Tampa Alamo

[Averryy]

Hello,

Recently booked our flights and car hire direct to and from tampa, thousands cheaper than to MCO indirect!

Anyways, never flown into tampa before so have a few questions...

1. How long on average (I know difficult to say) does it take to get through baggage, customs and immigration? I imagine quicker than MCO.

2. Plan is to have the 2 drivers carry on past baggage to head straight to garage, how long and easy is it to get to car rental?

3. Is the selection better or worse than MCO do people think?

4. Not a tampa related question. Booked through virgin Atlantic and they say the car hire voucher won’t be available until 1 month before arriving, is that always the case?

Cheers

[fredflintstone]

Originally Posted by Averryy

Hello,

Recently booked our flights and car hire direct to and from tampa, thousands cheaper than to MCO indirect!

Anyways, never flown into tampa before so have a few questions...

1. How long on average (I know difficult to say) does it take to get through baggage, customs and immigration? I imagine quicker than MCO.

2. Plan is to have the 2 drivers carry on past baggage to head straight to garage, how long and easy is it to get to car rental?

3. Is the selection better or worse than MCO do people think?

4. Not a tampa related question. Booked through virgin Atlantic and they say the car hire voucher won’t be available until 1 month before arriving, is that always the case?

Cheers

See more...

The BA flight tends to be the only flight in at that time, so the immigration hall is just BA passengers from the flight. If at the back it can take upto an hour to clear immigration and get your luggage.
Some will be lucky and few in minutes. Last time I went only 1 officer was processing people and 1 was standing next to him, but not processing.

The last 2 times, the first crate of luggage was through pretty quickly and early birds through immigration could be out within a few mins.
The second baggage upload seems to be about 40 mins before it came through. Talk about unlucky, both times we had half the cases through on the first load, but had to wait for the next unload before getting our cases.

So I go for between 10 minutes and an hour for those with luggage.

Its the nabout 10 -15 mins by the time you get to the car hire centre depending on speed through terminal and the 2 shuttles you need to get. Really simple. Get on first shuttle to main terminal, walk to the opposite end of the terminal, go up one level and get on the sky train to the car centre (2nd and last stop). Desks of all companies are here, or if have skip the counter, turn right off shuttle and go down escalators to the alamo floor.

Smaller than MCO , so less cars in a row, if any.

[jo williams]

Flew in on the 13th May, through and in car under an hour. Choice of cars is good, I would stay altogether if I were you as it’s now quite a trek through Tampa as you have to get 2 monorails to get to car hire place. Our baggage was already through and waiting when we got through immigration which took about 20 minutes, although we did fly over on a half empty very cold plane, everyone sat with there coats on. It must be a plane thing because people we met up with had the same thing two weeks previously.