Anyone have any tips on car rental deals at (Seattle) SEA-TAC? Arriving August 1, need a minivan and an economy car for a week - there are nine of us coming for a wedding - including three kids in car seats.

I've looked at prices, and my jaw is dropping. As the matriarch of this group, I will be footing the bill. Help!

Check out renting from a downtown location instead of the airport. There are taxes and surcharges for airport pickups that can be punishing. Getting the crowd from the airport to the downtown car agency might be a nuisance (3 cabs maybe) but you might discover that even with the taxi cost the overall savings can be worth it.

Yes. Start with Enterprise.

HTtY

We used Priceline in March and got a Toyota Prius for $10/day. I know that car wouldn't work for you, but we've gotten good deals on car rentals in several cities with Priceline.

Enterprise is who I use here (in Seattle) when I need a car rental.

Typical advice here is to rent from a downtown location, not at the airport, to save money. But with 9 people needing to get from the airport, this idea probably isn't applicable.

Just checked with Enterprise for prices for a week starting August 1.

Minivan, downtown $559, airport $989.

Economy, downtown $334, airport $659.

Over $750 difference for both. (Still very high, but that's Seattle in cruise season.)

A Shuttle Express private van carrying 10 pax and bags will cost $115 from the airport to downtown; cabs or towncars carrying 3-4 pax will be $50 each.

Two URLs I've found that save money on car rentals:

1) Kayak.com
You can specify the type of car you want, as well as the location (airport or downtown), or even the distance between the rental office and a specific landmark (within half mile of the Space Needle, for instance). This is a great place to start for getting prices from dozens of sites. Enterprise might be the cheapest, they may not -- with Kayak, you can find out for sure.
2) Hotwire.com
You can specify a type of car and an office location (airport or downtown), and generally get a lower price than anything listed on Kayak. The only catch is that you don't find out which company until you put down your money. For me, because a car is a car, I've never had a problem getting rentals this way.

Thanks for the responses - I see that Enterprise is less expensive, but schlepping nine of us into the city (including a five-week old baby and two toddlers) after a two-hour flight seems like torture at its finest.

Hotwire has decent rates, but we are renting a minivan and an economy car - with the car being returned a couple days earlier than the minivan - so it seems as if we could end up with two different rental companies, since Hotwire doesn't tell you the agency until after you commit. That kind of puts the scotch on that, as we all want to caravan to our destination two hours away together...

So ... I looked through a number of online car rental search engines, compared prices and ended up reserving a minivan (Thrifty) for $724 for the week. I went through our airline - extra miles points, and the price was the same as with the big search engines. I'll go ahead and use Thrifty for the small car, which I'm not worried about there being inventory closer to our travel date.

Thanks to everyone who responded with information!

If you join Thrifty's Blue Chip club, you can walk directly to your car without stopping at the desk.

There are often promotional codes for Thrifty. I found a 10% discount using CHEP at retailmenot, which may work for your rental.

HTtY