Pea-n-Me
DIS Legend
- Joined
- Jul 18, 2004
- Messages
- 41,717
Just got home Thursday night from our trip. Had gotten a great rate for a car rental through Alamo, the Official car rental comany for Disney.
Went to pick up Sat 8/28 at 2:30pm when our flight arrived. Very disappointed to arrive at Alamo counter to find a HUGE line of people snaking all the way through the ropes and almost back to the elevators! Have NEVER encountered anything like that before, including when we rented from Alamo previously when it was off site, or when renting from several of the other agencies on site. Many people were on cell phones calling the other rental agencies or just leaving the lines to go to the other agencies (who had no or very small lines) to pay the higher prices. Children were very restless.
DH stood in line while I visited the other counters to see if they would match our quoted price from Alamo (the rumor being circulated by MCO porters). None would, and we would have had to pay another $100 or so so we chose to wait. In the time it took to visit all these counters DH had made his way toward the front of the line. But it took an hour and 15 minutes out of our afternoon and it was quite maddening. I asked a woman who worked in one of the agencies for future reference if Alamo was always like that and she answered "Every day". Thought maybe because it was a Sat afternoon it was particularly busy but not sure - like I said, other counters were ok. Also when we went to the garage to pick up the car all the full size cars were gone so we had to go over to National (their sister company) to get our car.
Return was easy since we dropped off in the garage and had no lines to wait in.
Thought people may want to take this into consideration when renting a car. Myself - won't chance it again, it messed up our one night stay before our cruise, remainder of evening felt rushed since we were off schedule quite a bit as well as a little cranky!! Was also supposed to meet someone at 4pm so that was in the back of my mind too.
P.S. Glad I kept my internet confirmation with me where the second driver fee was included - of course it wouldn't come up that way in the computer at the counter (adding an additional 15 minutes to our wait). I have no doubt had I not had the paperwork I would have had to pay the $7/day charge. Also, for the first time we elected to pay the price for their gas (only $1.89/Gal) and that turned out to be a good decision in light of the storm - we left Thurs night instead of Sunday morning and just barely made our flight.
If Alamo is going to service a large portion of Disney's guests, they ought to have a larger counter with more people on duty (they had about 8 on - 5 Alamo with 3 National helping out). Thier off site agency was larger and even though there were a lot of people there last time we rented from them, they moved us right along.
One more thing, I did encounter some high pressure to buy the additional insurance and got a nasty quip when I declined. Maybe I was lucky before but had never had that happen either.
Went to pick up Sat 8/28 at 2:30pm when our flight arrived. Very disappointed to arrive at Alamo counter to find a HUGE line of people snaking all the way through the ropes and almost back to the elevators! Have NEVER encountered anything like that before, including when we rented from Alamo previously when it was off site, or when renting from several of the other agencies on site. Many people were on cell phones calling the other rental agencies or just leaving the lines to go to the other agencies (who had no or very small lines) to pay the higher prices. Children were very restless.
DH stood in line while I visited the other counters to see if they would match our quoted price from Alamo (the rumor being circulated by MCO porters). None would, and we would have had to pay another $100 or so so we chose to wait. In the time it took to visit all these counters DH had made his way toward the front of the line. But it took an hour and 15 minutes out of our afternoon and it was quite maddening. I asked a woman who worked in one of the agencies for future reference if Alamo was always like that and she answered "Every day". Thought maybe because it was a Sat afternoon it was particularly busy but not sure - like I said, other counters were ok. Also when we went to the garage to pick up the car all the full size cars were gone so we had to go over to National (their sister company) to get our car.
Return was easy since we dropped off in the garage and had no lines to wait in.
Thought people may want to take this into consideration when renting a car. Myself - won't chance it again, it messed up our one night stay before our cruise, remainder of evening felt rushed since we were off schedule quite a bit as well as a little cranky!! Was also supposed to meet someone at 4pm so that was in the back of my mind too.
P.S. Glad I kept my internet confirmation with me where the second driver fee was included - of course it wouldn't come up that way in the computer at the counter (adding an additional 15 minutes to our wait). I have no doubt had I not had the paperwork I would have had to pay the $7/day charge. Also, for the first time we elected to pay the price for their gas (only $1.89/Gal) and that turned out to be a good decision in light of the storm - we left Thurs night instead of Sunday morning and just barely made our flight.
If Alamo is going to service a large portion of Disney's guests, they ought to have a larger counter with more people on duty (they had about 8 on - 5 Alamo with 3 National helping out). Thier off site agency was larger and even though there were a lot of people there last time we rented from them, they moved us right along.
One more thing, I did encounter some high pressure to buy the additional insurance and got a nasty quip when I declined. Maybe I was lucky before but had never had that happen either.
He pulled up all our reservation info right there and we were out in five minutes. We were so grateful we felt compelled to tip the guy. I don't know if that's standard procedure, and if it was, why National wasn't taking customers off the Alamo line, but whatever the case, it is a good option for future Alamo line sufferers. Pricewise Alamo couldn't be beat, and car pickup and dropoff was very convenient.
