Port Canaveral car rental question

[Anyislandwilldo]

When we disembark after our cruise, will there be transportation to the car rental agencies?  Is it just a taxi or do the car rental companies offer free transportation?  Thanks.

[Anyislandwilldo]

Is it best to get off the ship right away?  How busy will the car rental companies be on a turn around day?  We are planning on going to the Kennedy Space Center after the cruise and then to Orlando to catch a flight home.  Thanks.

[JaxsMama]

They have free shuttle vans. We had fttf and walked off basically first and took a taxi instead. We got there first and by the time we were finishing up the van had pull up. There was a huge line.  I hate lines so the $10 taxi was worth it for me.  Make sure you bring print and bring confirmation on rental.  I booked using cc rewards (bc of the price diff to drop at a diff location).  They had me down as returning back to port location and not airport. They then tried to charge me the difference in price when I corrected them. Luckily I had my confirmation and they honored the price. 

[Anyislandwilldo]

35 minutes ago, JaxsMama said:

They have free shuttle vans. We had fttf and walked off basically first and took a taxi instead. We got there first and by the time we were finishing up the van had pull up. There was a huge line.  I hate lines so the $10 taxi was worth it for me.  Make sure you bring print and bring confirmation on rental.  I booked using cc rewards (bc of the price diff to drop at a diff location).  They had me down as returning back to port location and not airport. They then tried to charge me the difference in price when I corrected them. Luckily I had my confirmation and they honored the price. 

Thanks much for the reply and the tip to avoid extra charges.

[Capt_BJ]

how busy they are is very dependent on the 'port load' for the day in question. 

 

Some days just one ship is turning around with a capacity of 3000 ... this means 6000 folks with half arriving and half leaving.  Other days can see 4 BIG ships with a total capacity of 15,000 folks ... meaning 30,000 trying to pass thru ....

 

it is worth looking at https://www.portcanaveral.com/PortCanaveral/media/Cruise-Assets/FY2019/Copy-of-Master-Cruise-Schedule19.pdf

[kochleffel]

My experience in February was that turning in a car before taking the rental company's shuttle to the terminal is difficult enough, and picking one up would be very difficult indeed, if several ships are embarking/disembarking on the same day, and worse if any of them is very large.

 

The problem is that the rental office fills up with people who have just disembarked and are ready to pick up the cars that they reserved, but the rental agency needs people who are embarking to turn in their cars, which have to be checked, cleaned, washed, and gassed up. After seeing this when returning a car, I canceled my reservation for my disembarkation rental and used Uber instead. I was going to SFB, not MCO, so the shared-van shuttles weren't practical. For two people going from/to MCO, the shared-van shuttles make sense.

 

The rental agencies operate shuttles to/from the cruise terminals, but there can be a wait.

[Illbcruzn4life]

On 3/23/2019 at 8:38 PM, kochleffel said:

My experience in February was that turning in a car before taking the rental company's shuttle to the terminal is difficult enough, and picking one up would be very difficult indeed, if several ships are embarking/disembarking on the same day, and worse if any of them is very large.

 

The problem is that the rental office fills up with people who have just disembarked and are ready to pick up the cars that they reserved, but the rental agency needs people who are embarking to turn in their cars, which have to be checked, cleaned, washed, and gassed up. After seeing this when returning a car, I canceled my reservation for my disembarkation rental and used Uber instead. I was going to SFB, not MCO, so the shared-van shuttles weren't practical. For two people going from/to MCO, the shared-van shuttles make sense.

 

The rental agencies operate shuttles to/from the cruise terminals, but there can be a wait.

 

That's the problem we had when we rented from Budget in port Canaveral. They didn't check in the car, clean it, or make sure they gassed it up.

 

They just took the car off the people returning and basically giving us the keys. I didn't realize this until we were on the road heading to the airport. They tried to charge me for not returning with a full tank of gas.

 

I had taken a picture of the fuel gauge when i realized it and put enough gas in to get it back to what it was at when I took the picture.

 

Since the contract said i had a full tank and the mileage didn't match up they said i took the picture of a different car.

 

Took a couple of weeks to finally get them to waive the extra charges.

[dsvd79]

Your cruise may offer a Kennedy Space Center Excursion that then takes you to the airport.

[bacm]

How late do you think your flight would have to leave to take advantage of the excursion to Kennedy Space Center?

[parothead]

This port schedule doesn't go all the way up to Dec when we will be cruising but the Mondays have 5 ships in port at the same time. BUSY