Staying at Dolphin Hotel - Car Hire...

[BevS97]

You can collect a hire car at the dolphin 🐬. So you could pick it up on the 2nd day.

We had a few days without a car last year and it was ok but I definitely prefer the flexibility of a car.

[WASTID]

Seems that Hertz no longer offer a facility to collect car from the Royal Pacific or any of the onsite hotels. Which changes the dynamics a little!

Once we check out of the RPH on the Saturday we would have to get to a hire collection point somewhere nearby such as International Drive which starts to add in the issue of do we take all our luggage to the collection or does one of us make our way to collect the car and drive back etc. This for me seems to start to lose the appeal of taking the cheaper option.

Going to investigate the cost of collecting a car from either the Dolphin Hotel on the day we leave there or from the Disney Car Centre and then just accept that we will have to pay to park when we stay at the RPH.

[3family]

Avis have taken over at the universal hotels AFAIK. There’s a couple of threads about it on here if you search

[WASTID]

Originally Posted by 3family

Avis have taken over at the universal hotels AFAIK. There’s a couple of threads about it on here if you search

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Agh! Thanks for that.

I did search Google for Hire Cars from Universal but nothing seemed to come up. I will give that a look now. Thanks

[WASTID]

Originally Posted by 3family

Avis have taken over at the universal hotels AFAIK. There’s a couple of threads about it on here if you search

See more...

Just to say thanks again for that tip off. We got a pretty good deal on a car with Avis via the Virgin Atlantic membership link up.

[elmspenguin]

Just seen your thread otherwise I would have posted earlier about Avis at Universal, we are doing similar with our car hire this year as staying at Sapphire falls for 8 nights at the start before heading to the gulf coast and back to Orlando. So we have decided to try not having a car for the universal part.

We have got a car for when we arrive at MCO for 1 night and dropping off at Sapphire falls the next day after doing our Walmart shop etc so only 1 night parking charge and then collecting our next car from Sapphire falls when we check out and returning it to MCO at the end of our holiday. We have saved over £300 in car hire and parking charges so will use some of this for any Ubers we need.

Original we had planned to drop off and pick up at Embassy suites on Idrive so Avis taking over at Universal hotels worked out great for us.

[3family]

Originally Posted by WASTID

Just to say thanks again for that tip off. We got a pretty good deal on a car with Avis via the Virgin Atlantic membership link up.

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Great stuff.

I know for some people the car rental is a huge part of their holiday and I’m not knocking that at all

But there are plenty of holiday makers who have a car and barely use it. In some cases they’d save a ton by just having short term rentals but I see many on here who don’t even consider that a possibility

As ever, different holidays for different people.

[WASTID]

Originally Posted by elmspenguin

Just seen your thread otherwise I would have posted earlier about Avis at Universal, we are doing similar with our car hire this year as staying at Sapphire falls for 8 nights at the start before heading to the gulf coast and back to Orlando. So we have decided to try not having a car for the universal part.

We have got a car for when we arrive at MCO for 1 night and dropping off at Sapphire falls the next day after doing our Walmart shop etc so only 1 night parking charge and then collecting our next car from Sapphire falls when we check out and returning it to MCO at the end of our holiday. We have saved over £300 in car hire and parking charges so will use some of this for any Ubers we need.

Original we had planned to drop off and pick up at Embassy suites on Idrive so Avis taking over at Universal hotels worked out great for us.

See more...

We did wonder about hiring with Alamo to go from MCO to the Dolphin and dropping the car off there (Alamo rental in the hotel), but by the time we land and get through Immigration we will just want to get to the hotel so decided to do Uber and will just have to accept the extra costs of food / drink in and around the Parks, Hotel, Boardwalk etc.

[WASTID]

Originally Posted by 3family

Great stuff.

I know for some people the car rental is a huge part of their holiday and I’m not knocking that at all

But there are plenty of holiday makers who have a car and barely use it. In some cases they’d save a ton by just having short term rentals but I see many on here who don’t even consider that a possibility

As ever, different holidays for different people.

See more...

On booking the holiday my first thought was to book a car for the full two weeks, but once I investigated the two week hire and parking charges it seemed crazy considering we don't / won't have much time to venture anywhere in the car during that week.

During week two at the Villa it will be needed a lot more and considering having a day trip out to somewhere other than a theme park as well. :-)

Thanks again though.

NB - Also going to use the Virgin / Avis Preferred link up for out final week up in Maryland as its looking the cheapest option again.