Uber vs. Taxi

One week ago, I flew to Orlando for the annual HIMSS Conference & Exhibition. With an attendance of more than 41,000 attendees across the United States and around the world, ground transportation at Orlando International Airport was in high demand. Therefore, I should not have been surprised to see this when I tried to request a ride from Uber:

In fact, there were no cars available in any Uber category at the time:

After several attempts to request an Uber car, with each attempt timing out, I decided to take a taxi to my hotel. The passenger queue for taxi service was long, but the line moved quickly. I waited about 15-20 minutes before hopping on board (just a little bit longer than my usual wait for an Uber vehicle), and I was able to pay with a credit card and add an auto-calculated tip percentage of my choice. The total came out to $49 which was about the same as I would have paid for UberSELECT (the least expensive Uber option at the time).

While Uber gets my vote in most circumstances, sometimes a good old fashioned taxi cab comes through in the end.