Orlando Day 2 - Factory Outlet Shopping - International Drive vs Vineland Ave

Every US holiday is not complete without a visit to the factory outlet. We started our Orlando holiday with outlet shopping after arriving on Saturday evening. It was the Veterans  Day Weekend and it was SUPER crowded.

There are two premium outlets in Orlando. One is located along International Drive (nearer to Universal Theme Parks) and the one along Vineland Avenue (nearer to Disney Theme parks. If you have the time to spare, visit both outlets (there are 30 mins drive apart). Although they have similar stores (80% same stores), they do carry different products and sizes.

After visiting both outlets, I definitely recommend the Vineland Avenue if you have to choose one of them. Reasons being, ample parking spots and greater variety. We went to both outlets on the same day. We were at the Outlets @  International Drive for 5 hours and spent less than $100. Disappointed, we decided to go to the Outlets @ Vineland Avenue. We only had 2 hours there but we ended up spending around $500! Even though both outlets have similar stores, somehow, the goods are different.

If you are a shopping queen like my siser but don't want to waste a day at the outlet or drag the entire family (with young children) along, I recommend that you stay near the outlet @ Vineland Ave. Retail hours are from 9 am to 11 pm (Mon-Sat) and 10 am to 9 pm (Sun). Since most of the theme parks are closed by 7 pm, you can still squeeze in 2 hours of personal shopping time after dinner with the family.

Oh yes, one more tip. If you have forgotten to print your VIP coupon, just pick up any discount coupon from your hotel and I am sure you can find a coupon to get the VIP booklet for free (which costs $5). Happy Shopping!

Orlando - Day 1 - Car Rental Nightmare with Dollar Car Rental in Orlando

After my great experience with Payless Car Rental for my Las Vegas Trip, I thought I have "nailed" car rentals for US holidays. Apparently NOT.

Car rentals in Orlando are quite a different ball game from that in Las Vegas. Firstly, it is way more expensive. The cheapest car rental available on my favourite Priceline.ca is at least $30/day. That is before the usual ridiculously high insurance. Instead of following my own advice, ie. reserve BUT don't PREPAY, I caved in and prepaid for car rental on expedia.ca because compact car rental was the cheapest there. HUGE mistake! It was cheapest at C$20.99/day including taxes for a 11 days rental on internet BUT once I PREPAY, I was held RANSOM. The ridiculously high insurance was even much higher than the one they quoted in Las Vegas.

On top of that, the first guy that we spoke with at Dollar Car rental told us that he highly recommended that we get the Sunpass for tolls for a one time cost of US$100 for the entire rental. Reason was that many of the tolls were "hidden" and Dollar would charge an administrative cost of US$15 on top of each fine. I was taken aback since nobody seemed to have brought this up tripadvisor.com or any of the other Orlando site that I checked. I thought it was also quite strange that tolls are hidden. What's up with that? We decided to seriously reconsider if we want to forfeit the C$251.86 that we have already paid for the car rental or pay an additional US$800 for insurance + the sunpass thingy. More than US$1000 for car rental for 11 days? I am pretty sure it would be cheaper to just take a cab. Besides, we don't have to pay for parking at the Theme Parks (which is $15-16/day) if we take a cab.

We decided to have a quick dinner and decide before we leave the airport. My husband asked his friend who was in Orlando just a few days earlier on his car rental and he said he got the rental for Alamo - which was right next to Dollar at the Orlando airport and his rate was $50/day including the sunpass thingy. He also mentioned that ICBC insurance covers car rentals in the US so we only need minimal insurance. We decided to check with Alamo before we decide.

Apparently Alamo was so popular that the staff was just hanging around to go home because they are all sold out for the day. No cars left at all. So, if you are going to rent a car in Orlando, check out Alamo FIRST. We spoke to one of the guys and asked him if it was necessary to get the Sunpass thingy if we are just staying in Orlando and he said NO. There was only one toll on the way out of the airport. It is only $1.25! In fact, throughout our entire 11 days rental, we only paid $2.50 for toll (to and from Airport).  PLUS the toll booths are CLEARLY marked and not hidden as described by the Dollar Rental guy. And if you have a GPS, apparently, you can set it to non-toll roads only. So, don't get cheated! I can imagine how cheated we will feel if we have paid US$100 for the sunpass thingy to realize that we only need to pay US$2.50 for the entire trip! What a ripoff!

Since all the cars are sold out at Alamo, we decided that maybe we should give Dollar another try and just stick to the minimum insurance and not get conned into buying anything else. The second person was much nicer than the first and he did not try to sell us the unnecessary stuff but I think we still got ripped off with the basic car insurance. We wanted the bare minimum insurance but we were charged an additional US$351 including taxes for 11 days. We definitely need to check with ICBC if we need to get any insurance at all for US car rental before our next US car rental.

The only consolation is that the second guy gave us a free additional driver and we had a free upgrade from a compact car to an SUV - although we would have preferred a Toyota Corolla instead of a Jeep Liberty since it was a gas guzzler AND it had no tinted windows at the boot so we were not comfortable leaving our shopping in the boot when we went to the factory outlets.