Time Associated With Rental

[jrtoastyman]

We're considering getting a rental car for part of our next trip to go out and explore the Orlando area a bit. I do understand the calculus of when it would make financial sense to rent a car as opposed to just cabbing it or using a shuttle or something, but what I'm less clear about is how much time you have to take out of your trip to get and return a rental car. Can anyone shed some light on how long the process takes, if the rental places are generally busy, etc.? I'm all for saving money, but if renting a car means that I have to take 3 hours out of a day to get to the car rental location, go through the process, etc., that may influence my decision.

Anyone have any experience with this? We'll be at BLT, to the extent that matters in terms of getting to and from the rental locations.

Thanks!

 

[jrtoastyman]

bump

 

[lost*in*cyberspace]

Good news - there is absolutely no calculus involved in renting a car!

How long a car pick up takes depends on the rental agency, how many people are working and how many people are in line in front of you. It's usually pretty quick (unless you use Fox Rental; avoid them); under 20 minutes. Turn in is just a matter of getting in line and dropping off the car. Maybe 10 minutes.

 

[bumbershoot]

We've simply rented at the airport when we get there, and returned it to the airport when we were leaving. Easy.


There's also calculus (though it's not actually difficult....just plug in various dates and places and it gives you the info) that shows up when sometimes it's cheaper to have a longer rental than to have a shorter one. On our last trip we *were* going to take DME in then rent the next day from the National location at either the car care center or dolphin, but then I found a code (didn't "find" it, I just saw it on mousesavers) that gave me our FULL trip, renting from the airport, for far far less than our shorter rental would have been.