Taxi Van vs Rental Car

[mggeary]

All right, question for the offsite vets. This will be our first offsite stay, family of 7 (4 adults, 3 kids), staying 7 nights Sun-Sun at Wyndham Bonnet Creek, preceeded by 1 night at Beach Club. We'll be taking DME in. Originally planned to rent a car but when I crunch the numbers it seems just taking taxi vans each day would be both more convenient and possibly less expensive. I figure $15-$25 taxi trips to the parks each way. Lets say $40-$45 per day. Even if we can find a cheap rental minivan for that, we'd still have to pay parking at the parks for Tue-Sun, and it seems to me that cabs would be more convenient particularly to MK with a drop off at the Contemporary. We have no interest in depending on the Bonnet Creek shuttle.

What do you guys think?

 

[nacho113]

Depending on your dates, you may be able to get a minivan rental for the same or probably less than just the cab rides to the parks daily. Plus you will have the added convenience of being able to do grocery run (or 2), maybe do a little offsite souvenir shopping, maybe have a beach day or just pop back to the hotel mid day if someone is having a bad day or if the weather isn't co-operating.
Lots of good reasons to rent a vehicle, #1 in my books is just the convenience of being able to go somewhere on your terms/timetable and being able to pop out for an ice cream or a round of mini golf just because you have the convenience of the vehicle and can just do what you want (when you want)
Just my $0.02

 

[mggeary]

Depending on your dates, you may be able to get a minivan rental for the same or probably less than just the cab rides to the parks daily. Plus you will have the added convenience of being able to do grocery run (or 2), maybe do a little offsite souvenir shopping, maybe have a beach day or just pop back to the hotel mid day if someone is having a bad day or if the weather isn't co-operating.
Lots of good reasons to rent a vehicle, #1 in my books is just the convenience of being able to go somewhere on your terms/timetable and being able to pop out for an ice cream or a round of mini golf just because you have the convenience of the vehicle and can just do what you want (when you want)
Just my $0.02

All good points and it seems as if almost everyone at WBC uses rental car. Has anyone out there with a larger family tried doing taxi vans all week? How did it work out?

One option for us might be DME in from MCO, taxi vans for part of trip. Rental minvan for end of trip if they would let us pick up on property and drop off at MCO. (assuming we can fit all our luggage in as well).

 

[richmo]

I'm usually the first to say if you're staying offsite you have to rent a car. Seeing that Bonnet Creek is on-property, I would think their shuttles would be far better than truly offsite hotels...but, I'm not speaking from experience.

To answer one of your questions, yes, you can pick up a vehicle on property (usually the Car Care Center as you exit MK or the Dolphin) and return it to MCO. Price it out at Alamo and/or National. Perhaps also see if the Mears shuttle runs from the Wyndham back to MCO.

 

[siskaren]

We used imperial transportation from the Airport to Polynesian resort ,very professional driver an clean Suv we paid just $85.00 for the 6 pax ,no waiting in 30 min we arrived in our resort .
www.imperialtransportation.net

The OP isn't looking for transportation from the airport to her onsite hotel, she's looking for transportation between her offsite hotel and the parks.

 

[mggeary]

The OP isn't looking for transportation from the airport to her onsite hotel, she's looking for transportation between her offsite hotel and the parks.

That is correct. WBC shuttle is not a good option as they now charge per rider and it only runs 4x/day and per report is not that dependable. Since Bonnet Creek is so central, and most taxi van fares would be about $20 or less, I'm still waiting to see what I'm missing in regards to just skipping the rental minivan. We will not need a grocery run, prefer to use Garden Grocer. And we won't be doing much if any offsite stuff outside of our resort. We are rope droppers with young kids, so we plan to do a early RD morning to early/mid afternoon in the park every day, then back for pool time at resort. We may stay a few nights late, but probably won't need to come back to the resort and then return to the park at night. Transportation back to airport would be slight sticking point.

? Taxi Van > Rental minivan.