee. Might be less than the cost of a car. But renting a small car for a few hours from wdw location might be more convenient and not too expensive. (Factor in airport parking, gas, tolls.)

 

[bhsurfer]

If she's a registered guest, too, wouldn't she qualify to take magical express back to the airport when she leaves?

I would think so, I just dont want to end up stuck there.

Perhaps they'd let you go along (round trip, of course) for free (considering her age) or for a small fee. Might be less than the cost of a car. But renting a small car for a few hours from wdw location might be more convenient and not too expensive. (Factor in airport parking, gas, tolls.)

I hadn't thought of parking and tolls, I haven't flown in about 6 or 7 years.

........

As I was posting this my wife told me that Disney would give her a ME ride to the airport, we would just loose ours in the process. Because we are all booked together we get one ride to and one ride from.

 

[mikey13v]

Each individual in your group can have different arrival/departure times with ME. Just call ME and let them know before your trip. It's important to let them know in advance, or there might not be a bus leaving your resort when she needs to go to the airport, and they might not let her on if she doesn't have her return ticket (not likely but possible).
We did this before, and there were no problems with booking it. Our only problem was that there wasn't enough room on our bus for our reserved group. We had to wait for another bus, we almost missed our flight.

 

[bhsurfer]

Disney said we could not because we booked the package together. The thing with my daughter having to fly back came up after we booked the trip (lack of planning on my part )

Oh well, we got a good deal on the car now and we decided to use it to visit family the next day so it all works out.

 

[seashoreCM]

I was going to suggest modifying the ME return reservations after you get there. There remains one difficulty, if you accompany your daughter to the airport, you consume your return ride at that time.

As far as the bus not having room for your reserved group, I'm not sure whether the 3 hours in advance is supposed to allow slop for this but for the time being I say get the resort manager to provide a ride much sooner than the normal half hour ME bus headway if this problem happens.

Disney hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/magicx.htm