USA fly drive or book separately??

louthemoo20

I’m looking at a cross country trip in the US from Chicago to LA and would like to visit a few places along the way so I want to drive. Can anyone advise whether to go for a fly drive holiday or to book flights, car hire and accommodation separately? If done separately can anyone recommend car hire companies (taking into account there will be a drop off charge)? Advice on car hire insurance is also welcome!

johnnyroper

louthemoo20 wrote: »

I’m looking at a cross country trip in the US from Chicago to LA and would like to visit a few places along the way so I want to drive. Can anyone advise whether to go for a fly drive holiday or to book flights, car hire and accommodation separately? If done separately can anyone recommend car hire companies (taking into account there will be a drop off charge)? Advice on car hire insurance is also welcome!

in my opinion you are better to book it all seperate it will work out so much cheaper.

as for car hire give these a try they tend to be competative http://www.carhire3000.com/info/car-hire-usa/
make sure you take the decent insurance package as with the base insurance you will be responsible for costs to repair/replace the car with the top insurance you do not have to pay anything other than tolls or fines.

for flights try skyscanner,expedia and places like that.

Tippytoes

Without a doubt, it will be cheaper to book separately. When you have worked out an approximate itinerary, check websites like Tripadvisor for consumer reviews on hotels, restaurants etc. Their travel forums are really good. Depending on what time of year you travel, I'd even suggest that you don't pre-book hotels - you may find that you'll get even better rates as a "walk in". I've done this many, many times and saved a fortune. i.e. if the rate is too high, turn to walk away. Most of the time, they will lower them, expecially in the current climate.

I once rented a car on the east coast and returned to LA, expecting several hundred dollars one way drop off fee. They didn't charge me a bean! (I was later tipped off that sometimes there is an actual shortage of rental cars in California, so I was kinda being "rewarded" for dropping one off) Maybe a one-off, but you never know.

Think of your holiday in the same way as you would with other purchases. Cut out the middle man and you will save.

dzug1

Bear in mind if things go wrong, many US hotels make no charge if you cancel before 4pm or even 6pm on the day of arrival. Just avoid the internet prepayment no cancel rates.

Same for some car hire deals

Spursman180

Are you thinking of doing the route 66 trip, it's one I've alway fancied trying. There are numerous websites that give blow by blow accounts, directions, tips on accommodation, places to visit on the way.

Keep us posted on your plans be interested to see.

Kuromei

hi.. we did this a few years ago and booked it all separately. We used a company called Alamo for our car hire and had no problems at all. We had 4 drivers on the insurance, and we arranged to pick the car up in Vegas and drop it off in San francisco and no extra charge at all!

hope it all goes well and have fun - its fab!

Vikki_74

Agree with the suggestions to book everything separately.

For the car hire we've always booked direct with whichever company we decided to use based on price, location etc, never used carhire3000 or similar although have heard many recommending on here.

We used both Aviz & Hertz for various parts of our trip to California & Las Vegas last year and found both pretty similar in terms of fleet, service etc. No issues with either of them and no charge for one-way rentals, although I think that does depend on what trip you're doing so might be different from Chicago. I have a great corporate code for Avis from work so tend to lean towards them, but would go with whoever is cheaper.

Dollar seem to come up cheap a lot of the time but are annoyingly vague about one-way rental charges, also we've had a couple of poor experiences with them renting in Florida so tend to avoid unless the saving is really significant - one car we had was soaking wet and full of sand when we picked it up, on another the steering columnn vibrated the whole time you were driving :eek:.

Used Alamo in Florida too and don't remember any problems - they let you pick the car you want from a row of say convertibles, SUVs, midsizes etc (at least in Orlando) which is quite cool

Whoever you decide to rent from, join their loyalty club online - it should be free and usually gets you in a quicker line or, in the case of Avis, your name up on a board with a note of your car's parking space so you don't even need to go to the counter - just go get the car and off you go!

Vikki_74

Oh, one more thing if you book the car hire directly with say Avis (same applies for all the rental companies)...use their .co.uk site not the .com one - that way they will package up all the insurance you need as a UK driver (it's a lot for the US, the cost often outweighs the cost of the actual rental :mad:) which seems to work out cheaper overall than when you have to add it on separately using the .com sites.

freeway63

i found for me it was cheaper to book together, so its worth shopping around. try dialaflight

gem599

i've been planning a fly-drive to New England... definitely cheaper separately but the company that have seemed to come closest were 'trailfinders' if you'd rather book together. Virgin were ridiculously overpriced... their package was hundreds more than the constituent parts (even when looking at their flights and their car supplier!)

let us know how you get on!

ferf1223

gem599 wrote: »

Virgin were ridiculously overpriced... their package was hundreds more than the constituent parts (even when looking at their flights and their car supplier!)

We've always found this to be the case...sometimes we look up Virgin Holidays to Vegas for the same dates we've booked ourselves just for giggles...when we see VH tags on people's cases we always say we would would love to ask them what they paid.