Driving suggestions from Jersey

[fieldfam4]

Yo, Hi!
So, since our last trip to the happiest place on earth my children have turned into adults so the 4 of us decided to save money and to drive from Joisy to WDW this August. The 4 of us will be sharing the driving; we check in on a Sunday and are staying 5 nights (Beach Club, yo). We were planning on driving about 12 hours on Saturday, and sleeping over somewhere so that we would have just a few hours to drive on Sunday for our arrival. I am looking for any suggestions as to the best driving route to take as well as any ideas on where might be good to stop along the way and on saturday night to catch some zzzzz's. I don't want to drive too much on Sunday so we can be fresh to start our active fun vacation.
Thanks so much!

 

[davidb69]

We drive overnight and share the driving with my wife. We normally leave 6:30-7pm at night and get to the hotel for lunch the next day and we only stop for gas and breakfast the next morning, normally at Denny's in Brunswick, GA. We generally take I95 the whole way down. Only tolls going south is in Baltimore $4 tunnel toll and on the way back the same $4 tunnel toll, plus an $8 bridge toll.

 

[fieldfam4]

When do you sleep?

 

[davidb69]

Well, I am generally off the day of the trip and I take about a 4 hour nap during the afternoon before we go. My wife will work and she we drive the first few hours, and I am resting more in the car. I will then take a shift until 3 or 4 am. I then wake her back up and she takes the next few hours while I get a few more hours sleep until breakfast, then I drive the rest of the way. Generally the first day we don't do too much when we arrive but are able to do anything really and are plenty of rested for activities.

For the kids they sleep from 11pm till around 5-6am(when the sun comes up).

Honestly the hardest part is driving from Southern Virginia onward because all you see is trees. It's what makes South of the border so cool to see because there is literally nothing out there except that.

Anyways, the way I look at it, we spend less then $400 driving instead of $1000 flying + possible rental car. The trip home is the hardest part of the whole ordeal.

We did this trip once in 2000 without kids, once in 2008 and once in 2009. We actually flew down in 2007. The prices made it semi worth it then. I think we paid $500-600 for the 4 of us back then. We just had no control of when we arrived and when we left and we are not patient enough waiting in those disney transportation lines.

We are looking into issues in northern Virginia that might alter our plans and take a different route to avoid this area but I am still checking this out.