Parking at airport during holidays

[bcla]

SMF, on paper, offers 24 hour shuttles for parking and rental cars, even though the Rental Car offices are not 24 hours. But this year there has been a lot of controversy about shuttles not running. There must have been something to it because the airport just added 12 shuttle buses to their fleet.
Phoenix and St. Louis are the airports I frequent most often and recently have rented from. Never had an issue in Phoenix. My last trip through St. Louis in April during the eclipse was great, but they are off site now. Time before was years before, an the counters were in terminal then. I had a reservation thru Budget, arrived at the counter at 630 pm and it was closed. Called the 800 number and that was news to BUDGET. But got my car by riding the shuttle to the main airport location.
Worst was Enterprise at Calgary Airport years ago. Reserved a mini-van, road the shuttle off the airport property, and there were people lined up. It quickly became apparent that they had NO mini-vans, and several of us had reservations for one. They offered to take us back to the airport to other on site rental car companies if we HAD to have a mini-van. Very nice retirement age shuttle van driver took several of us back, and apologized. Said the local franchise owner took reservations without considering if they actually had the type of vehicle available. He said they only owned 4 minivans, all four were out on rental, and there were six of us right there with reservations for one. Ugh.

I haven't rented from a true off-site airport location car rental except for Enterprise in Miami back in 2006. I'd just taken a redeye from San Francisco, and (I kid you not) for some reason Felipe Alou was on my flight and not traveling with the Giants during the summer.

But Enterprise was open 24/7, but I was waiting something like 45 minutes for their specific shuttle. Might not be a problem now after they moved to a consolidated rental car center. But the driver was really good (offered everyone a cold bottle of water, which is fantastic in Miami), but I think the problem was that they might have only had a single shuttle bus.

 

[Breezy_Carol]

Not in Orlando, but in Baltimore we frequently use The Spot parking. There is one in Orlando. The Spot

 

[rafaelpalma]

Yikes, December 26th is a busy travel day! Book your long-term parking now if you can, even if it's a bit more expensive, it's worth the peace of mind. If you can't find a spot at the airport, those off-airport lots often have overflow parking, but you'll want to call ahead to confirm.