Should I rent a car? Help me decide... please

[kcchica]

Hi.. thought I might try for some advice...

Here are the details

Flying in red eye sat nite, arrive sunday 6am
Have a convention sunday-tuesday
Brother is flying in on tuesday
We are both leaving Friday morning
We will have 2 full days and possibly an evenign (tuesday) in the parks
First time to Florida parks for both of us
We are staying at orange lake (work has a condo booked for a week).

Should we rent a car, for airport transportation and transportation back and forth to WDW.
I guess ORange Lake has a shuttle, but I am not sure how it works.
I am a little nervous about driving in Florida, in/out of aiport for me, and going to pick up my brother, plus back and forth to WDW...

any thoughts advice?

We could just stick to some sort of shuttle for airport transfers and then depend on orange lake for getting to the parks....

thanks
kc

 

[inkkognito]

I have extensive experience using both towncars and rental cars. We use Happy Limo for our Disney cruises (we've taken almost 40) and WDW trips, and we rent a car for our numerous non-WDW weekend trips to Orlando (once or twice a month).
If you are nervous about driving in FL and think the shutte service will be good, then I strongly recommend a towncar. We use Happy Limo whenever possible because I am very lazy when on vacation. Of course, we stay on WDW property, but once the shuttle gets you there, you can use the internal Disney transportation system. We did stay at an offsite hotel once and used their shuttle...only bad thing was that the one bus stopped at multiple parks so it took a long time to get anywhere, but it was worth it not to drive. They showed a video which passed the time. Your hotel may have a shuttle for each park.
I suspect you will be near East Orange Lake Blvd. and 192. The traffic can be horrendous unless you know the shortcut, and FL drivers are utterly insane. But if you do decide to drive and want to use the shortcut, WDW has great signage on their property. I get my rental cars via Priceline, which deals only with onsite airport rental agencies (the one exception is Hertz, but they are close by and their shuttle is great).
Good luck with your choice!
Barb
Visit the Platinum Castaway Club at: www.castawayclub.com