Do you fly or drive?

[KelNottAt]

It's 920 miles (15 hours +) from my town to WDW. I've only made the trip by car twice - once in 4th grade, and once in college. I don't have any memories of the trips being either good or bad.

I doubt we will ever visit WDW more than once a year. Based on that, when we bought DVC, I assumed we'd always fly. But now I'm already thinking about conserving and banking points, driving for our first trip home, and saving money this year in order have a bigger trip next year.

I'm curious to find out what the other long-distance members' travel habits are. How do you decide whether to fly or drive? Is it based on the size of your party? Ages of the kids? (Ours are DS11 and DD9.) Budget? Frequency of trips? Distance?

When you must drive a long way to reach WDW, how long does it take to "recover?" Our first trip home is only 5 nights. Is that too short to make a car trip worthwhile?

Thanks for your opinions.

 

[goofy4dvc]

We fly. It's a 20 hour drive from Kansas. Once we retire and don't have to worry about vacation days and work, then we will drive down and stay longer than our current 8 days.

 

[Nick@ VB+OKW]

We always fly

. Can't see spending 3-4 days of our vacation sitting in a car

. When we retire in 4 years......then we will drive down and stop at Hilton Head on the way down and back. We also will stay longer and visit sister in West Palm Beach.Thats if we are not living in Florida by then.

 

[TDC Nala]

let's see... 2 hour flight vs. 15 hour drive... it's not much of a contest as far as I'm concerned.


But then, there's only me traveling, so I wouldn't save that much in cost by driving. And driving alone isn't the best idea.

 

[danny1649]

 

[Moonmom]

How do you decide whether to fly or drive? Is it based on the size of your party? Ages of the kids?

The last trip, (9/29-10/9) was just DH and myself. We flew from New York. I really don't like to fly...and last year when we flew Delta we ended up getting bumped...(twice) on our way home; our luggage got lost. We ended up getting home a day later; stranded overnight in a strange city. This year we flew into Sanford/Orlando.. much better. DH isn't all that much fun to ride with. Not that's he grumpy.. he just doesn't notice stuff along the way.. and it makes for a long drive.

January I'm going again.. this time with DD, who's 24; we're going down for the marathon weekend. DH is staying home with the dog and the snow. We're driving. One reason is that we were a little concerned about if there were to be snow or ice and problems with flights..this way we have the flexibility to leave earilier if the forecasts look like bad weathers coming in.

We actually have fun riding down together.. she told her told dad one day, "Oh, it's ONLY 22 hours .. it's fun, dad!" 'Course it helps that we share a taste in certain music... and both sing so loud to the CD's that we both drown out each other's tone deaf voice's... and we usually end up giggling over verses that we end up making up. Then there's the snacks that we pack... And the "goody bags"... yup... two grown ups.... and we each make a goody bag for each other... which we can only take an item out of when the other person is driving and when the driver says so. Then there's the rituals... having to stop at the very first Waffle House.... (we don't have them here) .... the "open all the windows and sing at the top our lungs "California Dreaming"... which we STILL can't get right!

Last year she went into a fit of giggles just because I decided to trim my hair as we were driving a long.. but I was bored!

 

[timC]

...about 16 hrs from Houston. We drive it twice a year.

For us, it's part of the experience. In fact the kids DS9&12 actually like the drive.

 

[lenshanem]

Considering i'm scared to fly now i'd say drive.

Luckily for us it is only about a 7 1/2 hour drive. Thsi is really pushing the limit, too with our 2 1/2 and 5 1/2 year old. The 5 year old is getting better, but my 2 year old lieks to be houdini and every 5 mintues has figured out a way to get out of her car seat.

Now if I coudl just get the courage to fly we coudl go check out California Adventure....

 

[mouseclick1]

We do both, but probably fly more than drive. I wuld rather fly, but it is a good experience to drive. We kind of go by what kind of airfare we can get, and if there is nothing reasonable being offered, we will just drive.

 

[kgforce]

Now that we have two kids (DD 3 yrs, DS 20mo.), it's a lot cheaper to drive to Orlando from Houston than it is to fly. (Especially if you like to get a rental car while in FL.) And it's much more convenient for hauling all their stuff around! The wife and I are self-employed, so time off isn't a problem.

