anyone ever drive from Upstate Ny in Feb?

[samsid99]

Hello all,

I am back again...my itch to get back to the Dis stronger than ever!!

My last trip was in July 04 and we stayed at the Pop. Just me & DD (8 & 10 ), my DH will not go with us!

Anyways...I am wondering if any fellow NY'ers have every driven in Feb?

I would be the only driver with my two girls? How much is weather a factor.

I am thinking if I left Friday after school we could be there late Saturday evening? Is that reasonable or no...

Now too I have to make the decision between annual passes or the new MYW?

You can only get the codes with an annual pass correct?

thanks again your advice is always super!!!

 

[Disneyof3]

Were from a little further north than you in Ontario and we drove last January and had no problems with weather on I75. As you can see were doing it again in Feb. and taking the same route and people we talk to that leave from here have no problems with weather. The only problems is near Ohio, and the weather can be iffy there. Alot of Canadians go I75 because we miss the mountains. If we go through NY we hit the mountains and that is no good with the winter weather. We also leave on a friday night and arrive on Sat. in WDW. Usually once you get into Kentucky you get nice weather.
Hope this helps a bit.

 

[estherhead]

Where in upstate NY? That can mean so many different things. We drive from Ohio and it takes 14 hours. We start at 5 am Friday and drive to Savannah, GA. We get a hotel on Priceline, usually under $45.00. We get there around 3pm Friday. Swim, eat, relax. The next morning we get up at our leisure and drive the 4 hours to WDW. It works for us and seems relaxing.

As far as weather goes... you just never know. Having lived near Newburgh, NY (and my mom is from near Jamestown) and driven across state many a time in the dead of winter sometimes it's great, sometimes it's a blizzard. Oh the stories I could tell!

South of Maryland you should be fine.

Esther

 

[3guysandagirl]

We did ot once and haven't done it since! It was through the Poconos in PA that we had our problem. Snow to the point that traffic was stopped. Cars everywhere. It was a true nightmare. That being said, this winter has been so non-existant that you might be just fine! We broke up the trip quite a bit too and there were 2 of us driving. We left after work at night and got past DC that night and had absolutely no problems getting to FL the next day. Again, that was with 2 drivers though. Good luck with your plans and drive safely!!

 

[cricket429]

We will be driving from the Buffalo area the 3rd week of March so I will be watching your post for advice as well. Where exactly in NY are you leaving from?

 

[patsal]

My sister does this each year. They have not encountered problems, this is from Buffalo. Of course we have lousy road conditions frequently, but she has not complained about the drive.

 

[cmonroe]

May I interject? We live in Mass and it takes about 25 hours in one straight shot.
We have two little ones DS 1yrold DD4, so we broke the trip up into two legs.
Now it only takes us about 5 hours to get to New York from Ma. That would leave a twenty hour drive. Are you planning on driving all night into and through the next day with one driver and no hotel stop? I've only driven down once, so I'm not pretending I'm an expert, I'm just wondering how tired you're going to be trying to do it driving through the night into the next evening in one shot.

 

[samsid99]

My plan would be to leave right afterschool which is 4:00 pm and try to drive until midnight or 1 am. Then stop for the night and drive all day and evening on Saturday. I am thinking we are 22 hours away...our trip would start from north of Syracuse. I realize under any conditions this is ambitous, I just don't want to wait until July for our next trip. And my girls are old enough now that behavior in the van should not really be a problem. And we do have a FunTv Set with two monitors and headphones. By biggest concern was weather....and what route to take. Thanks again for any input.

 

[cricket429]

We got a trip tick from AAA. If you pm me I can give you information on the route they suggested for us. We are leaving around 11 or 12 at night, driving as far as we can can (hopefully at least SC) then stop and finish the next day. We do have 2 drivers but dh will be doing most of the driving. We have a 5 yr old so keeping her occupied is a priority as well. I am going to rent a portable dvd player and with leaving in the middle of the night, she should sleep for a good part of the trip and maybe shut her eyes for a while in the afternoon. We,ve never done this before so it should be interesting.

 

[Weluvdisny]

How far are you from Syracuse? We live in Fulton and we usually leave around 4:00 am Friday morning and have driven as far as Fayetteville, NC our first trip and Florence SC on our last trip. That extra hour or two driving the first day makes the second day go by so fast! We made it to Disney by early afternoon with time to check in and go to downtown disney for the rest of the day!

Most of our driving was fine. Only on the way home out last trip did we run into some bad weather in the PA mountains.

Good luck!

Don't you wish you could teleport there?

 

[Lori-n-NY]

Sorry I can not offer any advice but I wanted to say

HI to everyone that lives in or around Syracuse. I live in North Syracuse and work in Carousel Center..small world.


Lori

 

[DAWGPOUNDAJ]

Well I'm not from upstate NY, but from Northern Ohio. In fact as far north as you can get because Lake Eries only like 3 miles away. I've driven from there in January, February, and July down to Florida, and we get Lake effect snow. So a foot of snow at a time isn't uncommon at all where I live. We've also picked up a friend during our January visit from Syracuse, NY, and while we had a lot of snow we made it, from NY, in about 28 hours. Of course thats counting the multiple stops we kept making to stretch our legs, and I'm a bit of a road hog and tend to do all the driving. So I definitely think what your planning is doable, but you definitely, with two kids, need to break the trip up into 2 days, and make sure to get lots of sleep before you leave. Basically its your personal preference, if you love driving then it should actually be a fun drive depending on what highways you take, some are quite picturesque and might amuse the kids for awhile. I also don't think you'll have a problem if your the sould person doing the driving, but again thats if you can drive for long hours without getting tired. Keep all of that in mind before you decide to do the drive alone or not. Good luck on whatever you decide!