Never rented car before - questions

I noticed that most of the "airport" car rentals are on Gilespie Street. The first hotel I'm staying at is downtown and I don't want to get on the highway. How easy is it to find LVB or Paradise from Gilespie? Our plane gets in on Friday at 2:30 PM. Our first hotel stay is at the D. We have pre-purchased tickets for Gordie Brown to pick up for the 7:30 show that night and need to eat the buffet before the show. Would all the car rental dilly dally eat up too much time causing us to rush?

Actually, we wouldn't even need the car our first two days downtown. Alternately, could we get a Budget rental at the GN on Sunday for when we change hotels to the strip and drop the Budget rental off at the airport location and get a shuttle to the airport on Wed? Or would the vehicle have to be returned to the GN? If the latter is the case, we wouldn't have time for that before our morning flight.

Finally, does anyone have any discount codes? I know they charge less by the week, but ideally I'd rather just rent the car three days for under $100.00 including all fees/taxes.

Any advice is appreciated.

 

LVB is two rights from the car rental facility exit. Very easy to find. And the majors are generally pretty quick about getting you into a car, especially if you join their frequent renters clubs. As for whether to rent from the airport or the hotel, it depends on the numbers. Whenever I've tried just doing a few days from the hotel with the plan to return the car at the airport, I usually found it was cheaper to get the car from the airport and keep it.

As for codes, try Costco or the other warehouse clubs if you are a member of one, your credit card or favorite airline. ACG also has codes for Alamo that you can get from their site.

 

Thanks.

Not a member of AAA or any warehouse club. Got an e-mail from SW rapid rewards advertising Avis today. Still expensive even with "35% discount".

 

That does seem to be true. I was concerned about the time crunch on the first afternoon we arrive.

 

Sign up for whatever special club that the company you are looking at has. We joined Alamo Insiders, Hertz (forgot the name) and Dollar Express. You will get better rates that way. I totally understand the avoid the highway thing...we were the same way the first few times we rented. To avoid the highway take rt on Gillespie, rt at the lights, right at next light (LVB)....take Tropicana to Koval if you want to make better time and avoid most of the strip. Koval to Sands...rt on LVB to downtown. I am always shocked at how quick the ride downtown on LVB is. (Using Koval to bypass the busy area). I have never used Budget but I know that Dollar comes out with sales on Sunday and Alamo on thursdays. Renting at the hotel is generally much more expensive. Since we started renting we have never gone back to cabs/shuttles. The freedom to drive around and get to know the city has been wonderful for us.

 

Including the exit from the Rental Facility it's three rights to Las Vegas Blvd. You'll have a smoother, safer and faster ride on I-15, though. As long as your rental is at the rental facility it should be fairly quick to get your car and get going. Sounds like you have plenty of time. You might find it worthwile to check costcotravel.com. Sometimes the price they offer is low enough that you could sign up for an annual membership and still save.

 

I usually have good luck with carrentals.com. Also check back frequently, prices change all the time. There have been many occasion where I reserve one day and the price drops the next.

You may want to avoid Fox and Payless agencies. If I recall correctly, you take a bus to get to the main rental center where Hertz/Avis/etc are and then switch buses to get one of them.

 

Is there any reason to avoid the highway? We are renting for the first time n trying to figure out the best route to Luxor. Guess we might just follow the gps. Worried abt it taking us on the Strip though...I don't think I want to deal with bumper to bumper traffic at midnight on Friday after a long flight.

 

There's nothing scary about the freeway but at the same time there is no reason to use it to get to the Luxor. It's pretty close to the airport.

 

I rent a car [usually Advantage] and stay downtown [usually El Co] every trip. I tend to stay away from I-15, it's easy to get on to, but can be a tad tricky to exit. Easiest is to take the Charleston exit, take a right, to LVBlvd, left to downtown. Since i know the roads a bit, if I avoid I15 i tend to go one side or the other of the Strip, i.e. turning on Trop, to the left to Industrial [Dean Martin?] or right to Paradise in which case i go one block past Trop to turn right. Thanks to the LDS influence early on, the roads are a grid system and pretty easy to navigate....

 

renting a car is pretty cheap.

I just use orbtiz/expedia for a baseline and then use priceline name your own price and short them a few bux.

usually $7-10 a day ( but tax is also like $10) a day. A Friday- Sunday rental is usually $60.

its worth it from the airport since you will save $20 cab fees each way.

fk

 

If we don't rent the car we will take the Wax bus downtown.

I'm not comfortable using a bidding service because then I'll be stuck with it and I'm not 100% positive I'm even going to get the rental.

Does anyone know if I could rent from downtown and drop the car at the airport?

 

I'm sure you could, but rental companies charge more for one way rentals and you'll get hit with the airport location fees as well. It's probably easier and possibly cheaper to rent from the airport for the whole trip.

 

my sister and BIL will be in vegas in a couple of weeks. they usually rent their car from advantage, they have a booth in the MSS and return their car at the airport. Not sure how much it costs or if they are charged for the airport return but you could go to the advantage web site to see.

I can understand why not to take the I15, if you get your car around 3:30 pm you may start hitting the afternoon rush hour traffic, especially on a friday afternoon, you may start to catch the weekend traffic.

As for traversing the I15 to downtown, I used google maps, used the street view and just kept going down the I15 until I saw the downtown exit. Kind of neat, you can almost have a road view how to get downtown. I printed pages for my friend so he knew what exits to take to get downtown.

as for the luxor, do NOT take the I15, just take las vegas blvd down to the luxor from the rental facility.

Also, FYI, fox rental is away from the rental facility, you have to catch the fox shuttle to get to their rental facility. Payless is located in the Gillespe rental facility but overall, service, availability of cars, etc. isn't as reliable as the national chains but payless and fox rentals are generally cheaper than the other agencies.

 

I've heard this from a number of people but don't seem to see it... I've checked every day for a month (no rush, trip isn't until September) and have never seen base price drop under $20 for economy/compact and this for Sun-Thurs rental.

 

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, to my surprise, they wanted $234.00 for the three day rental of their smallest car!

 

I have spent untold hours researching ways to save money on rentals in Vegas, and I concur that CarRentals.com is one of the two best.

The other is CarRentalSavers.com. This site is a promo-code consolidator, so they rate they offer is already inclusive of the best available promo code that they have access to.

Almost all of my Vegas rentals are from one of these two sites. It is how I found a $20/day convertible on Dollar for my upcoming trip.

 

ouch! for that price I'm sure that you might be able to rent a car at the airport facility for most of your stay (if not all of your stay).

Since my sister and BIL book a few months in advance I wonder if they check the rates regularly so get a decent rate, otherwise I'm not sure it would be worth renting from MSS and returning at the airport. But then again I think they got a charter package - air/room and meals for about $500 each so not a bad price, maybe they can afford he extra $200 or whatever to return at the airport.

IMHO, maybe best to just take the shuttles/or bus to downtown and when you want to rent a car, take the bus back to the airport to rent the car. that way you can return the car at the airport. I know, what a pain but not sure which option would be good for you since it doesn't look like you have time to return the car downtown and take the bus or shuttle to the airport.

 

Thanks

The more I think about the different scenarios, the time and money involved, plus finding parking or tipping valets, it doesn't seem to be worth it.