Renting a car cost vs. Ride-sharing around

[DisneyJColeMom]

Hello! I hope this is in the right place, Im thinking of it in the context of getting to & from the parks each day. We will be staying at Poly most of the last week of April. Im really the one doing the planning, my husband hates planning, just likes to show up & enjoy lol. I just mentioned to him that Im planning on us using Disney’s transportation for our trip. He says, Cant we just Uber around the whole time? From your experience, can we? This triggered for me the question of, should we just rent a car? We are renting points so i believe we get free parking at Poly. I did a quick search, and for the 5 or 6 days we will be there, the rentals are ranging from like $65-$100 per day. Would we be spending that if we just Uber/Lyft to a park & back to the hotel each day? We are not park hopping. The longest rides we would need are from MCO to Poly, from Poly to Universal Studios when we change resorts to Royal Pacific, and from Universal back to MCO. We wont be needing a car at all during the Universal portion of our trip. Thoughts on whether you think pricing is comparable? Do all the Disney parks have big parking fees? Thank for any advice!

 

[hes122]

All of the Disney transportation methods are currently not filling to capacity, so the park/resort/Disney Springs busses will never be crammed with people. That was my experience with Magical Express as well. My only disappointment with the bus transportation on property was that the barriers between sections kind of prevented you from seeing where you're going, but that's so minor in the grand scheme of things. I would personally not use Uber for anything other than your transport over to Universal and back to MCO if I were in your shoes.

And to answer your question about parking fees, if you have a car on property you won't have to pay to park at the parks. I've never rented DVC points, so I can't say for certain whether or not your parking is free for the resort.

 

[DisneyJColeMom]

I would personally not use Uber for anything other than your transport over to Universal if I were in your shoes.

What makes you feel this way?

 

[hes122]

I felt completely safe on the busses and frankly didn't find any of the waits to be any longer than we would normally wait. In the mornings you can time your arrival at the bus stop based on the MDE wait times feature of the app. Since the rest of the Poly won't be open yet when you're there, the bus stop shouldn't be overly crowded IMO. I just don't see the need to spend extra $$ on something that isn't really necessary. Now if you're running late one day and might miss an ADR because of that, that's when I would likely consider some type of ride share service.

 

[CarolynFH]

Hello! I hope this is in the right place, Im thinking of it in the context of getting to & from the parks each day. We will be staying at Poly most of the last week of April. Im really the one doing the planning, my husband hates planning, just likes to show up & enjoy lol. I just mentioned to him that Im planning on us using Disney’s transportation for our trip. He says, Cant we just Uber around the whole time? From your experience, can we? This triggered for me the question of, should we just rent a car? We are renting points so i believe we get free parking at Poly. I did a quick search, and for the 5 or 6 days we will be there, the rentals are ranging from like $65-$100 per day. Would we be spending that if we just Uber/Lyft to a park & back to the hotel each day? We are not park hopping. The longest rides we would need are from MCO to Poly, from Poly to Universal Studios when we change resorts to Royal Pacific, and from Universal back to MCO. We wont be needing a car at all during the Universal portion of our trip. Thoughts on whether you think pricing is comparable? Do all the Disney parks have big parking fees? Thank for any advice!

You can use the Uber and Lyft apps to get prices for the rides you expect to take, just don’t confirm the ride. Reports on the Transportation board here are that prices are much higher than before, especially if traveling at busy times like park open and close. This thread was started during the earliest Spring Break period.

 

[Marthasor]

As a Poly resort guest, you will not pay for parking at the parks, so you can take that out of the pricing equation. I'm not a huge fan of uber/lyft in the Orlando area. We've tried it in the past and we've had some good drivers and some really bad ones and those bad ones were enough to make me nervous about using ride shares there again. Personally, I would look into a private car service for those bigger trips - MCO to WDW, WDW to Uni, Uni to MCO. There are some very reputable private car services in Orlando that will have fully insured, professional drivers (we use Park Ave. Limo) And then simply use Disney transport when you are onsite at WDW. Or rent a car, but that brings other headaches, IMHO. I don't like driving in congested, unfamiliar areas when I'm on vacation.

