DisneyWorld newbie

[Robatr0n]

Countdown said:

Thanks.

Any suggestions about satnavs? AFAICS my options are

Get a US SIM card with data allowance and use Google maps on my IPhone

Use NavFree on IPhone which apparently doesnt need a data connection

Buy or rent a TomTom

Where are you renting your car from?

If you rent something from the prestige/adrenaline range from hertz they come with Neverlost pre-installed.

Incidentally, I was there last week but rented from Sixt this time around. Managed to bag a Mercedes E350 for £200 for the week including fuel, drivers, taxes and insurance. They tried to sell us GPS but we're pretty familiar with the area and the car had an inbuilt one anyway!

The only downsides are that they are off-site which means you have to wait for a coach to pick you up from the airport, their car lot is tiny and they claimed I had hired a Nissan Sentra and offered to upgrade me to an E class for only $5 extra a day until I pointed out that I had infact hired an E class so they won't be charging me extra for it.

Oh and they include a deductable (excess) too incase of damage. A little odd really as you can rent a Corvette, Mustang GT, Challenger R/T or Camaro SS from Hertz with NO excess if you have the Loss Damage Waiver.

[Deva Link]

Robatr0n said:

Countdown said:

Thanks.

Any suggestions about satnavs? AFAICS my options are

Get a US SIM card with data allowance and use Google maps on my IPhone

Use NavFree on IPhone which apparently doesnt need a data connection

Buy or rent a TomTom

Where are you renting your car from?

If you rent something from the prestige/adrenaline range from hertz they come with Neverlost pre-installed.

We had Neverlost in an Escalade and it was worse (a lot worse) than useless - the directions it gave were just insane.

You really don't need sat nav in Orlando. Buy a copy of this map http://www.orlandomaps.co.uk befoe you go, it's brilliant. You get a feel for the place from a map that you can never get from sat nav.

Robatr0n said:

Incidentally, I was there last week but rented from Sixt this time around. Managed to bag a Mercedes E350 for £200 for the week including fuel, drivers, taxes and insurance. They tried to sell us GPS but we're pretty familiar with the area and the car had an inbuilt one anyway!

The only downsides are that they are off-site which means you have to wait for a coach to pick you up from the airport, their car lot is tiny and they claimed I had hired a Nissan Sentra and offered to upgrade me to an E class for only $5 extra a day until I pointed out that I had infact hired an E class so they won't be charging me extra for it.

That's staggeringly cheap for an E Class. Normally anything European is extremely expensive to rent.

Robatr0n said:

Oh and they include a deductable (excess) too incase of damage. A little odd really as you can rent a Corvette, Mustang GT, Challenger R/T or Camaro SS from Hertz with NO excess if you have the Loss Damage Waiver.

I think damage excess's are illegal in Florida (if not all of the US). Sure, they take a deposit, but only in case you bring it back late, lose the keys etc.

[Bitzer]

Is there any advice for going in February during half term? Mainly the weather situation.

[telecat]

Went with Thompson to Vegas on a 767 that wasn't nice!!!! As for United I prefer Non-Stop and ever time they come up it's a stop and catch another flight.

[Deva Link]

Bitzer said:

Is there any advice for going in February during half term? Mainly the weather situation.

It's very random. A couple of years ago my wife & daughter were there in the middle of Feb for a Disney marathon and it was literally freezing the whole week they were there - during the race water falling on the ground at water stations was freezing.

However the week before and the week after it was in the 60's F (16C).

[Countdown]

telecat said:

Went with Thompson to Vegas on a 767 that wasn't nice!!!! As for United I prefer Non-Stop and ever time they come up it's a stop and catch another flight.

Am being promised Dreamliner so hopefully shouldn't be too bad

[Countdown]

Robatr0n said:

Where are you renting your car from?

If you rent something from the prestige/adrenaline range from hertz they come with Neverlost pre-installed.

Incidentally, I was there last week but rented from Sixt this time around. Managed to bag a Mercedes E350 for £200 for the week including fuel, drivers, taxes and insurance. They tried to sell us GPS but we're pretty familiar with the area and the car had an inbuilt one anyway!