We drove the for the first time in May and stopped and spent the night in Pensacola. The kids had a blast at the beach -- much nicer than our own Galveston beaches! With as many stops as we had to make to keep the kids from getting too restless, it wound up being about 18 hours in the minivan. I suppose when we get enough Continental OnePass miles, we will fly again.

We are driving again in December -- we'll be at OKW Dec. 13-19. Woo-hoo!

 

[michaeln]

We drive. But then again we only live 5.5 hours away.

 

[o.t.4disney]

This past summer we drove from Albany to Pittsburgh. 8 hr drive. Way too long of a drive and too much tension in the car. I can't see driving 24 hrs to Orlando when its only 3 hrs by air.

 

[Granny]

St. Louis is just over 1,000 miles to WDW. We flew the first trip, and have driven ever since.

We started when DDs were 9 & 7. And we've made four trips since then, all driving. We do it in one LONG day, but it's really not that bad except we lose an hour on the way there due to time zone change.

We like to have our car there when we are at WDW because we're always doing off-site activities and trips. It saves us a fair amount of money, and with all the entertainment gear in the car, it's an easy drive.

That's just us....but we'll drive every time.

 

[geffric]

We drive from Chicago

It takes about 22 or so hours.... Ds 9 and and DS11 have been doing the drive for the past 10 years... As long as we have the TV VCR and games.. works for us.. Once the kids got bigger and we have to buy them seats on a plane.. driving is our only option. much cheaper for us to drive ... We do it 1 to 2 times per year..visit lots of fun places along the way...

We take turns driving to make it easier..we also leave about 3 am so the kids sleep for the 1st 6 or so hours...

there are more tips on driving on the transportation board. :

 

[timC]

Hi kgforce...You're near us. We live in Tomball.

We also stop in Pensacola, but we usually pick a Holiday Inn express just off the I-10. Their free continental breakfast is a pretty good deal. Is there a good beach-front motel you can recommend?

Also. I play a trick with the clocks in our motel, the night before, by switching it eastern time. We get an hour head start on the day, and it's not as depressing when we actually cross into eastern time, and have to give up an hour. We check in by about 4pm. Anyone else do this?

Boy that I-10 is one long hunk of asphalt.

 

[xlstacey]

Coming from Oregon ... we fly. Waaaayyy to long to drive. Of course I love to fly over driving and also prefer to fly to Disneyland which is only 18 hours away .. of course unless it's just me we do end up driving there.

 

[bombero]

to save money I would drive.
It takes aprox 16hrs from Houston, TX area.
We borrowed a small tv/vcr combo for the kids(7yr, 14yr).
If you think about flying think this,
1)parking for you car at the airport
2)airfare for 4, probably min. $800 round trip at least.
3)transportation from Orlando air to dis property.
4)if you want to see other sites around Orlando, Taxi charges.

I figured it would have run about $1100 if we would have flown last time.
With me driving, $110 each way is what it cost.
Savings of $800. Even if I lose 2 days driving, I don't quite make $800 in 2 days at work.
Don't get me wrong, I wish I could fly and rent a car every time we go, but $800 is alot that could go toward our next trip..
Hope this helps.
corey

 

[jcodespoti]

FLY!!!!. Life is to short to drive.



Joe in CT

 

[Gail & Joe]

We drive from Pennsylvania. We don't drive straight through and we don't have any children along any more. They are grown and besides, my husband won't fly.

 

[ScottOKW2K]

Drive.

We live about 12 hours driving time / 750 miles from Orlando. Depending on when we leave, we will arrive at WDW about early or mid evening of the same day. I have decided that driving works out best for us due to a number of factors:

Cost : For the three of us to get from our house to our resort and back it would be a minimum of $500, and often more if we flew. Cost to drive : $0 , company van, company gas, stated policy from my manager since we have a daily deduction from the paycheck for the vehicle. It's a small deduction, but who am I to argue !?!

Time : Not as much of a difference as you would think. Our only real options flying from my closest airport are Southwest and Delta, and possible Northwest. Southwest has the cheapest and most direct flight - direct to Orlando - but the only schedule they have to Orlando is fly down evening , fly back morning. NO park time either day, and you have to get up really early in the morning to get to the airport for the trip home. Delta costs more , and you have a layover in Atlanta. By the time you start the clock from the moment you leave your house to head to the airport and then stop the clock once you arrive at your resort we found that we really didn't save a huge amount of time.

So that's what it came to for us - I haven't found the savings in time significant enough to offset the additional cost. As always, YMMV.