HELP, 22 hrs straight for $2100?

[scrapquitler]

Check Flights on Southwest from Bradley....Bradley is only about 1 1/2 hours from Brattleboro

 

[disneychic33]

I know what you're going through. We live in CT and decided to drive after seeing the cost of airfare. We drive a 08 Odyssey and I've looked at trip gas calculators too.....somewhere between $400-$500. Thank goodness prices are dropping. We are heading out the day after Thanksgiving and I'm really paranoid about holiday traffic on I 95 sooooo we might go to PA down through Virginia north Carolina. Good luck on your trip!!!

Good luck to you to! My trip isn't until March I hope you enjoy the park during the Holidays, it is so beautifully decorated! Don't forget toll money if you take I95, there are so darned many of them.

 

[disneychic33]

What are your dates? I have never had to pay those prices out of Buffalo. Syracuse and Rochester are also options for you as well. If you are travelling for Christmas or Spring Break you might be stuck with those prices but for other times keep looking. There are sales all the time, and prices fluctuate every few days.

Our dates are 3/16/2013-3/23/2013 DH only has 5 ays he can take, so we are doing Sat to Sat in order to get in slot of Disney

 

[DawnM]

I would drive. But I am cheap!

 

[disneychic33]

Check Flights on Southwest from Bradley....Bradley is only about 1 1/2 hours from Brattleboro

I will def check it out, I didn't realize that they flew out of Bradly.

 

[WellingtonR]

Depends on the day with sw out of Bradley. We ran into the cost issue with both them and JetBlue. Looking at your dates....high prices because that's winter school break for many in the Northeast like Connecticut. The reason why school goes all the way to end of June.

 

[Julie*]

I live in Vermont too (Colchester) and we have driven to Disney the last 5 times we've gone as a family. It all started when we didn't have the money to fly when the kids were really little. I think the drive is part of the fun but we're weird like that. We always take 9 days though and pick a new spot to visit on the way down. We drive straight through though on the way home and that can be rough.

 

[disneymagicgirl]

How about Priceline bid your flights?

 

[shopn24seven]

22 hours....2100.00. Thats a lot of money to save IMO....
I would drive it....
Maybe split it up over 2 days,, could you do that?

I drove it once from NJ...we did take our time...and this was with an almost 3 y/o. She did fine...

have a gr8 trip,, either way.

 

[kstgelais4]

E have figured it all out. Disney is going tom cost us a grand total of $6310.87. That of course is with a flight for five people. However if we drive, it should only cost around 450 dollars for the round trip. If we drive it will have to be a straight shot from Southern Vermont to WDW, the trip is roughly 21.47 hrs. I'm on the fence about luxury of travel by plane, $2584, roughly 3 hrs. (I don't know about you guys, but my vacation starts as soon as I am seated on the plane) Or I could drive taking turns with DH and save about 2100, of our hard earned money. He is no help he just says it's up to me. HELP!!

We live in MA. GPS says it's a 21 hour drive from my front door to our Fave WDW resorts front door. We have made the drive with all of our kids 5 times now. Our last was before our newest was born, so we had 6 kids in the car. It is very manageable! The kids look forward to the drive now. It is part of the vacation.
We usually leave at like midnight after DH has taken a long nap (He'll usually go to bed around 7ish). He drives until morning, we stop for breakfast when the kids get up, and then I will drive. He'll sleep while I drive, and when he wakes up we swap again. We usually check in the hotel 24 hours from the time we leave home. So we do a late check in, and we sleep for as long as we need to. We will start a little later the first day (I like to make a late morning character breakfast reservation for the first day), but we are both usually fine. It's never a wasted day.
Good luck with whatever you choose!

We drive from nyc non stop. We started when the the kids were little, now they are 22 and almost 17. We start around 3 am, my dh is a morning person,then I drive for awhile and he finishes the trip. Kids never had a problem. They would read, play game, listen to music and watch movies. We would stop for a quick breakfast, lunch at cracker barrel, and then quick dinner. Everyone would get out and stretch at gas stops. On the way home is another story. We always stop over night on the way back. We also enjoy having our car at Disney. I think it makes things more relaxing, but that's me.

This!

I know what you're going through. We live in CT and decided to drive after seeing the cost of airfare. We drive a 08 Odyssey and I've looked at trip gas calculators too.....somewhere between $400-$500. Thank goodness prices are dropping. We are heading out the day after Thanksgiving and I'm really paranoid about holiday traffic on I 95 sooooo we might go to PA down through Virginia north Carolina. Good luck on your trip!!!

We left for our last trip Thanksgiving night. It was amazingly a great drive! We didn't hit too much traffic!

I live in Vermont too (Colchester) and we have driven to Disney the last 5 times we've gone as a family. It all started when we didn't have the money to fly when the kids were really little. I think the drive is part of the fun but we're weird like that. We always take 9 days though and pick a new spot to visit on the way down. We drive straight through though on the way home and that can be rough.

This!

 

[Jenny-momof3]

We aren't quite as far....only 16 hours for us. But we drive it straight through each way. And I literally mean straight through! We stop for 10 minutes twice each way...my kids call it the 3G...fill the gas, go to the bathroom, grab something to eat. Then were right back on the road again. Round trip is $400 or less depending on gas prices. No way would I pay $2500 just in transportation!

 

[Ciciwoowoo]

On our last vacation, some of us flew, and my brother and his family drove. They left around 6 am; our flight was supposed to leave around 5 pm.