 

[LeeLee'sMom]

I uber when we are at Disney. I don't uber for everything but for the early-ish morning TS and such or just don't feel like waiting for a bus. It depends where you are going but I say it for us it averages between $8-$10 per trip. I love it.

 

[BroadwayHermione5]

Hi! My family has used Uber and Mears several times to get around the resorts and to and from our WDW hotel and UOR. Never had an issue with either and mears has great options for those with scooters or wheelchairs.

 

[NashvilleMama]

We really like using Lyft in the mornings, never had an issue doing so at the resorts and schedule it the night before in the app. The only exception is if we're at a skyliner resort, then I'm happy to wake up early to use that for DHS. We alternate between renting a car and solely relying on a combo of Lyft and disney transportation while there. Usually we rent a car only when we're wanting to go straight to a park from the airport so we can keep luggage in the trunk and not have to waste time checking in, which sounds like a silly determining factor but we don't take long trips so need to eek out every minute possible in the parks.

 

[stace1214]

We typically use Disney transportation for our onsite trips with Uber/Lyft for early mornings or meals at other resorts. We've found that it's cheaper for us to use that combo than to rent.

 

[ScubaCat]

And to answer your question about parking fees, if you have a car on property you won't have to pay to park at the parks. I've never rented DVC points, so I can't say for certain whether or not your parking is free for the resort.

You do not pay the resort parking fee if you are renting DVC points.

 

[LauraLap]

We always rent a car. Usually I play with pricing and it's always cheaper to pick up our rental at the Car Care Center at Disney and return to MCO when leaving. I play with dates to get the best rate. For example, on our next trip we're picking our car up 3 days into our (2 week) trip and it saved me 50% off rates from renting the whole time.

 

[Mike Mantis]

I did a trip in November 2019 where we were there for 5 days and used 25 Ubers around the resort. It was great. Cheaper than a rental car.

I have heard stories about Uber/Lyft rates being insane in the age of COVID (lack of drivers, etc) so may want to keep that in mind.

I'm going in June and may resort to using Taxis (gasp) if I find Uber/Lyft has surge/crazy pricing.

 

[SarahC97]

I've read that recently rideshares have taken quite a while due to lack of drivers. That's something to think about.

 

[subtchr]

Is there a reason he wants to use rideshare instead of Disney transport? With only DVC open at the Poly, there shouldn’t be big crowds waiting for the buses. And you could still use Magical Express to get from MCO. You’d only need Ubers for Poly-RP and RP-MCO.

We may be in the minority, but using DIsney transport is part of the “escape from reality” that is a Disney trip for us. There are a few situations we do use a rideshare, when Disney transport is inconvenient or not available at all. But overall, we enjoy the options.

 

[CynBeth]

We use Disney transportation from our hotel to the parks but usually rent a car because we do a day or 2 at other area attractions. We pick up from MCO and are Alamo Insiders so pay ahead online and prior to Covid it was such an easy process to print out the forms from the kiosk and go across to the garage to pick out our car from the midsize section. Then the day we fly home we return the car back at the airport.

 

[LiveLifeLoud]

I refuse to drive on vacation. We use Disney transport most of the time but uber if we want to get to a park very early or have an ADR at a resort and we don’t want to deal with using multiple forms of transportation to get home (bus/walk/monorail to park, then bus to resort). We save money over renting a car too.

Like a pp stated, Disney transportation is part of the experience for us. I love the voice when you get on and off the buses. The sounds of the monorail.

 

[DisneyJColeMom]

Thanks everyone!! This was all really helpful info!!!

 

[Blondie58]

If your DH wants simple, then I would not rent a car. Driving in the traffic in the theme park capitol of the world is stressful for some My DH has no desire to drive in the area nor do I. We used WDW transportation and then Uber to other places. However, we have rented a car for a day or two if leaving the Disney bubble for another FL site seeing excursion of some sort.

 

[Meglen]

With the horror stories from spring break ( over an hour wait for a bus, and the uber/lyft prices going upwords to 100$) for my oct trip we will be looking into renting a car. I just cant stand at the bus stop for that long. And assuming the 50th will be a mad house I think renting a car will be the cheapest , timesaving and less stress option.