Driving - do you book a hotel on the way down?

[Greenfield1984]

Hello,

We're thinking of driving on our next trip to WDW. It's about a 24 hour drive, and we would make one stop. My plan is to leave the house at 8pm (so the kids sleep through the night in the car - we've done this before for our trip to myrtle beach, so I know they will sleep through the night in the car),and drive for as long as we can! I don't want to make a specific plan on when to stop because I want to get as much driving done as possible on the first day. I plan on us probably doing a good 18-20 hours, then stopping for the night and having only 4-6 hours do to the next day.

Since I want to just wing it, I wouldn't be able to book a hotel. I can guess wherebouts we'll be when we stop (somewhere around savannah, ga it seems as per google maps).

So does anyone do this, not book a hotel and just try and find somewhere when you get tired? We'd be going either in January or next week (yes, I'm trying desperately to convince DH to bump our trip up), so neither is really peak travel time.

Has anyone ever had problems finding a hotel/motel to stop at during your drive?

thanks for any input!

 

[sam_gordon]

That's what we do. I'd hate to have a room booked somewhere and either get tied up in traffic and not make it, or be feeling "good" and want to get another couple hours in. The last time we drove (before we had smart phone/gps), we got a AAA guide book for Georgia. About an hour or so before we were going to stop, DW looked up hotels in the guide and called to see who had rooms available.

 

[wdw4rfam]

We drive every year- its an 18 hour drive for us. We never book a hotel on the way down. We always plan on where we are going to stop, and it never works out. We either get farther than we thought or not as far as we wanted- but never right as planned. Plus the price is almost ALWAYS better as a walk in. We have never had a problem getting a room.

 

[scout68]

We book a couple of different places a couple of hours apart. If we start to get tired or the kids have reached the end of their rope we take the first one. If we are going strong and feel good we will push on a little further. Most hotels will allow you to cancel your res. as late as 4:00 without penalty.

 

[badgirlgiz]

We drive down every year and had never had a problem finding a room along the way we usually stop at the welcome centers when we think we may be stopping soon they have books with coupons for hotels in that state and if they are open they can call and save you a room if you are going to stop in that state. We have used this many times and have stayed at some nice hotels at a great value. 45.00 - 60.00 and it was a great break befor a fun filled vacation.

 

[Greenfield1984]

Thank you all for your replies! I didn't think it would be a problem, but wanted to hear some first hand experiences with just walking up to a hotel. And thank you for the tip of stopping at the welcome center! We never stop at those places, so it is nice to know about the coupons available

 

[tobikaye]

Those coupon books are great for not only discounts, but also giving a good idea as to which exits have plenty of hotels to stop in and check.

 

[ncc1701]

A couple of years ago my cousin's family decided to wing it coming back from WDW to the Philadelphia area. They started to look in North Carolina at the half way point in the state and none of the chains they stopped at had anything available along I-95 until the DC area:
Needless to say they decided to just drive straight thru.

 

[njmom47]

I drove my mom home from FL this past May, and she would look at the map and figure out where we would be in an hour (or whenever she wanted to stop) and call AAA and have them reserve a room for us. Just make sure they do have a cancellation policy though.

 

[MommyRobin]

We just drove down from SW Ontario about a month ago. We didn't book ahead, but stopped at the Welcome Centre of every state that we thought we may be spending the night in. We picked up the coupon savers and saved a ton that way.

 

[Echo queen]

Great tips here. Thanks

 

[CPT Tripss]

We drive down every year and had never had a problem finding a room along the way we usually stop at the welcome centers when we think we may be stopping soon they have books with coupons for hotels in that state and if they are open they can call and save you a room if you are going to stop in that state. We have used this many times and have stayed at some nice hotels at a great value. 45.00 - 60.00 and it was a great break befor a fun filled vacation.

And . . . you can always use your cell phone to call places when you are close to see whether they still have rooms at the discount rate. Beats all the stopping and looking.

 

[crystaldawn]

We have driven for 8 years (different times of the year ranging from Oct through Feb) we never had an issue finding a hotel using the "stop when we're ready" UNTIL the last time. Our drive is about 24 hrs, we decided to split it into 3 days on the way down for some reason. I cannot even remember now where we stopped but our kids were at the end of their rope and it was making us nuts lol... When we stopped there was apparently a BIG college game someplace close and all the hotels were booked. We did manage to get a room but it was NOT great. They had cleaned the carpets the night before so they were wet, which sucked with a not quite walking toddler... they ended up taking pity on us and giving us another room which means that someone else got that one.

My suggestion is just don't wait til you HAVE to stop... start looking before that... then you have the option to continue on if you need to. Oh and we are in the dark ages here, no smartphones so I'm sure that it would have helped if we knew how far it was to the next exit that had hotels