Car rental costs..extra costs: Orlando Airport/Port Canaveral

We are taking the June 19th Carnival Sensation from Port Canaveral. I have a week long business meeting in Daytona Beach prior to the cruise and my wife is flying from West Coast and picking up a car (I do not need one for meeting) at Orlando Airport on the 17th and staying with me for two nights. We plan to drop the car off at Port Canaveral on June 19th. After the cruise on June 23, we are taking a rental car from Port Canaveral to go to the Orlando area and returning it to Orlando airport on June 28.

I have done a lot of checking of car rental rates of two types: Rent the car at MCO (orlando airport) and keeping until it is returned at MCO, and doing what I described above. I found that I save about $150 by splitting the dates of the car rental plus saving on parking fees. More hassles because I have to do shuttles from and to cruise line from car rental agencies, but the cost difference makes it worth it.

I also found costs of car rentals seem to be in two price categories, lower(alamo, national, thrifty and budget) and significantly higher (avis, hertz). Sometimes budget falls into the higher category. What amazed me is that I can find great rates on the daily or weekend rate, but the extra fees at MCO are high. I booked with Thrifty and the base rate for the first segment is $40 but the additional airport taxes, drop off fee, recovery fees, etc bring the total to $79. [Drop off fee is $17] Also, if you want your spouse to drive it is $9.99 per day, and if you want to take LDW it is $27 a day. For the second segment the base fee is $194, drop off fee is $40 and other fees bring the total to $268. The lower based rental agencies have different fee structures to some degree, but the grand totals are very similar, with or without drop off fees. If you want Hertz or Avis, be prepared to fork over a lot more dollars.

I am not prepaying the two car rental segments, only reserving. I am checking rates later to see if they might have lowered or specials are available.

I chose Thrifty because the rate was acceptable relative to other quotes and it has an office near the cruise line that has a free shuttle.

If others have better strategies or lower sources of costs for car rentals I would like to learn of your suggestions.

I did some reviews of the different car rental agencies and all have complaints about a variety of issues, but the greatest number are associated with agents having people sign for extras that they did not understand or saying an extra is critical, etc. Read the documents..a number of complainers admit they were in a hurry and just signed.

I normally use National. From the mousesavers.com website you can join the Emerald Club for free and this will allow your spouse to drive the vehicle. I also have an Entertainment Book and so use their codes and coupons.

We are flying into Orlando/Sanford prior to our cruise. I am actually using my company corporate code that they have made available to us for personal use. A one-day, one-way rental + less than one day rental will cost me $96 total from AVIS. My company allows for one-way.

So advise is to check mousesavers.com for discount codes and strategies on rentals ... also check your own company's available corporate rate.

Good luck!

Orlando has some of the highest fees/taxes on rental cars in the US :mad: (I think DFW is the worst, but Seattle is also bad) -- I guess they need to make up the tax dollars from somewhere and us tourists do not vote in the FLA elections.

With your situation I think you are doing about the best you can, unless some of the discount codes mentioned above save you a few dollars. When you get closer to your cruise date you might keep checking Priceline and Hotwire to see if you can get a deal on a car - meanwhile, reserve something you can live with and keep shopping. Good luck! :)

Regarding taking their insurance .... we don't because our own car insurance covers rental + we also use a credit card that has Loss of Use and car rental insurance. So before signing up for additional insurance, check your personal car insurance policy and also the credit card you plan to use. You may find that you don't need to pay for additional insurance.

A few years ago, we rented a car one way from Orlando to Port Canaveral and then picked up a car for the drive back. This was actually probably the cheapest car rental I've had at any destination. I think I used Thrifty at the time. I'm sure their rates vary, but it was much cheaper for us to have two one-way rentals than to have one rental and pay rental and parking fees for days we were on the cruise.

I flew into the Orlando-Sanford airport a couple of weeks ago with some friends. There were 6 of us so we needed a minivan. We checked all the prices of the different agencies and made a reservation with the least expensive one. Then, another friend suggested that we use priceline.com. Best advice ever! We were able to get a minivan for 60% less using priceline than going directly through the rental company. The rental ended up being with Alamo. None of us had ever used priceline before, so we were kind of hesitant, but the transaction was smooth and everything was as promised.

I'm doing the same thing. I found Thrifty to be the cheapest from MCO to Port Canaveral, but with the higher fees to rent from Port Canaveral plus the $40 drop fee to return it from MCO, Hertz was cheaper for the trip back to Orlando. My total from Hertz on the way back was about $130 for two days with taxes. I'm using my company's discount code.

Thrifty was cheaper on the way there even with the discount code. It was $61 with taxes for 1 day.