Orlando car hire - satnav?

[captain_cynic]

//j17 said:

Dave Brand said:

Ascayman said:

Its America, all the roads are straight lines

Really? Just taking at random a couple I've driven, do a search for "Deal's Gap" & "Coronado Trail" then come back & tell me all the roads in the USA are straight lines.

Even some Interstates, e.g. I-90 through northern Idaho, are pretty twisty!

As a drained swamp Florida's not big on landscape features you need to drive around so IS quite grided. If you take Route 41 across the state, rather than I75 you have basically 20 miles with just 2 turns - and they are left/over bridge/right. No much of a camber on it either so once managed to drive over 3 miles without touching either the pedals or steering wheel. Even then it was just a tiny nudge of the wheel back towards the center of the road.

A lot of the US is like that. For every Big Sur (which is quite a nice drive when you're not stuck behind a Prius), there are a dozen I-5's (a straight road between SF and LA). But when you think about it, it makes sense to build highways as the straightest path between point A and point B. Its just here in Europe we cant always do that because someone who's owned an oddly shaped parcel of land since 1422 says no. The US had the room to make highways as they should be, long, straight and wide.

Doing Highway 1 from LA to SF took me 12 hours of driving, not including any stops, I usually recommend using 3 or 4 days and taking your time for stops... Taking the I-5 back to LA took 6.5 hours... and 45 mins of that I was stuck on a bridge due to an overturned lorry.

[98elise]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I've never really had a problem. We tend to rent places out on highway 27, and from there it's either 192 or 4 into the park areas. We do try to avoid peak season though

Its also been 3 years since I was there. Back out there this year, probably west coast rather than Orlando.

[//j17]

captain_cynic said:

The US had the room to make highways as they should be, long, straight and wide.

Fecking dull though!

[Terzo123]

I went last year and just used Waze. Being on the Three network it didn't cost a penny. Traffic updates were great.

Saying that, out of the 3 times I've been, twice I've been lucky and been supplied a rental with working sat nav without having to pay for it. With some companies it does seem to be the luck of the draw.

[RammyMP]

My last car was from Alamo, they asked if I wanted to pay extra for a satnav, I declined. We got a low rent Mitsubishi Outlander, had a radio, that was it!

[Sheepshanks]

A disadvantage with relying on sat nav is you don't get an overview of the area.

It used to be standard practice to get Mapman's Orlando Tourist map: http://www.orlandomaps.co.uk/

[The Moose]

Dave Brand said:

Even some Interstates, e.g. I-90 through northern Idaho, are pretty twisty!

That is true - especially once you get towards Montana. Do you know that part of the world well?

[Dave Brand]

The Moose said:

Do you know that part of the world well?

Not as well as I'd like to.

Last year we did Seattle to Vancouver, eastwards in Canada as far as Kamloops, down to Whitefish & across the US back to Seattle through the northern parts of Montana, Idaho & Washington state - first time in British Columbia, Montana & Idaho for us.