Driving from St Louis--any one with experience?

[PKS44]

Driving this summer from St Louis to WDW...probably leaving early Saturday morning or could go late Friday night...any thoughts and tips and experiences are appreciated regarding traffic areas, stopping or not stopping etc...

Paul

 

[DJBounce]

Hi
I've driven down to WDW traveling much of the same roads twice before.
I used my Streets and Trips program to calculate the driving time between ST. Louis and Lake Buena Vista and found it to be roughly 17 hrs.
If there is more than one driver, you can drive straight through easily. But if you have smaller children you might want to break it up into 2 sections.
Dalton, GA is roughly 8 hrs away from St. Louis and about 8 from Lake Buena Vista.
Atlanta Georgia is 9 hrs and 7 hrs.
Valdosta Georgia is a little over 12 from StL and roughly 4 from Lake Buena Vista.

Whether or not you drive straight through is up to you, but you could also play it safe and break it up. And when I say play it safe, I mean that tired and sleep deprived drivers have been shown to be as dangerous on the road as intoxicated ones, and getting into an accident on the way down the the happiest place on earth just isn't right.
The first time we drove down there were three adults to share the drive and we went straight through. I was working 7pm to 7am at the time and drove from midnight to 8 am...then let the other two drive for awhile and took the last leg.
The last time we went my wife was the night worker and we drove mostly during the day (we left at 3am and were there by 11pmEST).
We are going down again in November (or next January, we have yet to decide) and we are driving in two days due to the unpredictablility of midwestern weather at those times.

Driving home we have stopped both at Chattanooga and Nashville and stayed the night.

 

[4407mark]

We've driven it from STL - left at approx midnight (kids were 5 and 4 - put them to bed and them moved them to the car) and we were in Chattanooga for breakfast (roughly 730). Had planned to drive through to Atlanta and stop but we were there at noon so we drove on through to Valdosta and got in there around 430. That included several stops for food and gas as well as a construction detour in Georgia (this was several years ago).
We weren't rushing but we wanted to get the bulk of the drive behind us the first day. When we left Valdosta, we made it to WDW in about 4-5 hours.

 

[Jon99]

As is the case for most everyone in the midwest, I think one of the biggest things in driving down is avoiding Atlanta during a rush hour..

 

[wdwfam]

I agree- avoid Atlanta during rush hour if possible. Especially if it is raining. We've traveled down many, many times by van. We used to pace ourselves - so far to Paducah, Nashville, Chattanooga, Atlanta, so on. It takes about 16 hours from St. Louis. Sometimes we drive straight through, sometimes we stop either north of Valdosta, or just south. When the kids were smaller, they liked to stop several times south of Atlanta to break the driving time up. I think they were those Magnolia gift shops. A must for us was a television/vcr. You can tell we haven't driven for a few years, since now everyone has a DVD. The drive isn't bad at all. Nice interstates all the way - once you get out of MO. Have fun.