Rental Car Advice

[MissManda]

Planning June 2012 trip. We will be staying off site and will need to rent a car (mini-van actually). I've never rented a car before and I'm pretty lost as to how to get the best deals. Right now, the prices to rent a mini-van are enough to give me heart failure!

It seems like its better to wait until closer to the trip to reserve a car. Is that true? If so, what time frame should I start looking?

Any particular company that I should be looking at for a mini-van? Are they all about the same or are some better than others?

How do you go about getting discount pr coupon codes?

I'm pretty clueless, so any and all advice is appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[BrerMama]

I'm going the same time of year and plan to get serious about reserving something in March (3 months ahead). That seems to be the magic time when the rates start dropping. No point in worrying about it now because most coupons/codes expire December 31 so we can't use them at this point.

Mousesavers.com has great info on renting a car, complete with available coupons codes you can use to lower your rate.

For your question on Minivans, I'm not sure. I would suspect that the answer is to go with one of the "big" rental companies and you'll be fine. There are a couple of smaller, Orlando specific companies but they aren't recommended.

If you notice, on this board there tend to be threads for specific months for car rentals. I'd think that about March, the June 2012 car rental thread will get going and people will start sharing their rate and the codes they used to get that rate. Just follow that and hopefully we'll find something affordable. I'd love to get a mid-size SUV for my family!

 

[MissManda]

Thanks so much for the advice. I'll just put the rental car on the back burner for now and wait a few more months. I can't believe I didn't think about looking at mousesavers. I've used that sight so many times for research but I never though about looking for car rental deals there.

 

[conniehar90]

I would reserve a car "just in case" now. You can always cancel it later if you get a better deal. I usually always find the best deal at National for some reason. I use Flyertalk.com - they have some good advice/codes. I also recently came across autoslash.com. They will track your rental and let you know if they find a better deal. I have a reservation for Spring break at National. Autoslash is tracking it and let me know last week that they found a better deal at Dollar. I was able to go to National and rebook my rental using the same code as before for a better deal (autoslash just helped alert me to the fact that rates had dropped). I also have them tracking a rental for July - not much action on that one yet, but at least I feel comfortable that I have a reservation.