Driving to WDW!

[Northern Disney Girl]

Hi All Canadian Diser's! Since I booked our room only the other night, my hubby and I have been giving serious consideration to driving to the World! I know you all will think we are crazy, but we think it will be great fun! Our girls are super travellers and we would span it out over 3 days. My husband really enjoys driving and is very behind the wheel, especially on long highway drives! Anyway, I guess I was just wondering if anyone else from Northern Ontario or even MAnitoba had ever made the drive and what your experiences were like. Thanks for reading!

 

[iluveeyore]

Hi Kim! We have made the drive from southern Ontario many times - takes us about 21 hours over two days, so you should have no problems over three days - glad to hear your children travel so well. Ours always did too, or we would have never tried it. Now they're older so we either go just the two of us, or my DD13 is the only 'child' with us. We can usually get cheap flights out of Buffalo (10 min from our house), so we don't always choose to drive. Hope you have a safe and wonderful trip. One tip good for travelling through the US - stop at the Welcome Centre of whatever state you might be spending the night in and pick up a coupon book for hotels - they have great rates for travellers only staying for one night - usually $49-59 per night for four, especially cheaper for Sun-Thurs.

 

[katiesmom2]

We also drive from Southern Ontario with our 3 and 5 year olds. It is a 22 hour drive for us and we take our time and do it in 2 1/2 days. Our kids are also great travellers and we enjoy the trip down. We also really like having our car when we get to the World.

Check out the Disney for Families thread for some great printables for your girls to do in the car. How old are they? I made some travel bingo games for my kids that they LOVE. Color Wonder, DVD player and some fun CDs are also great.

Enjoy your road trip!

 

[Northern Disney Girl]

Thanks for the replies so far! We have a DVD player, colour wonder stuff, and many books and games to keep the girls entertained. Our route will probably look something like this -

Fri Jan 16 - pick up DD7 from school and drive to Eau Claire, WI (6hrs)
Sat Jan 17 - drive to Mount Vernon, IL (approx 8.5 hrs)
Sun Jan18 - drive to Cordele, GA (approx 9.5 hrs)
Mon JAn 19 - Drive to WDW! (approx 4.5 hrs)

As I said before, our girls are excellent travellers and enjoy just looking out the window and seeing the world pass by! This will be new for all of us as none of us have ever travelled any farther south (by car) than Minneapolis!

Anyone else have anything else to add?

 

[Debbie]

Enjoy your trip! You are going to have a wonderful time. And the ride down will be the beginning of family time! My kids loved the side trips that we took when they were younger, and still love trips to Cracker Barrel and miss the ones to Waffle House.

 

[pkitty]

we always drive there and always reqret the drive back. Then again even the ones that fly regret leaving as well. Take your time and enjoy driving through the season's. I always enjoy working my way down to summer.

 

[katiesmom2]

Enjoy your trip! You are going to have a wonderful time. And the ride down will be the beginning of family time! My kids loved the side trips that we took when they were younger, and still love trips to Cracker Barrel and miss the ones to Waffle House.

We LOVE Cracker Barrel. By the time we get to DW, we are quite sick of it though. I love to take DD to shop while we wait for our food to come (I tell DH that we need to stretch our legs, but we all know why we REALLY do it!). Such cute things!

 

[Thumper_ehhhhh]

Thanks for the replies so far! We have a DVD player, colour wonder stuff, and many books and games to keep the girls entertained.

Anyone else have anything else to add?

DVD is great. I would also recomend a few other things.
-MP3 player with headphones. They work great for the DVD player also.
-coloring books.
-reading books.
-video games.
-in car toys.
-road games.
-trip planning sheets for them to help make sudjestions on that to do in each park. You can print off the maps of each park and ride names. Let them plan away. Enjoy your trip.

 

[sapper1]

We make the drive yearly from New Brunswick to Florida and usually take four days but it is little further from Down East than from Ontario.
We love the Outback Restaurants for dinner and Ruby Tuesday's for lunch. Ruby's have a great salad bar so you don't have to have a heavy lunch and then get back in the car. If you belong to CAA I highly recommend their Trip Tik and accompanying travel guides. It tells what services are available at each exit of your route. They also list hotels at all the exits and you can phone ahead when you know how far you will get each day. If you don't have a reservation it is best to stop between five and six because the hotels will fill up. It is also easier to get into a restaurant before six. You may encounter quite a wait after six. When we are in Florida we always eat lunch around 11AM and supper by 5:15. At those times you will have little to no wait, except at Disney World where there is always a wait. After six PM in Florida be prepared to wait forever--especially at an Outback!!!

