Renting car to drive to Disney?

[monica9]

AFAIK, you can't use DME unless you've flown in. So you'd have to drop everybody off at the resort, then have someone drive to the airport to drop it off, then take Taxi/Uber/Lyft back.

Also, that $1600 doesn't add up. I just checked one way tickets to MCO and the highest price I found on AA for the last 2 weeks of September was $200 per person for an economy fare, so $800 for your family. What airport and airline were you looking at that was giving you $400pp? Because that's bordering on highway robbery.

Probably because you are looking at Frontier or Spirit. My husband won't fly either of those. We normally fly jet blue. There is also a lot of construction going towards LGA so we are hoping to fly out of Hartford since last time it took us 3 1/2 hours to get home from LGA

 

[monica9]

AFAIK, you can't use DME unless you've flown in. So you'd have to drop everybody off at the resort, then have someone drive to the airport to drop it off, then take Taxi/Uber/Lyft back.

Also, that $1600 doesn't add up. I just checked one way tickets to MCO and the highest price I found on AA for the last 2 weeks of September was $200 per person for an economy fare, so $800 for your family. What airport and airline were you looking at that was giving you $400pp? Because that's bordering on highway robbery.

plus if it's 200 one way that would be 1600 total since we need round trip if we fly both ways

 

[jec6613]

Probably because you are looking at Frontier or Spirit. My husband won't fly either of those. We normally fly jet blue. There is also a lot of construction going towards LGA so we are hoping to fly out of Hartford since last time it took us 3 1/2 hours to get home from LGA

Nope, as I said, AA on AA metal. And that's the one way fare because you were only looking at driving one way.

 

[Disneypro1]

Id fly...add in rental cost...food,hotel, stress with kids.. Honestly, its $$ to go one way in a rental..Id fly.
If you rented round trip....that would probably save you money.

 

[monica9]

Nope, as I said, AA on AA metal. And that's the one way fare because you were only looking at driving one way.

Oh, ok. That's why I'm thinking of flying only the one way because round trip would be 1600 not one way.

 

[kandb]

A few years back we were in Disney and a tropical storm was moving in and we were able to cancel our flight with JetBlue and get a refund. We would of renting a minivan from Alamo? (right at the car care center, near the Poly) and we drove home to NJ. We only paid a little over $100 for 3 days. It was a brand new van with television. We stopped at Walmart, got a few CD's and saved hundreds of dollars because got refunded from the Poly for 2 nights also. (we had already been at WDW for 10 days so it was fine). Think it really depends on availability. We made the reservation the night before we needed the van.

 

[monica9]

A few years back we were in Disney and a tropical storm was moving in and we were able to cancel our flight with JetBlue and get a refund. We would of renting a minivan from Alamo? (right at the car care center, near the Poly) and we drove home to NJ. We only paid a little over $100 for 3 days. It was a brand new van with television. We stopped at Walmart, got a few CD's and saved hundreds of dollars because got refunded from the Poly for 2 nights also. (we had already been at WDW for 10 days so it was fine). Think it really depends on availability. We made the reservation the night before we needed the van.

yes! This is what I want to do. We want to drive to experience it and stop at south of the border for some cheesy fun but we don't have time nor do we want to do both ways. It would be ideal to rent a car, have daughter do half day of school Thursday and start driving around 12, stop at a hotel around 11pm and wake up early and get on the road for 6am stopping at south of the border and getting there for Friday early evening

 

[kandb]

yes! This is what I want to do. We want to drive to experience it and stop at south of the border for some cheesy fun but we don't have time nor do we want to do both ways. It would be ideal to rent a car, have daughter do half day of school Thursday and start driving around 12, stop at a hotel around 11pm and wake up early and get on the road for 6am stopping at south of the border and getting there for Friday early evening

We drove many times round trip when our twins were much younger and it was always fine. My husband really wanted to fly, so we started flying round trip. I think driving one way is a good idea and you should try it.

AFAIK, you can't use DME unless you've flown in. So you'd have to drop everybody off at the resort, then have someone drive to the airport to drop it off, then take Taxi/Uber/Lyft back.

Also, that $1600 doesn't add up. I just checked one way tickets to MCO and the highest price I found on AA for the last 2 weeks of September was $200 per person for an economy fare, so $800 for your family. What airport and airline were you looking at that was giving you $400pp? Because that's bordering on highway robbery.

If you are staying at a Disney resort you can definitely take DME, Disney does not care when you arrived at the airport. We have arrived at MCO, rented a card did some things in Florida and returned the car days later and took DME to get to our resort.

 

[kandb]

Also for a rental car, try autoslash.com It is really great and offers discounted rates with popular rental companies. In my experience, rental car rates always go down closer to the rental date, so a rate that shows today, could be half price by the time you rent the car. Always check the rate up until the date you leave.

One thing we found with driving is that if you are stopping "mid" way, you should try and do more then half the trip the first day. The second day, everyone seems to be more tired and just wants to get to Disney. We used to drive from NJ for 12 hours the first day and leave only 5 hours for the day of arrival. Not saying you have to drive that much but try to do more the first day, definitely makes to trip easier.

 

[monica9]

Also for a rental car, try autoslash.com It is really great and offers discounted rates with popular rental companies. In my experience, rental car rates always go down closer to the rental date, so a rate that shows today, could be half price by the time you rent the car. Always check the rate up until the date you leave.

One thing we found with driving is that if you are stopping "mid" way, you should try and do more then half the trip the first day. The second day, everyone seems to be more tired and just wants to get to Disney. We used to drive from NJ for 12 hours the first day and leave only 5 hours for the day of arrival. Not saying you have to drive that much but try to do more the first day, definitely makes to trip easier.

Listen if my husband let me drive some of it I'd say we just drive straight through but I know even if I drove a little he wouldn't sleep! Thanks for the recommendation