Chicagoland Friends - Any Driving Tips?

[mnra]

This might be shorter mileage wise, but timewise? The lights in Terre Haute IN are AWFUL and there are a lot of small towns on 41 that you have to slow down for. I just went that way to go to a family reunion and it's torture

We did that trip in 17.5 hours and it depends where you get US 41. A few stop lights was ok and sometimes it saves time for the bathroom breaks. I have gone both routes thru Indianolpolis and Louiville and you can get way backed up in traffic there also.

 

[famsen]

We've done the drive from Chicago to WDW about 10 times round trip. We take I65 to I24 to I75.
We leave around 3:00am and drive to Indianapolis where we stop at a Cracker Barrel for breakfast. Then we drive straight through to the Tennessee border and have lunch we packed ourselves. After that we drive right on to Cartersville, GA which is about 30 north of Atlanta, where we stop for the night. This puts us at our hotel at around 4:00pm EST.
We get up the next morning by 4:00am and hit the road. We stop for breakfast after about 2 or 3 hours. The next stop we make is at the Florida Welcome Center for our complementary orange juice. We end up arriving at WDW around 12pm or 1pm.
Driving through always sounds like a better idea then it actually is. It's a rough, long drive.
Coming home is a different story. We do usually drive straight through because we just want to get home and have some down time before we get back to work the next day.

 

[Tink1971]

We live in the far NW suburbs of Chicago and we are driving for the first time and leaving on Nov 19th too. We have gone 1-2 times a year for the last 8 yrs and have always flown, but we planned this trip last minute and airfare is just too high.

I have asked many people about which route is best and everyone has said to take 65 through IN and don't drive down IL. We have one friend that leaves at 3 AM from Bartlett and says to drive striaght through and another that leaves from Huntley at 8 PM and says to drive straight through as well. However, for us -- we have driven down with our families as kids but never as adults so we are going to leave at 3 AM and stay over night in GA on the way down and TN on the way back. There are Holiday Inn's right of the interstate and are about $80/night and we're projecting approx $350 in gas.

We decided that we're going to stop and see America a little bit each way and leave the hotels by 6 AM each morning.

 

[Bouncin-Tigger]

We are here right now and like pp we go 2-3 times a year and this was our first driving expierence and I have to say it was actually not bad at all, hit a few tired streaks but wasnt so bad. We left at 4pm and had 3 gas stops and a breakfast stop in the morning and arrived at the boardwalk at 1030am florida time. The kids slept thru most of the night and there was zero traffic problems the whole way because it was Saturday night into sunday morning. I did for the first time try an extra strength 5 hour energy which worked a little too good like a kid who ate 5 pounds of candy. The only thing we would change would be to leave a little later because it took a few hours for our room to be ready, we went to communtiy hall and killed sometime and swam for a lil while but didnt feel like we were actually here until we got our room.

 

[Tink1971]

Bouncin-Tigger that's awesome. Most people have said to leave at 8 PM, stop 3 times for gas and 1 breakfast via a drive thru and you'll be there in 17 hrs. Sounds like you had a similar experience.

For the person who asked about the Rockford Airport. We flew on Allegiant Air from Rockford to Orlando (Sanford Airport) and had a good experience. If your staying on Disney property you do not get the Magic Express service though. But if you were planning on renting a car anyways it's a good choice. The Rockford Airport itself is very small and clean. Parking is free and very close to the front door. Sanford Airport is nice as well. One thing to consider though is that they only have about 3 flights a week so if you miss your flight you're pretty much out of luck... the next flight might not leave for 3 days. So we gave ourselves a little extra time. The flight attendents play games on some of the flights or do raffle drawings. We were able to get round trip air for 4 of us for around $600 total --- which was AWESOME. They recently changed their gate times to Orlando so the prices are a little more but you can still snag $200 RT tix most of the time.

 

[ILuvTigger]

We always take the I-57 route and drive straight through. It takes us about 18 hours. That's with 3 stops for gas/food. We don't mind the drive so it's a much better deal than flying for us It costs around $400 in gas roundtrip plus it gives us the luxury of having our SUV out there and don't have to worry about extra baggage fees.

 

[FOXFIELDZOO]

Has anyone ever flown out of Rockford? We flew out of O'Hare last October and the whole flying experience was so unpleasant that we've vowed not to fly again unless we're going to Aulani. I was just wondering if going to Rockford would be an improvement.

About 20 years ago I drove down with my parents, my sister and her two daughters. We left at 7pm and drove through the night, then stopped somewhere in Florida around 2pm the next day. After going to bed early and getting a good night's sleep, we were able to get up and get to WDW around the time the parks opened. We took the I-57 route and the only real issue we had was my poor mom having a panic attack in the mountains (she has an extreme fear of flights, which is why we didn't fly).

If we go down through Alabama, would we miss the mountains? I'm trying to talk my parents into going down with us (DH, DS, DD and I) again, but I don't want to take my mom through the Smokies again!

Rockford is like butter but they don't fly out every day and you fly into Sanford not MCO no magical express and you would need to rent a car