One Way Car Rental (TPA-MCO)

[princesslynn]

Hello!

I need some help and I'm hoping one of you have some experience to pass along!

Our booking window for Southwest opens up on Monday. We have already purchased our tickets down to Florida, and because it was significantly less we chose to fly into TPA. Our travel dates are May 24th - June 8th. Since we were using points for the flight, taking the "cheaper" option made sense.

We were wondering, however, if we could fly out of MCO (since flights back home appear to run LESS from MCO than from TPA) without paying an arm and a leg for having our rental car drop off location be different from our pickup location. Since we are still about 6 months out from our trip car rental prices are still pretty sky high and I'm having trouble trying to figure it all out.

Does anybody have any recent experiences with doing this? My gut says play it safe and fly back out of TPA...but if we could fly out of MCO and pay a comparable price in rental car I'd prefer to do that!

Thank you in advance for any insight you can pass along!

 

[cluvsdisney]

Hello!

I need some help and I'm hoping one of you have some experience to pass along!

Our booking window for Southwest opens up on Monday. We have already purchased our tickets down to Florida, and because it was significantly less we chose to fly into TPA. Our travel dates are May 24th - June 8th. Since we were using points for the flight, taking the "cheaper" option made sense.

We were wondering, however, if we could fly out of MCO (since flights back home appear to run LESS from MCO than from TPA) without paying an arm and a leg for having our rental car drop off location be different from our pickup location. Since we are still about 6 months out from our trip car rental prices are still pretty sky high and I'm having trouble trying to figure it all out.

Does anybody have any recent experiences with doing this? My gut says play it safe and fly back out of TPA...but if we could fly out of MCO and pay a comparable price in rental car I'd prefer to do that!

Thank you in advance for any insight you can pass along!

We just did this in Oct and I think we ended up paying around $155ish for a one way rental of full size car for 8 days. This was with Alamo using the insiders club, a visa coupon code someone posted (you can also check mousesavers.com). We got this rate about 3 weeks before our departure date. Also, I read in this forum that there is no surcharge for.a one way rental from tpa-mco.

 

[Southernswthrt]

Thanks for posting this question. I am doing the same thing in February and not finding any great rates.

I did notice that if you try to book with National using the KLM code, it does add a $250 drop fee

Alamo if ridiculous right now, but didn't add the fee. I can get the best price with Budget, but I'm not 100% sure about their fees...anybody???

 

[princesslynn]

I think I'm going to go ahead and "risk" it and plan for a one way car rental. I prefer Alamo, but I agree their prices are ridiculous right now! Dollar was several hundred dollars better, still quite high but if I had to pay it I'll do it. I went ahead and made a reservation with Dollar--but I'll keep checking prices as we get closer to May. Last year I was able to get a full size car from Alamo for 16 days for $252 total (all taxes). I'm not expecting a deal that good again this year, but I'm hopeful prices do drop some as we get closer!

 

[travelcoupons]

There's no one-way drop fees in florida. The only issue you may have is some coupons & discounts are not valid for one way rentals. (most are though).

Book the best rate you see now & keep checking. Something better usually comes along, just rebook & cancel the higher rate. But always book something right away (like you did) as an 'insurance' policy in case rates don't drop.

 

[Lewisc]

You need to shop. Occasionally an agency will charge a one way "drop fee" in Florida. Sometimes a discount code will be unavailable, or capacity limited, for one way rentals.

You can almost always, in Florida, find an agency with a competitive rate on a way rental.