We ended up getting to our hotel only 1 1/2 hours ahead of him. The plane was delayed majorly; we waited almost 2 hours on the tarmac. If you factor in the need to get to the airport 1 1/2 to 2 hours ahead of time, the drive time to the airport, and time to either catch the Magical Express bus or rent a car, you really are looking at closer to 7 hours, at least.

And that is if everything goes OK with the flight.

We will definitely drive next time. We are in Michigan, and looking at roughly 22 hours. It will be worth it!

 

[monarchsfan16]

For those dates you could fly Southwest out of Bradley for all 5 of you for about $1700 or Jet Blue out of Boston for about $1800 round trip. The times aren't great, but the prices are a lot better. Southwest out of Manchester is coming up at $2100 round trip. I didn't check the legacy airlines.

The problem you're running into is that's spring break time. Although the public K-12 schools aren't on break then, that's typically UNH's break, and many other colleges. Airfares soar that week.

 

[BuzznBelle'smom]

We're just over the border from you, in Keene, NH. We typically fly out of Bradley or Manchester. Albany is NEVER a bargain (used to live in the Saratoga area and had no choice).

If you're up against the college spring break, you probably aren't going to find super bargains. But, we've found that sometimes Bradley is better, sometimes it and Manchester are equal. Logan is rarely a bargain. We generally fly Southwest.

Also, NH's Feb. break is a week later than CT's, so that's a good week to fly out of Bradley for us.

Don't forget to look at Sanford or Daytona ariports, too. Daytona is about an hour from Orlando, but it's an easy drive, the airport is very nice, and it's not nearly as crowded as Orlando.

With your limited time off, I would say you should fly.

 

[StuckInKS]

We are 20-21 hrs away and it would cost us over $2000 to fly. We always save the money and drive. I would prefer to fly (driving all that way makes me a nervous wreck) but our disney time is only limited by our budget, and that translates into at least 5 more days. Plus we do st.pete beach too (gulf side) so relying on magical express really isnt an option for us and renting a car would make flying even more expensive.

 

[funhouse8]

We are driving a relatively new Honda Odyssey. I was working on figures from an average between AAA gas trip planner and the gas buddy trip planning site.

Our Honda Odyssey is really bad on gas,

 

[dakotix]

Not the same as travelling with kids but we drove from Rhode Island to Port Charlotte FL with our two dogs. We left at 2pm and rolled into Savannah GA around 6am the following morning. I drove the whole way up to that point (I love to drive). The dogs did great..slept most of the way.

We stayed at a motel 6 in Savannah for about 8 hours -- just enough time to nap for a bit and take in the sites and then it was back on the road. My husband drove the rest of the way after that (another 6 hours to Port Charlotte). If our stop was Orlando it would have meant another 4 hours.

It was a great experience and I think the timing was perfect as we had absolutely no traffic to contend with and the overnight travel kept the dogs sleeping. The only thing I would have done differently is I would have stopped sooner -- like say around 3 or 4 am and got a room somewhere. That basically means stopping somewhere in Virginia-North Carolina. By doing that we would have been able to sleep a little more soundly and by the time we woke up, we still would have had a some morning left in our day.

There's really no way to do it without having your first day in Orlando being a washout. Kids will be cranky, you'll be tired and by the time you roll in, it'll be time for dinner anyway. If you are ok with that then its a great way to do it. But be careful, remember you have to drive back! Its always harder -- mentally -- driving back home!

 

[TomD]

Here is how I do it.

If airline tickets are $1500 or less we fly. Otherwise we drive. When we drive we leave at 4am Saturday morning and drive to the SC border and get a hotel.Usually it is around 9-930pm. Get a good nights sleep and on Sunday we arrive in Disney refreshed ready to go.

 

[kikiw]

We leave in 5 days for our 3rd road trip to Disney (25hrs) our kids dd(7) and ds(3) are great in the car. I make special trip binders with things for them to do, I make trip tickets so each time we enter a new State they add a sticker, then I have a separate "surprise" bag with some fun little dollar store items like glow sticks, or masks etc... I pull it out on those times when they get antsy and want out of the car. They get to choose something if they agree to drive a little longer. They also have a portable dvd player and ds/leapster game systems. We pack food and eat in the car so rest stops can be spent running around instead of eating (it also gives them something else to do in the car). We love having our car with us and I just can't bring myself to spend the money on the flight.

 

[kaytieeldr]

I'm sorry my children are DD11, DD7, and DS10. We drove it a few years ago and they loved the drive. The only problem is we stopped that time for a night and split it into a two day trip. This time my DH can bot get the time off to split it, so it would have tomb a straight through. Personally I work third and am so used to having very little sleep that I think I could probably drive the majority of it by myself.

The extra money would probably be put into a fund for another WDW trip in the future. We love WDW.

I am leaning towards driving myself I just can't bring myself to spend the extra $ even if it does make us give up a little park time and relaxation. However I think my DH is hoping I will choose to fly so that he can get on the Plane, go straight to DME and start his relaxation with no driving for a week. it is a nice perk but worth 2100 dollars?

Getting by on very little sleep is entirely different from driving hundreds of miles on very little sleep. Please don't do it. As good and alert a driver as you think you are - you're not. Your reaction time is slowed, your judgment is affected.

My suggestion would be to cut back somewhere else - change resorts, buy tickets from an authorized discounter, etc. - but at the very least, please absolutely switch off drivers every three or four hours.