Renting a car while on WDW property

I have never rented a car so I really have no background knowledge on the subject. We are hoping to be taking a long trip that may involve a week on WDW property and then a week off property. I am assuming that it would be cost prohibitive to rent a car when we arrive at the airport and have it for two weeks when we only need it for the second week. Is there some place on Disney property that we could get a car for the second week? If not, what are the most convenient locations to secure one? If so, can it be returned at the airport? Much help needed! Thanks in advance.

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Yes, you can pick up a car near Disney and return to the airport. Do a google search for Car Rental near Disney World. Then, go to the websites for any of the companies that match the search. You’ll select your pickup location, and set your return location to “MCO” (which is Orlando Airport" Then you’ll see your car options and prices.

You can, but it might be considerably cheaper to take DME back to the airport to pick up a rental there. It is almost always more expensive to pick the rental up at one location and drop off at another, regardless of how close the locations are. At least run the numbers!

Give this a look:
Alamo Disney Car Care

My advice would be to arrange to pick up a car on the last day that you are still at WDW. That way your family can continue to vacation & all of your luggage is still at the hotel room. You don’t have to drag your whole party and all you stuff to a car rental location. Keep it simple.

I don’t think the DME is an option. You’d need to lie to Disney (oh no!) and tell them a fake flight number and make your whole party go & bring all your stuff with you.

Or, one person takes DME and the others stay at the resort with the stuff. People do this all the time and you have paid for DME with the cost of your resort. In absolutely no way is this stealing or taking something that isn’t rightfully yours. And it could potentially save you hundreds of dollars.

We have done something similar on both of our Disney trips:
We land in Orlando, take Magical Express to our resort, and use Disney transportation for the week. On our last day, we pick up a car from Disney Car Care Center (we use Alamo) and head out for part II of our vacation (which is outside of WDW).
They make it very simple - we just call Alamo the day before and arrange for a shuttle - they send someone to pick us up at the resort and bring us to Alamo to pick up our car. (My husband has done this while I stay back at the resort with the kids, pack up, have breakfast, etc. - he has always been back in less than an hour.)
We do a one-way rental and actually drop the car off at a different location and haven’t had concerns about that being too costly (as opposed to returning to the same location as pick up.) The convenience and time savings of picking the car up on Disney property and returning elsewhere is worth it to me.

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Check out Car Rental Advice from JackOfAll - using @JackOfAll’s tips you may find that having a rental for the full two weeks is not that expensive after all. Personally, I like having a car when at WDW rather than relying on WDW transportation all the time.

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There is always ENTERPRISE - they will usually pick you up as well.

Also just price it out - you may find that it really isn’t that much more expensive. BOOK it early and then keep checking back. You can change Car reservations VERY easily. I booked our car out abour 4 months from the trip at $245 / wk. Now it is at $400. At the end of the day - we may just take UBER instead. I can just not pick up the car and no problem

There’s some great info already posted here. We used DME on our very first trip, but we called DME directly and told them we were not catching a flight home, but we would like transportation back to MCO and they set everything up for us. From there we rented a car for the second leg of our journey. I’m sure there is easier ways to doing this as mentioned above, like Disney Car Care, but at the time I didn’t know about DCC.
Just saying it is possible to take the Tragical Express back to MCO if you call them even if you are not catching a flight.

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We rented from Dollar Car rental through Priceline for the same reason- picked it up halfway through week at WDW, then drove to Fort Myers and returned it there. Picked it up at Holiday Inn close to Disney Springs, they sent a shuttle to bring me there and get it. Total for a week including taxes and fees was $336 for a minivan. I booked and rebooked a couple times.