Car Rental in Orlando ~ Glad I reserved a few months ago

[Egret1986]

I reserved a Dodge Charger (Full Size) back a few months ago for a trip in April to Cocoa Beach. With tax and fees, it was $258. I periodically have been checking to see if it had dropped. Big increases instead. Tonight I checked. Oh my gosh. To get the same car would be $707. That's more than 4 roundtrip airfares that I bought to get us there. I am so glad I reserved early. These rates are unbelievable. I have always found Orlando rental rates to be low. I would be horrified if I had bought my airfares first, only to find after-the-fact that the car rental would be more than the airfares.

 

[TerriJ]

Guess I need to make my reservation soon for my April trip, thanks for the tip.

 

[NJCOBRA10tha]

Guess I need to make my reservation soon for my April trip, thanks for the tip.

You always should book car rentals as far in advanced as possible. I booked my April 09 reservation 10 months in advanced and got a Mazda 6 for about 200 even out the door for a week with Hertz no less.

 

[Talent312]

It also pays to look for discount-codes thru membership groups (AAA, AARP), American Express Selects, Costco, the rental company's own website -- and to check LC-brands like Advantage or Enterprise.

 

[JamminJoe]

I booked my car (full size) for 7-days at Priceline.com, I offered $14.00/day and Hertz grabbed it. Las Vegas has very high fees and taxes at the airport pick-up/drop off but I still only paid $160.00 for the week. I made the offer in Deceber for my trip this March, Priceline has always worked for me, just go to the section where you name your own price, if they don't accept it you try again 3-days later. The most I ever paid was $17.00/day for a full size in San Diego.

 

[Timeshare Von]

I reserved a Dodge Charger (Full Size) back a few months ago for a trip in April to Cocoa Beach. With tax and fees, it was $258. I periodically have been checking to see if it had dropped. Big increases instead. Tonight I checked. Oh my gosh. To get the same car would be $707. That's more than 4 roundtrip airfares that I bought to get us there. I am so glad I reserved early. These rates are unbelievable. I have always found Orlando rental rates to be low. I would be horrified if I had bought my airfares first, only to find after-the-fact that the car rental would be more than the airfares.

Imagine my chagrin to have a reservation for 12/27/08 for $250 for a week only to learn that day they had no cars, period!! That was with Advantage Car Rental and was supposedly due to inventory issues with the car manufacturer. Not sure what really happened, as I got another story after the fact, but the end result was without a car in Orlando, we had to cancel our flights and DRIVE (from Wisconsin).

 

[donnaval]

Priceline now allows you to resubmit bids every 24 hours rather than 3 days.

I wasn't able to get anything reasonable for a three-week rental, picking up in Fort Lauderdale and dropping off in Orlando. So I broke up the reservation and got two weeks in FLL for $12/day (Hertz grabbed it). I figure the hang-up was the drop-off in a different location.

I try Priceline every day, but so far none of my bids have been accepted for the third week. I do have a back-up reservation with Alamo through Costco for $21/day. We always rent economy or compact cars and have never paid more than $10 a day in Florida before and these rates are shockers!

 

[Polly Metallic]

Imagine my chagrin to have a reservation for 12/27/08 for $250 for a week only to learn that day they had no cars, period!! That was with Advantage Car Rental and was supposedly due to inventory issues with the car manufacturer. Not sure what really happened, as I got another story after the fact, but the end result was without a car in Orlando, we had to cancel our flights and DRIVE (from Wisconsin).

How could they stiff you if you have a reservation. That's terrible! How did you find out they didn't have any cars? What if you hadn't learned that in advance and showed up in Orlando expecting your rental to be waiting for you?

 

[bobby]

I had to pay $17/day for a compact in MCO last week through Priceline. Hertz car so I'm happy as they have 4 doors. I tried $12-16 repeatedly without any luck. Car is for Feb. 22+ We have an exchange in Daytona Beach.

 

[Timeshare Von]

How could they stiff you if you have a reservation. That's terrible! How did you find out they didn't have any cars? What if you hadn't learned that in advance and showed up in Orlando expecting your rental to be waiting for you?

I only found out when I called that morning to let them know of our travel delays and to let them know we'd be in two days later due to weather here in the midwest. It was horrible.

I am sitting on a reservation now for Honolulu with them and now find out they no longer have a location there. So I'm going to have to find out what now. My reservation was $155 for the week and I'm now looking at nearly twice that with another company.

 

[UWSurfer]

We leave for Orlando this coming Friday night. We are staying 7-1/2 days (8 in rental car terms). Made a rental car reservation through Costco to Budget for a mini-van last fall and it came to around $800 for a week.

Found mousesavers.com code last month for Delta airlines which got us a minivan through Dollar for about $400.

Last night I made an offer on Priceline for $25/day for a minivan and got no takers. We've had one person drop out of our trip, so I substituted a SUV in place of the mini-van and got our bid accepted for a total of $298 for the trip. Alamo was the company which went for the bid.

(Note: all prices above include taxes & fees)

Obviously we've cancelled the earlier reservations.

 

[jesuis1837]

Had to rent a Minivan in Orlando airport on our coming on June 27 to July 11 and the best price i found for 14 days was 750$ taxes included for the 2 weeks. Thought it was very pricey at the time but now i think i had a deal.... Booked the airfare an the van via priceline.

 

[JonathanIT]

I rent with National as an Emerald Aisle Exec. member (they let you pick your car from the lot and drive off, no stopping at the rental counter!). I just reserved last week for a trip to MCO next week (4/14). The rate was $203.47/week/AI. I've had much worse, so I'm happy!

