The Story of How We Started

A couple years ago, I was searching online for the best deal for my son and me to go to Walt Disney World in Orlando. After booking our flight, I found several great deals for hotels just outside the Disney main gate. Then I noticed that they don't have shuttles from the airport. Digging further, I realized that unless you're staying at a Disney property, none of the Walt Disney World or Universal Studios area-hotels offer shuttles from Orlando International Airport or Sanford International Airport!

I spent hours Googling for some way to get from the airport to any of these hotels without spending a fortune. I found It costs over $460 to rent a sub-compact car for just 5 days! That's crazy!! Plus you get to pay to park the car at the resort and theme parks once you have it. (Not to mention all the tolls and the high cost of fuel!) There's plenty of free shuttles to take you all over the place once you just get to your hotel. So I kept looking.

This is the photo from a nationwide rental company web site - wanna guess what they charge for just 5 days rental? A whopping $465.32 (that includes the pre-pay discount! Otherwise it's $505.20)

In desperation, I finally called a cab company just to see what their rates were to get from MCO to any of these hotels..."60 bucks each way, plus tip". Ouch!

It turns out, some of the local limo and bus companies have shuttles that they run – and there are some decent deals to be found, if you look hard enough. The tricky thing is, though, a lot of the local transportation companies have extra hidden charges for the highway tolls (every highway is a toll road around Orlando!), plus there's airport fees, parking fees (why?), fuel surcharges, and so on. Sometimes the webpages have small print – somewhere – that tells you one or more of these fees will be added. "How much?", you ask. You have to call to find out, then the guy just wants to bargain with you – starting high and seeing if you give in.

In the end, we spent more than $160 extra to stay at one of Disney's cheapest hotels, the Pop Century Resort, so we could get there using Disney's Magical Express. Not exactly "Free", but it was convenient. We had a great time on our vacation - as you would expect.

A better mousetrap

That experience got me thinking, though. There surely has to be better ways to get cost-effective transportation from the airport to hotels in Orlando.

So, I did what any motivated web-geek would do, I started compiling all the rates from the most reputable transportation companies in Orlando including Priceless, Mears Transportation and others into a fully searchable database including all of their fees so that you can compare rates and find the best deal.

Today, OrlandoHotelShuttles.com offers the most comprehensive listing of transportation company rates for shuttles and private rides from Orlando International Airport (MCO) and Sanford International Airport (SFB) to Walt Disney World and Universal Studios area hotels.

Verified Best Price rates with no booking fees

We offer verified, all-inclusive rates from the best priced transportation firms in Orlando and book them right on our web site. Since our launch we have become Orlando's most comprehensive independent booking web site for private shuttles and private rides to more than 400 Orlando hotels as well as Port Canaveral.

We have grown into a registered travel agency focused exclusively on hotel shuttle bookings in Orlando. Our customer service team handles countless reservations daily. We continue calling and emailing Orlando's best transportation companies, over and over, to figure out how their final rates actually compare – and finding out which companies seem reasonably reliable – just so I can save a few bucks on my next trip. And you can, too! Find your best deal right here.

rick@orlandohotelshuttles.com

—Rick
Founder and Chief Fun Officer!