We live just north of the Washington beltway and have made the drive to Orlando many times (besides loving WDW, our daughter and her family live 20 miles north of WDW). The drive for us - with short stops every 150 miles or so – takes around 13 hours give or take 30 minutes depending on the season (longer in the summer, shorter in the winter). I can give you a few driving hints. Hint number one – avoid the Washington beltway at rush hour. I live north of Washington just off of Rt. 270 and work just off of Exit 28 on the Beltway. I make that drive every workday. Fortunately, I’m going against traffic so the drive isn’t too bad. So here’s what you need to know if you’ll be going through Washington on a workday. The direction of the heavy morning traffic is from Rt. 95 to the west on the outer loop (counterclockwise). You must avoid this area from 6:00 am to 10:00 am. Unfortunately, this is the way you’ll want to go because going the other way gets you tied up in the Wilson Bridge construction. So that gives you your first planning point. The evening traffic in that direction is no bargain either but it’s not all that bad. If you can avoid that area from 3:00 pm to 7:00 pm – that would be good also. But the afternoon problem moves to Rt. 95 south from the Washington beltway (people leaving work in Washington and going home in Northern Virginia). This area, the first 30 miles south of the beltway, is no problem in the morning but is a nightmare from 3:00 pm until 8:00 pm. There is a HOV lane that will help. After that, Rt. 95 is pretty easy driving until you get to Jacksonville. In Richmond, we don’t know take the bypass and just stay on Rt. 95. It’s 5 miles shorter and not really any slower (plus the police seem to patrol the bypass a little more). There are a lot of services in Virginia where Rt. 58 crosses it and in Santee, SC and Brunswick, GA.
Another section of road that presents problems is Rt. 95 in Georgia, especially around milepost 30. If you google “I-95 Construction Georgia” before you leave, you’ll see what they are doing. They do the work at night – usually starting at 7:00pm – so at times when you think you’ll just fly through there, you hit serious backup. There are work-arounds on local roads.
You should plan on being south of Washington after the first day’s drive so you don’t face that the first thing on the second day.
The second hint is to be concerned with when you leave WDW. My experience has been that everyone seems to check out of there hotel at around the same time (9:00 am to noon) at hit I-4 and Rt. 95 north at the same time and doing so, they create their own little traffic jam that follows them all the way up Rt. 95. I know it’s hard, but we try to clear Orlando by 5:00 am (to avoid the normal Orlando rush hour traffic also) and we usually have clear sailing all the way home.
Thanks
