Hire care in Orlando

[Disney1357]

Hello!

I’ve never been to America and we are just planning our trip to Orlando this November.

we are planning to hire a car because there are a lot of us coming and we are staying around 20 minutes from the Disney parks.

planning to hire two cars- my hubby and myself to drive and my father in law.

How does insurance work? I’m being told that we need to be sufficiently covered and the cover offered by the rental company won’t be full coverage (and they expect you to sort it out)?

Also are there any specific driving laws I need to be aware of? The driving and car rental seems to be the most complicated part of the trip!

any advice surrounding this topic would be greatly appreciated

It's been a few years since we went, but I know when you arrive they usually try and up sell on insurance. Before we went we took out an excess policy in the UK which was cheaper.

www.icarhireinsurance.com/insurance-information-centre/excess-insurance

Who is telling you that the car insurance from the car hire companies isn't good enough? We've always used Alamo and have their best insurance. It costs a bit, but we've always been happy.

Car hire, especially from Orlando Airport, is very easy if you sort it all from the UK (we do it through a holiday package with Virgin). All paperwork done here, just go to the bottom level garage at the Airport on arrival, show your paperwork and driving licence, choose your car and off you go. There are lots of companies there, Alamo, Avis etc etc. 20 minutes from getting through Airport Security to driving away.

Rules of the road are obviously different (apart from driving on the wrong side of the road) like turning right on red (google it, I think I've got that correct), but you get used to it very quickly.

Would recommend you get a car with built in Satnav.

Sorry that was an essay, we've done it a lot.

The major rental companies all offer fully inclusive insurance. Make sure that when you do your research that the price is given in £s. If its given in $s then its more than likely an American company catering for Americans who use their own car insurance to defray the cost. You as a Brit cannot do that.

I've seen that another poster has used Virgin. If I was you I would do a comparison with BA. I have always found them to be cheaper most of the time. The secret to all of this is homework and constant checking. The cost of flights never goes down after you have booked. The cost of cars does. I usually hire 9-10 months in advance. The price will usually halve before your holiday but you have to go in every week and check for discounts. Use googleflights.com to check flight prices and book directly with the airline. When covid started BA paid out promptly some others paid out up to 9 months later. These days I usually book the car separate through Alamo Brits, Discount Florida Car Hire. I check others as well. No loyalty to any company, cheapest usually wins.
You might be cheaper buying a US chip for your UK satnav. It can take 20 minutes after you drive out of the garage to find the satellite so study google maps know what roads out of the airport you need to take to get to your accommodation. The satnav will not locate the satellite in the garage because you will be under 6 floors of concrete. If you want more info pm me.

Last time we went we didn't bother hiring a satnav, we just used our mobile phone and it was ideal – quite a big saving on previous years. It works for us because we get unlimited data which could be used in the USA so worth checking that

If you will have a lot of people and a lot of luggage, it is best to take a minivan, it will be ideal. And it's best to rent it right at the Orlando airport. I know a service where you can book it online, click here

I was there last week. We had a hire car from Alamo at Orlando Airport. It included full damage waiver in the fee. We could choose any car we wanted from a whole row of them.
We hired a Florida map satnav before we went from eBay which was REALLY useful as the hire car didn't have satnav.
Be aware the parking is $25 a day in the Disney parks and $30 in Universal.
We stayed on International Drive.... there is a trolley bus you can use from there to get to Universal and IOA which only costs $10 for 14 days, so saved us a lot in parking fees at Universal.
Any questions do ask.

Remember you pay for parking per vehicle at the parks, so might be worth having one larger one that everyone can fit in. Also American cars have weirdly small boot spaces so worth bearing that in mind as well

I know you didn't ask this, but perhaps check if ubers might be cheaper? by the time we had $25 parking fees plus car hire etc it worked out slightly cheaper to get two ubers every day and we were 45 mins away from the parks. Super convenient and lower stress, we took boosters for the smaller kids and put them in a locker for the day with our lunches.