Driving 14 hours with a 1 yr. old?

[Tasha+Scott]

Dh and I are planning to go to WDW around May 2006. Our DD will be about 1. Dh and I usually drive the 14 hrs. from Mississippi to WDW. Sometimes we drive straight through, sometimes we stop for a night. We have never attempted it with a toddler before though. Has anyone else done this? It is a given that we will NOT drive straight through with the baby. We will probably break up the trip into 2 days w/frequent stops. I also will probably still be nursing so I am just wondering if anyone else has taken an extremely long road trip such as this with a 1 yr. old before. If so, how was the experience? We can not take a plane b/c Dh is deathly afraid of flying, so that is definitely out. Any tips or info. you can give me will be greatly appreciated. I like to be prepared well in advance.

 

[Tigger&Belle]

I've done long trips with babies/toddlers several times before. The hardest thing is entertaining them in the car since they are not old enough to do a lot of the normal entertaining things that older kids can do (ie, play video games, watch tv, read, etc, etc)--the good news is that she won't be talking back to you yet so it's not all bad.

Bring a lot of little toys for her to play with. I like to leave at "oh dark thirty" in the way early morning so my little ones would go back to sleep for a few hours. If you leave a 5 in the morning you can get 3 hours of driving in before stopping for breakfast, especially of you bring some safe munchies for your daughter in case she wakes up earlier.

Make the stops at a place she can run around. If you have food with you a rest stop is good. She could then nurse while you are eating and have some running around time (just not while she is nursing... ). Then have snacks in the car for her--just beware of choking hazards. Some people don't allow any eating in the car for this reason.

Or you can stop at a McD's or Burger King that has a playground. Then she can burn off some energy.

Of course at this point you have no idea what her traveling temperment will be. Hopefully she'll be the type to take long naps in the car! If not, your DH might have to work through his fear of flying, or is that not going to happen? That's a tough one.

T&B

 

[Familyofsix]

What we have done driving from northwest Louisiana is to leave at night 7pm or a little later and drive straight through the night. Its the little ones normal sleep time and just switch drivers in the night.

 

[Kristi1357]

We drove straight through from NH to WDW twice with DS. The first time he was 6 months and the second time he was 17 months.

Even though the driving is hard on us, esp. going straight through (approx. 24 hours) - we thought it was better since DS could sleep 12 hours of the trip at night. On the drive home when DS was 6 mos., we did stop overnight. What a mistake for us! He was so screwed up from traveling, he screamed/cried in the hotel all night unless we held him. So, we didn't really get any rest anyway. We should have kept driving instead. But then again, every child is different.

We had a portable VCP this past trip and it was worth it's weight in gold! I now know Aladdin, word for word. Definately have a VCP or DVD in the car!