The only downsides are that they are off-site which means you have to wait for a coach to pick you up from the airport, their car lot is tiny and they claimed I had hired a Nissan Sentra and offered to upgrade me to an E class for only $5 extra a day until I pointed out that I had infact hired an E class so they won't be charging me extra for it.

Oh and they include a deductable (excess) too incase of damage. A little odd really as you can rent a Corvette, Mustang GT, Challenger R/T or Camaro SS from Hertz with NO excess if you have the Loss Damage Waiver.

If I dont take the Thomson package I'll be renting from Alamo. There's (at least) six of us so it will either be a Toyota Sienna or Cadillac Escalade. Price for Escalade seems a reasonable £500 for 10 days.

[Robatr0n]

Deva Link said:

Robatr0n said:

Countdown said:

Thanks.

Any suggestions about satnavs? AFAICS my options are

Get a US SIM card with data allowance and use Google maps on my IPhone

Use NavFree on IPhone which apparently doesnt need a data connection

Buy or rent a TomTom

Where are you renting your car from?

If you rent something from the prestige/adrenaline range from hertz they come with Neverlost pre-installed.

We had Neverlost in an Escalade and it was worse (a lot worse) than useless - the directions it gave were just insane.

You really don't need sat nav in Orlando. Buy a copy of this map http://www.orlandomaps.co.uk befoe you go, it's brilliant. You get a feel for the place from a map that you can never get from sat nav.

Robatr0n said:

Incidentally, I was there last week but rented from Sixt this time around. Managed to bag a Mercedes E350 for £200 for the week including fuel, drivers, taxes and insurance. They tried to sell us GPS but we're pretty familiar with the area and the car had an inbuilt one anyway!

The only downsides are that they are off-site which means you have to wait for a coach to pick you up from the airport, their car lot is tiny and they claimed I had hired a Nissan Sentra and offered to upgrade me to an E class for only $5 extra a day until I pointed out that I had infact hired an E class so they won't be charging me extra for it.

That's staggeringly cheap for an E Class. Normally anything European is extremely expensive to rent.

Robatr0n said:

Oh and they include a deductable (excess) too incase of damage. A little odd really as you can rent a Corvette, Mustang GT, Challenger R/T or Camaro SS from Hertz with NO excess if you have the Loss Damage Waiver.

I think damage excess's are illegal in Florida (if not all of the US). Sure, they take a deposit, but only in case you bring it back late, lose the keys etc.

Neverlost isn't too bad, in my experience it's been better than Garmin. Well, aside from the time when we set a rendevous point just off the PCH 1 and ended up with 3 muscle cars rumbling around a small residential estate with little kids running after us beaming from ear to ear.

But you're right, Orlando is very easy to navigate without the use of a GPS.

With regards to the E-class; we were originally going to rent the Mustang GT as I quite like the 400bhp+ it has but my brother found an offer from Sixt which we couldn't really turn down. They are fairly new to the US and have been pushing introductory offers which makes some of their fleet quite cheap.

I wasn't aware that Excesses were illegal in the state of Florida but it makes sense as I've never seen it before. When they first launched the ZHZ Corvette we rented the Coupe off Hertz and I asked what would happen if we were unlucky enough to be involved in an accident. The lady's answer was this "Sir, you have the LDW so we don't care what state the car is in, just so long as you return the keys to us".

The woman at the Sixt desk kept referring to the 'deductable' and even dumbed it down as excess for us. The contract had a deductable of $381 but she hand wrote $4000 on another piece of paper! Alot of money for lost keys or a delay in getting the car back to them.

Countdown said:

If I dont take the Thomson package I'll be renting from Alamo. There's (at least) six of us so it will either be a Toyota Sienna or Cadillac Escalade. Price for Escalade seems a reasonable £500 for 10 days.

That's pretty reasonable if you can get your hands on the Escalade. Pretty comfortable they are too.

