Pros and cons of using Miami airport

[squires55]

Just flew into/out of Miami as we toured round South Florida for a few days before driving up to Orlando. Miami airport was easy to navigate in/out of although it was Sunday when we travelled back. Drive back from Davenport to Miami took approximately 3.5 hours via the Florida Turnpike and was easy and quiet.

[esteeds]

Hi,
As many posts say it depends upon you and what is important to you. No doubt there can be significant savings however, when we did it a few years back we agreed never to do it again. there were 3 main things:

1: We arrived in rush hour and getting out of Miami was a pain. After a long flight we should have opted for a night in Miami or somewhere close. The drive up is boring, especially when it gets dark. I would say that it is more like 5 hours by the time you stop for refreshments / dinner etc.

2: We missed MCO - sounds strange but the mono-rail (and getting a photo of the kids up front) is a family tradition for us. Miami seems busier, more cramped and less friendly...

3: Packing up on the last day, we know we are in for a long flight and a long drive (Gatwick to Cornwall). When we fly out of MCO we spend the day at Aquatica, chilling out then drive to the airport mid afternoon and go to sleep on the plane. When we flew from Miami we had breakfast and headed to MIA just in case of bad traffic. It felt like we lost a whole day of the holiday.

We may try Tampa one day as we drive there for Busch Gardens a couple of times during each stay (we often stay around Champions Gate/US27/Ronald Regan Pkwy areas) and it is around an hour.

Good luck and have a fab time
Ed

[Wizz]

Originally Posted by esteeds

Hi,
As many posts say it depends upon you and what is important to you. No doubt there can be significant savings however, when we did it a few years back we agreed never to do it again. there were 3 main things:

1: We arrived in rush hour and getting out of Miami was a pain. After a long flight we should have opted for a night in Miami or somewhere close. The drive up is boring, especially when it gets dark. I would say that it is more like 5 hours by the time you stop for refreshments / dinner etc.

2: We missed MCO - sounds strange but the mono-rail (and getting a photo of the kids up front) is a family tradition for us. Miami seems busier, more cramped and less friendly...

3: Packing up on the last day, we know we are in for a long flight and a long drive (Gatwick to Cornwall). When we fly out of MCO we spend the day at Aquatica, chilling out then drive to the airport mid afternoon and go to sleep on the plane. When we flew from Miami we had breakfast and headed to MIA just in case of bad traffic. It felt like we lost a whole day of the holiday.

We may try Tampa one day as we drive there for Busch Gardens a couple of times during each stay (we often stay around Champions Gate/US27/Ronald Regan Pkwy areas) and it is around an hour.

Good luck and have a fab time
Ed

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Thanks for your detailed response.
We’ve decided as the savings are so huge we are going to do LHR-MIA with BA.
DH is happy to drive it and we will book a hotel for when we arrive and then be up early to drive to Tampa.
On our return we are going to book a night as well so will have some time to explore the area the day before and the day of our return flight.

Thanks for everyone’s responses it really helped. I’m actually quite excited to see a bit of Miami before we fly home.
Couple more days until my inbound flight date is live and we will be getting the flights confirmed.

[princess allie]

Originally Posted by Floridarules

That’s what we are planning this Year, booked the Sheraton- can I ask, did you book the car hire to start the morning after or did you contact the car hire people and advise that you would be collecting the next day? 👍

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Sorry for the late reply. We picked the car up the following morning. Saved a bit on the car hire this way too. We booked it as a fly drive with BA. We didn’t need to go back to the airport, we just crossed over the road and in to the car hire centre. It literally is opposite the Sheraton. The road is quite busy, but there is a crossing just up the road.