first time - rent a van for 10 days or not?

[cheribear]

This is our first and probably only trip for a family of 6. We have 5 days booked on resort at A of A, and are planning to do the rest at a nearby hotel with suites so we have more room.

I am flying into Sanford and want to rent a vehicle, but will really only need it to get to and from the airport, and possibly a little bit of driving around when we move off resort to get groceries etc.

My questions:

1) Is it feasible to rent a car for 1 day to get from Sanford to Disney, so we would rent it the 15th of August, and return it to Disney Car care (or other rental place on-site) the next day. I don't see needing the car at all until the 20th, when we move off-site. So then I suppose we'd pick up a car from Disney Car Care again and use it until the 26th when we fly out of Sanford again, and would return the car at Sanford.

2) if we have a car and are staying off-site those last few days, I need to look at hotels with free parking, or hotels with a shuttle, or can I drive to Downtown Disney each day (free parking, right?) and take a bus to wherever we want to go? Or is it better to just park at the place we will be spending the day.

3) we have water park passes for our whole trip. Parking there is free. Is there bus or shuttle service from there to the parks or would that be long and complicated?

Thanks in advance for any advice or tips. If it was a compact or small car rental I would just rent it the whole time and not worry, but minivan rental seems pretty steep for the amount we would need it, then add in self-parking fees etc...

The cost is about $343.00 for a 1 day rental, return, then a 5 day rental

For all 10 days with pick up and return at Sanford it is $600-ish

I have been looking at the Alamo website for rates, and have also priced through the Allegiant website and Undercover Tourist.

 

[goofy4tink]

This is our first and probably only trip for a family of 6. We have 5 days booked on resort at A of A, and are planning to do the rest at a nearby hotel with suites so we have more room.

I am flying into Sanford and want to rent a vehicle, but will really only need it to get to and from the airport, and possibly a little bit of driving around when we move off resort to get groceries etc.

My questions:

1) Is it feasible to rent a car for 1 day to get from Sanford to Disney, so we would rent it the 15th of August, and return it to Disney Car care (or other rental place on-site) the next day. I don't see needing the car at all until the 20th, when we move off-site. So then I suppose we'd pick up a car from Disney Car Care again and use it until the 26th when we fly out of Sanford again, and would return the car at Sanford.

2) if we have a car and are staying off-site those last few days, I need to look at hotels with free parking, or hotels with a shuttle, or can I drive to Downtown Disney each day (free parking, right?) and take a bus to wherever we want to go? Or is it better to just park at the place we will be spending the day.

3) we have water park passes for our whole trip. Parking there is free. Is there bus or shuttle service from there to the parks or would that be long and complicated?

Thanks in advance for any advice or tips. If it was a compact or small car rental I would just rent it the whole time and not worry, but minivan rental seems pretty steep for the amount we would need it, then add in self-parking fees etc...

The cost is about $343.00 for a 1 day rental, return, then a 5 day rental


For all 10 days with pick up and return at Sanford it is $600-ish

I have been looking at the Alamo website for rates, and have also priced through the Allegiant website and Undercover Tourist.

That's a tough one. You obviously need a car. So...
1. Yes, it's feasible to rent for 24 hrs, return it, and then rent again...from someplace on-site.
2. You could do that, but it is very time consuming. The buses run only between DTD and the resorts. So you would have to go to a resort and then transfer to the park bus you wanted...figure on about 90 mins...at least! You really are better off just paying to park at the park you're at for the day.
3.Water parks as in TL and BB? Sure, you can park there, but again, somewhat time consuming to get to parks from those areas.

Here's the issue....a car service (company that picks you up at the airport and takes you to WDW resorts) will run you about $200 r/t...probably $125ish one way, plus tip. There is a price to be paid when staying off-site, which you've discovered...as well as a price to be paid for landing in Sanford (which I love by the way...terrific airport). So, with that in mind, I would go with the smallest car you can make do with...and rent it for that one day, return it, and re-rent when it's time to move off-site. Expensive? Yes. But why pay for a car that you don't need?

 

[cheribear]

Thank you for your reply! That makes sense to me - there is also a price to pay for having four kids - it keeps coming up for everything on this trip! But sometimes it works out - I did not expect free dining for our dates but it came up and is going to really save us some money and make it easier to budget - I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how and where we were going to eat and how much it will cost - and that is one less thing to worry about!

I don't mind paying for the car if we are using it, but I don't like paying for something that is sitting in the parking lot unused for four days! If I can get the cost of rental down by renting, returning and then renting again - paying for parking at the parks is no big deal.

On some days we are likely to go to a water park early and then head to a theme park for the later afternoon/evening. I thought it might make sense to park the vehicle at the waterpark then take a bus to Epcot or wherever rather than drive to the next park and pay for parking there - but time is worth money, too. Saving an hour or so on a bus is an excellent reason to just pay to park it wherever we need to go!

Some of the hotels we might book off-site have a shuttle available, but for a family of 6 the cost for the shuttle is usually more than the cost to park. No big deal - at least we are making use of our rental vehicle and don't have to wait for buses etc. We can do a little bit of shopping and have some meals in the area if we want to. I think we can make the rental vehicle worthwhile.

 

[ktate82]

I would recommend looking at Costco rates for rental cars for both scenarios of your trip. We did this once and found that even after paying the $55 yearly membership, we still saved quite a bit on our rental cars (we travel a few times a year so just saved even more on other trips). You can look at the rates without being a member. Also might look at returning the car to a different place (several places around DTD). Sometimes returning or picking up at a different place makes it cheaper.