We rented one a few years back to drive from Orlando to Fort Lauderdale and it was a nice place to be so we tried to rent one from Boston to Rhode Island and from Rhode Island through Conneticut to New York city. But sad;y they only had a Suburban available which left us dissapointed... until we got in the thing. It was practically fully loaded, nice to drive and had a nice throaty V8.

[Countdown]

Robatr0n said:

That's pretty reasonable if you can get your hands on the Escalade. Pretty comfortable they are too.

We rented one a few years back to drive from Orlando to Fort Lauderdale and it was a nice place to be so we tried to rent one from Boston to Rhode Island and from Rhode Island through Conneticut to New York city. But sad;y they only had a Suburban available which left us dissapointed... until we got in the thing. It was practically fully loaded, nice to drive and had a nice throaty V8.

Might be getting confused - that's the rate for a Chevrolet Tahoe "or similar".

Would an Escalade be classed as "or similar" ?

[Robatr0n]

Probably not, no.

They are considered the luxury or prestige choice out there so I doubt it'd be in the same class as either the Tahoe or the Sienna.

[5potTurbo]

A Chevy Tahoe "or similar" is likely to be something like a Ford Explorer or Jeep GC - not something costing double.

Escalades, being the U.S. most stolen car, are pricey to hire - unless you're very lucky at the rental co., which is unlikely.

[Countdown]

Ah fair enough

Got my hopes up then

[Countdown]

5potTurbo said:

A Chevy Tahoe "or similar" is likely to be something like a Ford Explorer or Jeep GC - not something costing double.

Escalades, being the U.S. most stolen car, are pricey to hire - unless you're very lucky at the rental co., which is unlikely.

Are the Explorerr & JGC 7-seaters? I though they were 5. ?

[cat220]

Countdown said:

Are the Explorerr & JGC 7-seaters? I though they were 5. ?

Had an explorer for my recent trip. It was a 7 seater, didn't use the two additional seats so can't comment on how good or bad they are.

[FiF]

When sorting and figuring out vehicle sizes, don't forget, party of 6 PLUS luggage / bags / incidentals.

You are therefore going to be in a Suburban / Excursion or whatever the current equivalent is for comfort.

They are big mofos to be sure, but quite amusing as a change. The monsters we used to get from the job garage used to provide amusement when revving the V10 in N at the lights.

[Deva Link]

cat220 said:

Countdown said:

Are the Explorerr & JGC 7-seaters? I though they were 5. ?

Had an explorer for my recent trip. It was a 7 seater, didn't use the two additional seats so can't comment on how good or bad they are.

I think Explorer is 7 seats as standard. We've had Jeep Grand Cherokee a few times and they've always been 5 seaters, I'm not aware there's a 7 seat version at all. Dodge Durango would be the next size up from the Chrysler brand.

[Countdown]

Now at Stage 3 - car hire

There will be at least 6 of us traveling (plus associated paraphernalia as mentioned by FiF. I'm looking at 4 large trunks, plus two smaller suitcases.

Will a Grand Caravan or a Toyota Sienna be sufficient? For UK comparison purposes I'd be OK in a Ford Galaxy with the 7th seat flat,

[Crafty_]

We had a Sienna in 2008, 5 of us with a case each + a 2yr old and associated gear, just about fitted although the journey from/to the airport was pretty chocker. When you have the last row of seats up (which you will) the boot is somewhat cavernous - see: Sienna Boot, erm I mean trunk

Don't know about the others.

[Countdown]

Crafty_ said:

We had a Sienna in 2008, 5 of us with a case each + a 2yr old and associated gear, just about fitted although the journey from/to the airport was pretty chocker. When you have the last row of seats up (which you will) the boot is somewhat cavernous - see: Sienna Boot, erm I mean trunk

Don't know about the others.

That sounds similar to us (3 adults/3 kids / 5 to 6 cases).

I'm guessing I will be able to drop seats 7 and 8 if I need to ?

Interesting linky btw

What's the smallest 7 seater anybody's been allocated ?

[Crafty_]

No the seats fold flat as per the pic.
From memory we had the 40 split seat folded down and bags stuffed all around the rear seat.

just noticed the url of that link