Preferred Rental Car Agency?

I like Hertz, because of the #1 Gold Club. I like walking up, finding my car, hopping in it and with little effort driving away. I guess others have the same program, but Hertz makes you feel kind of special.

Having said that, if the prices have a wide variation, I'll go with the cheaper one, whoever it is.

I've always been partial to National and Budget, mostly because I have a membership with their "clubs" and I've never really had a bad experience with them.

I've also heard a lot of good things about L&M in Orlando, but they're a little too under the radar for me to try them out.

I would have to give my vote to Alamo, I have used them in the past and the rates were very competitive and the cars were clean and dependable. No complaints, thus they get my repeat business. The last few rentals I pre-registered over the internet and never had to stop at their desk. I just picked up my luggage and went across the street to their garage picked out whatever car caught my eye (in my rental category of course) and drove out to their checkout booth and was on my way to WDW.

I've never had a problem with Alamo either. Also like National's Emerald Aisle.

We've never rented a car.... Is it easy to find your way around? What are the pros & cons of renting a car? Do you spend alot of time off property?

We never rented a car until I had to do so for a conference once. It was a heavenly moment. We've rented ever since!

It's very easy to find your way around. Disney World is basically two main streets and a bunch of turn-offs. Epcot is in the heart of it all, so your location at the Dolphin would make getting everywhere very easy. That said, turn-offs are quick, so I usually end up taking a wrong turn at least once each trip. But it's just a big circle, so you can get right back to where you were going very quickly.

Pros--
--You save LOTS of time. If you've ever calculated the amount of time waiting (sometimes in LINES) for disney transportation and riding disney transportation, you'd be amazed. You're paying $1500+ for a vacation, yet you're spending a lot of it waiting for public transportation! The "allow up to 2 hours for travel" from resort to resort is absolutely unnecessary. In a car, you can get from AKL to the Polynesian in less than 10 minutes.

--You can get off-site much easier. Consider if you need to get to a pharmacy quickly, run out of bottled water, want to go to an offsite restaurant, want to go to another theme park (gasp!), want to head to the beach for an afternoon...anything! You actually have mobility with a rental car!

Cons--
It's an extra cost.

But if you take a towncar, you're already dropping $100. With discounts you can find on Mousesavers (rental car discount page), you can get a car for a week for $200-$300. It's just not that HUGE a difference when you're already paying $1500+ for your vacation.

Just imagine how much more you could do with your vacation if you weren't waiting around for transportation all the time! Those 2 hours it would take you to get to your dining reservation could be spent by the pool!

I wonder how the cost would balance out for us with the towncar/taxi option that we use now? We use taxis on property for many of our dinners since we like to eat at the resort restaurants.
It might be cheaper in the long run with the added benefit of less waiting on busses for our trips to AK. ( I'd probably still bus to MK & walk to/from Epcot/MGM)

My thinking has always been that you pay so much for the WDW vacation, if you can spend an extra $20 per day to get some extra time out of it, it's worth it. I will say though that it can definitely be nice to not have to drive and there's an immersion factor to only using Disney transit.