Everything You Need To Know About Rental Car Insurance In California
Everything You Need To Know About Rental Car Insurance In California – After many years of traveling with children, I have rented several cars for my family trips. My husband and I tried almost every major rental car company from Alamo to Hertz to Enterprise. We tried bringing our own car seats and props and renting them directly from the car rental company. We struggled with children and luggage and wheelchairs on rental cars and airport trains.
Of course, being transported in a car with children, especially babies and young children, can be scary. Each airport has different procedures and policies. Each place does things a little differently.
Everything You Need To Know About Rental Car Insurance In California
How can you prepare for an efficient car rental when traveling with children? Here are all the things to consider when booking a rental car, as well as what you should do while traveling to minimize the hassle of renting a car on your family vacation.
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Do you need a rental car for a trip? Many families only think that they will rent a car at the airport they are going to. But make sure you always love it. First, analyze and break the numbers!
If you are planning a vacation at a resort and don’t leave often, you probably don’t need a rental car. If you are going to an area of the city with good public transport, you may not want this. If you’re going to a big city where parking is expensive, you probably don’t need it enough to guilt yourself into paying to park it every day.
Instead, everything you could want in these types of places is easy to get to and from the airport. Research and compare the cost of delivery or car service locally.
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The advent of Uber and Lyft means it’s easier than ever to get around (see my guide to taking Uber and Lyft with kids). And the explosion of grocery services like Instacart means you probably don’t need a rental car to go to the supermarket to stock your vacation or hotel fridge with food. (Related: Grocery List for Tourist Rentals.)
Do you only need a car for part of your trip? Instead of renting at the airport and having the hassle and expense of a full-time rental, consider renting a car near your hotel for a day to get to your destination. We did this at Disney’s Aulani before exploring O’ahu’s North Shore for a day trip (there are tables for rent at the Alamo in Aulani). Many large cities such as San Francisco also have car rental locations in major tourist areas near hotels.
So let’s say you think through the questions of the steps and really need a rental car for your trip, how do you decide to rent?
Family trips – especially with young children – often have a lot of luggage. The small car you rented to save money before you had kids may no longer fit the suitcases and wheelchairs in the box. But you also don’t want to spend more money than you need to.
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Car rental companies categorize their cars a little differently, but the basic classification of car rental from smallest to largest is this:
Ever since we added our second child to the family, our family of four has rented a midsize or regular car, no matter what. This is a very small space that provides enough leg room for children in a car seat and a car seat and can usually accommodate two large suitcases with space for a wheelchair.
When traveling long distances, we often choose a fully-equipped car to travel comfortably. If you plan to bring a lot of luggage or a wheelchair or have more than two children, you may need more. I would recommend renting at least a standard SUV or minivan or full size.
When my children were young, the biggest travel task I had to think about was getting out of the airport and into a rental car. If you’ve never flown with a baby or toddler before, you may not have thought about all of these steps. Taking a small wheelchair and all your luggage on the train or renting a car to a remote rental car location is difficult!
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Which strategy works best for you depends on the layout of the airport you arrive at. So do your research! Some airports – especially smaller ones – have a rental parking lot near the baggage claim and you can walk to your car. That’s amazing. Sometimes, if I had the choice of several airports to reach my destination, I would look for a smaller place for these better types of transportation.
However, most airports require you to take a train or bus to get to your rental car. Some have central car rental centers where all the major companies are located together. These airports use shared transportation to get you there. Some airports will have multiple cars for each car rental company to split the company’s location.
The method we use most with young children (and often still use today) is what we call divide and conquer. At the airport with a long rental car, my husband rushed ahead and took a taxi or train. He would get into the car while I was at the airport with the children. Many times we looked at the bag for me to take until he came back with the car to pick us up.
When you have to do this process in the background, the split also works. Many times I would ask my husband to leave my luggage and I would be left stranded at the airport. We will collect the bag from the ticket counter. He will pick up the car and take it to the station so we can meet. Then we went together to the security checkpoint to have two sets of older hands help the children.
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Of course, this policy does not apply to solo travelers! Whenever I travel alone with my two children, I really think about transportation. I packed properly so that carrying luggage would be less, I brought a child that was so heavy that I couldn’t hold my youngest or see that one bag was smaller than it could help me. In the stay I hired a shuttle.
The most confusing aspect of renting a car for many families traveling with small children is the car seats. I’ve done a lot of writing on car seats and airplane travel on this blog over the years, so I won’t go into detail here. To read all the details, check out my three-part guide to car seats on airplanes.
The main issue is whether to take your own car seat from home or rent it from a car rental company. My family has done both jobs many times.
There is risk and concern in one way – if you take your car seat from home, do you check it or use it on the plane? If you use it on the plane, is it worth it and can you really take it to the airport and have fun with the kids? If you check, lose or crash the plane? If renting from a rental company, is it clean or the right size for your child? How do you know if it’s an accident? Q. It is enough that you want to be at home.
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My best advice is to determine your own risk tolerance and then look at the actual itinerary of your trip – the airport you leave, connect and arrive at. I usually take my car seat as an infant and use it on airplanes (many of us buy extra seats for long flights). We rent car seats often when we have small children ages 2 and up who may be at risk. We have only once provided a car seat that was found unacceptable by the airport car rental company and were able to exchange it for a brand new one on the spot.
When choosing a car seat, my top picks for the ages and stages we’ve used the most with our kids are as follows:
Check out the other product guides in my guide to the best car seats and air travel props.
A quick tip.