 

[Northern Disney Girl]

WOW! Thanks so much for all these great ideas and suggestions! I do have lots of time yet to plan this thing, but I do love hearing all these ideas! Let's keep this going, please! I would love to hear from as many people as possible! I bet there are lots more great ideas out there yet! Keep it coming!

 

[Shir Kahn]

We LOVE Cracker Barrel. By the time we get to DW, we are quite sick of it though. I love to take DD to shop while we wait for our food to come (I tell DH that we need to stretch our legs, but we all know why we REALLY do it!). Such cute things!

Yeah, Cracker Barrel is awesome, we always have to stop at one at least twice when we drive down!

We drive from Winnipeg and it takes about 32 hours. The last time we went to WDW was in August 2006 and we drove down in a car with no air conditioning! We brought along those huge slurpee cups and packed them with ice every gas stop or so. The ice water was fantastic for keeping us cooled down. Keeping the windows cracked open a bit while driving 170km/h to keep pace with the rest of the traffic also helped keep us cooler, although it didn't do much for our hearing!

We absolutely love to drive down, as there is so much to see on the way. Having your own car at WDW is great as well. We're having to fly there on this next trip and I'm really going to miss having our car. Not sure if we're going to miss the car so much that we're willing to shell out $300+ for a rental though!

 

[JackJack08]

we always drive there and always reqret the drive back. Then again even the ones that fly regret leaving as well. Take your time and enjoy driving through the season's. I always enjoy working my way down to summer.

Us too!!!! That is so funny! But then we end up driving again the next year. We drive from Southern Ontario too....and we always leave at 6:00pm or so. This gives the kids a few hours awake and then we have most of the night to drive while they sleep so they are not so bored. We usually stop about 4:00 am or so and get a room so DH and I can catch some z's. Then back on the road again about 9:00. This year we will have the new Caravan with the table and the chairs that turn, and the wireless headphones with the DVD. I am going to be in Heaven........

 

[canadianmom2three]

We have driven a LOT, from SW ontario - but usually we are not headed to disney rather to fort myers (even further south!) The first time we went, a friend told us to wrap up little trinkets for the kids, and surprise them with them at random times. We went to the dollar store, and got a bunch of stuff, and wrapped in tissue. Every hour or two we would surprise the kids with a gift to unwrap (our kids are not great travellers, so we would always say oh look how patient you are being or whatnot) and they LOVED it. It was a great trip, and now it is like a tradition that we wrap and give out the junky trinkets. Also we make little duotangs for each kid that contain maps we print off so the kids can track how far we have driven, which cuts down on questions about when we will be there, and also the license plate game, car bingo, and lots of other travel type games, wordsearches and disney games etc, plus maps for the return trip. We also bought the guide to I 75 which had all this fun trivia and information - great book availabe at any bookstore. Other than that, lots of patience, snacks and movies! It is a stunning drive, I love it (except when its foggy, or snowy, or raining so hard you can't see....) but mostly it is great, and beautiful, and when you finally make it to the FLA border and stop for the free OJ - you know you are 'almost' there. Enjoy the trip!! This year we are flying, and I am almost a little sad, because the drive really is amazing, but otoh, there is something to be said for spending 2.5 hours on a plane, VS 25 hours in a van ;-)

 

[Northern Disney Girl]

Canadianmomofthree - I loved your idea of the binders with maps in them! I will need to remember that one - what a great idea! Both my kids love maps! They come by it honestly - I am a map lover myself! Another poster had the idea of the little gifts every so often - that is a great one too! We have used that one on our drives out west and it is a keeper! I have already started collecting small goodies for our BIG TRIP!

BTW, You all are KOTS (Keepers of the Secret) cause my girls don't know we are going! We plan to tell them at Christmas!

 

[pkitty]

I love the free OJ too but even better is their free grapefruit juice.

 

[Shir Kahn]

I love the free OJ too but even better is their free grapefruit juice.