 

[Talent312]

One more thought: If you are planning to rent a car in Orlando to drive someplace else... It may pay you to arrange a shuttle (MCO has plenty) or do a one-day, one-way rental to+from that destination. You could then rent a car at your destination (if you need one).

In May, I will do one-day, one-way rentals to+from Orlando for ~ $50/each way with Budget.

 

[thecypher]

And my recommendation is to sign up for the fast pass or whatever equivalent the rental company you pick offers. Most times this is free and you can sign up on the internet. I have nightmare stories of arriving in Orlando close to mid-night to find a mile long line at the rental car counter at the airport. And these were all people who had prior reservations. I believe the rental car company was Avis. While all other rental car counters were near empty. It took us nearly 2 hours with little kids who were half asleep and cranky to get our car. It was horrible. People were trying to cancel their reservation and get a car from other rental car companies but were not able to do so because the other agencies were charging twice as much. So our only choice was to wait in line for 2 hours while the 1 lady at the counter took forever to handle each customer. That was a good lesson learnt. If you have the fast pass you don't need to wait in line at the darn counter. Your car should be ready for you. You just go straight to your car.

 

[UWSurfer]

I've rented several times from Alamo previously, though this will be the first time in Orlando.

One nice feature Alamo offers is the check-in Kiosk where you can by-pass the counter as well. I've found I can get through the process in under three minutes and be on my way...EXCEPT...when I rented at the Sacramento airport, where the Kiosk let me check in, but I had to get back in line because the single counter person was the one who handed out the keys.

That was the only place I've experienced that wrinkle though.

 

[UWSurfer]

We leave for Orlando this coming Friday night. We are staying 7-1/2 days (8 in rental car terms). Made a rental car reservation through Costco to Budget for a mini-van last fall and it came to around $800 for a week.

Found mousesavers.com code last month for Delta airlines which got us a minivan through Dollar for about $400.

Last night I made an offer on Priceline for $25/day for a minivan and got no takers. We've had one person drop out of our trip, so I substituted a SUV in place of the mini-van and got our bid accepted for a total of $298 for the trip. Alamo was the company which went for the bid.

(Note: all prices above include taxes & fees)

Obviously we've cancelled the earlier reservations.

We'll my dufuss moment came this morning at the Alamo Rental counter at MCO. I had my reservation in hand from my winning Priceline bid and the system wouldn't recognize it. Having flown a red-eye flight overnight I was stumped...UNTIL THE AGENT READ IT WAS FOR A WEEK FROM NOW!

I had placed a winning bid and paid for a week's rental of an SUV for the week immediately following our departure. OH NO was the immediate exclamation. Alamo told me they didnt' even have any SUV's or minivan's (what we reserved) available this week. Their cheapest car was $120/day!!!

So I pulled out the laptop, settled into the chairs across from the rental counters and was able to re-reserve my $400 8 day mini-van rental from Dollar, afterwhich I walked across to the counter and picked it up.

So, my bargin $300 SUV now is combined to make a $700 set of rentals for our week here...and my own dumb fault. I know I put in the correct dates at first...I'm not sure how they changed but I'm sure it was my fault. It could have been a lot worse. (sigh)

Now if I could only figure out how to use the SUV, prepaid for a week we're not here. Any ideas?

 

[donnaval]

Ouch ouch ouch!!!!

There is definitely a downside (or two) to Priceline. I swear that sometimes "they" just change the info on our submissions. I know that recently, while bidding for a car at Fort Walton Beach, I got back a response that said no cars whatsoever were available for my location. Huh? Turns out SOMEHOW my request had gotten changed from Fort Walton Beach to Downtown New Orleans. No way, no how, had I typed that in there!

I lost a week paid through Priceline once, but it was because I had reserved an economy car, and later my brother who uses a wheelchair was able to come with us and there's no way that car would've worked. Fortunately I was only out a little over $100 that time.

I did just get my Fort Walton Beach offer accepted. I've been trying every day for a couple of months. They kept making me a counter-offer of $20/day (the best price I had secured as a refundable was $26.50) but I held out, and got the car for $17 finally. Our trip is in a little less than two weeks and they simply weren't budging until a few days ago, when the counter-offer started popping up.

 

[Talent312]

... I had my reservation in hand from my winning Priceline bid and the system wouldn't recognize it. Having flown a red-eye flight overnight I was stumped...UNTIL THE AGENT READ IT WAS FOR A WEEK FROM NOW!...

Sorry about your loss.
I learned the hard way not to hit the "buy" button late in the day when I'm tired. Once, I went to book a R/T from Florida to San Antonio. When the tickets were confirmed, they were R/T from San Antonio to Florida. I called the ticketing agency and they fixed it, but would not or could not waive the change fees.

I also found that some reservation sites reset to a default if you go back to make a change. I made a non-changeable reservation for Hilton which included breakfast, and had to write Hilton when I realized it was for one person, not two.

IOW, these things happen.

 

[hajjah]

Ok, so where are the discount rentals codes for Orlando now? I'm trying to book a rental during Xmas and the rates are sky high. They were the same during this time last year. Even a discount via Costco has the rate about $500 for an economy. I've searched on Mouse Savers and still cannot find a discount. I know that we're late renting, but we just decided to go back to Orlando during this time of year.

 

[nimrod]

You might want to try checking rates on advantage.com and using discount code ADVAN. Good luck.

 

[hajjah]

Thanks so much. I will certainly check this out. So far, I've found the cheapest rates off airport.