JAXPORT Rental Car Guide

A third option, parking the rental at the terminal for $17 a day while you sail, is priced further down. It rarely survives the math.

We read every one of these offices’ pages, and none mentions JAXPORT, the cruise terminal or cruise passengers.

The port still points you back at them. Its FAQ says to contact the company “directly for information on transportation to and from the cruise terminal from their closest location.” Whether any of them will drive you there is a question for the phone, not the website.

Visit Jacksonville puts the closest agency, an Enterprise it doesn’t name, “about 15 minutes away” — our own route estimate for Northside comes in at 14, with no traffic.

Further out, Enterprise runs branches at Woodland Acres and Sandalwood along Atlantic Boulevard and one on Lem Turner Road, roughly 9 to 10 miles from the ship by our estimates, plus Regency, which we didn’t route but which sits on Atlantic between the Avis-Budget and Hertz offices.

Regency and Woodland Acres list after-hours returns too — Sandalwood opens Sunday from 9 to 1, but takes no after-hours returns.

As their pages read, each ends the same way — a cab or rideshare to the terminal, since none mentions a ride to the ship.

Start with Sunday at 1 PM, then try Saturday at 2. Enterprise Northside and Hertz close at noon on Saturday and don’t open Sunday at all — by early afternoon, Avis and Budget’s shared counter on Atlantic Boulevard is the only office near the port still open.

When the checker comes back empty, the answer is the airport, not a closer office. Five of its counters run until 1 AM, and after that four companies still take the keys.

The parking fee looks harmless on its own — it’s the rental running underneath that costs you. On a four-night sailing that’s about $307 against $70 in cab fares — for a car nobody touched.

Return it before you board — and if the week keeps going, rent again after the cruise.

We half expected an all-night counter at an airport this size, and found none; Alamo, National, Dollar and Thrifty didn’t show hours we could read. For a return it hardly matters, since four drop options run past closing.

Picking up late is another story — land after 1 AM and no counter we could check opens again until six.

A comparison search will line up the companies it works with for your pickup-to-Jacksonville pair, one-way charge included in the total.

It won’t tell you which office is open when you pull in, or how you’ll get from the return lot to the gangway. Those two answers are above, and they’re the ones that go wrong on a sail day.

By Enterprise’s US figures a midsize takes 5 people but just 3 bags — a standard SUV holds the same 5 people with room for 5 bags. The full-size SUV seats 7 but still lists 3 bags, which reads like a count taken with the third row up.

For a group that size with a week of cruise luggage, the minivans are the honest fit — 7 people and 5 bags, or 8 and 5.

Florida’s child-restraint law doesn’t care whose car it is. Anyone 5 or younger rides in a crash-tested restraint: up to their fourth birthday, a stand-alone carrier or the car’s own integrated seat, with boosters joining the list at ages 4 and 5.

Rented seats aren’t cheap: $14 a day at Avis, “usually,” to a cap of $84, or $14.50 and $87 at Budget. Avis adds a $50 charge if the seat isn’t returned to the branch that issued it — the usual outcome of a one-way into JAX.

American, Delta, Southwest and JetBlue all say they’ll check a car seat free, so the cheap seat is the one you already own, not the one at the counter.

JAXPORT’s own route from the airport, I-95 south, I-295 east and off at Exit 41, crosses no toll plaza, and the Dames Point Bridge charges nothing either.

The one optional exception is the I-295 express lanes, which by local reporting charge 50¢ a trip at weekday rush hours and take SunPass only.

Drive up from Orlando and you’ll meet a single plaza leaving MCO, $2.24 with a transponder — from Disney or Universal, none at all.

The fee is the trap, not the toll. One toll day switches on the rental company’s program.

Enterprise, Alamo and National bill $4.95 on any day the car touches a toll road, no more than $34.65 a rental, and pass the toll through at its video, cash or undiscounted price, whichever is highest. Avis and Budget’s e-Toll is $6.95 a toll day, capped at $34.95, plus non-discounted tolls, with e-Toll Unlimited sold separately and billed every day.

PlatePass All-Inclusive at Hertz, Dollar and Thrifty costs $14.99 a day in Florida and bills every day of the rental, tolls folded in; there is a weekly ceiling, but we couldn’t pin down its amount. Decline it, roll through a cashless plaza regardless, and Hertz charges $9.99 for that toll day on top of the toll.

Bring a transponder from home (E-ZPass, E-PASS, SunPass or SunPass PRO) and link the rental’s plate for your dates, unlinking it once you’re done. There’s no program fee that way, and it’s your ticket into the express lanes, I-295’s and I-4’s alike.