Driving vs. Flying. Am I nuts?

[#1 Mickey Fan]

We are planning at trip to the world in August and are having trouble finding airfare that will work with our budget. We have always flown in the past, but are considering driving this year to save the cost of the flight. We live in southwest Ohio and it looks like it would be about a 15 hour drive from here. My boyfriend thinks that we should drive it straight through, but I am afraid that by doing that, we will be so tired when we arrive that we won't really enjoy the first few days at the parks. I would prefer to stop halfway (or even 3/4 of the way) and then get up early the next morning, finish the drive and have a full day of fun in the parks. It is just the two of us, so we don't have to worry about stopping for kids, but I can't usually sleep in the car.

Has anyone ever done a long drive like that and found that it ruins the first couple of days of the vacation? We are used to doing the parks "commando style" and I would be really disappointed if we missed out on things because we were too tired!

Any advice????

Thanks!

 

[ncligs]

Fly.

 

[drewc]

I think you need to look at all the factors.

In our case, we chose to drive because we have a family of five. Airfare and mini-van rental would have run us about $1,500, with the best discounts available. Driving should cost us under $300 (we're driving straight through). There is also the hidden cost of wear and tear on our vehicle, and our own time and state of mind. In our case, we think we're young enough (and maybe naive enough) to make it a fun trip.

Granted, we did get a video system installed in our van, but we figure that we'll have that for future trips also.

In your case, with only 2 people, it probably makes more sense to fly, even if you have to rent a small car. You can probably do that for under $500.

We're looking at this as an experiment. If it goes well, then great - we'll know we can do it in the future and save lots of money. If it turns out to be nightmare, then we'll know that it'll be worth the extra cost to fly next time.

Actually, I'm also secretly hoping it goes well so I can talk my wife into letting us get a camper and do a trip to Ft. Wilderness every year. We live in upstate NY, so this all depends on how well our kids travel that far.

 

[dtauer]

We drove a couple of years and flew the remainder. There was a thread a long time ago called "Fringe benefits of driving" or something similar but I can't find it now.

If I remember correctly, there were a lot of good posts about why people drive, I'll start with what I remember from that thread and hopefully others will jump in.

1. The drive is a vacation in itself, seeing the country, being spontaneous with stops, seeing goofy stuff like "the second largest ball of twine in the world".

2. Getting to know your spouse/partner/kids better then ever before. The kids have a captive audience and you don't have a choice but to have time for them.

3. Driving takes longer, but is sometimes more relaxing then making a 7:00am flight, getting through security, making connections, worrying about delays, renting the car, etc.

4. We collect Disney art and snowglobes. When driving we don't have to worry about bringing them on the plane or shipping them home.

5. Kids have a lot more patience for lines after they just drove 25 hours to get to Disney.

6. A trip to the store for special movies, cds, books, etc that are reserved for the trip down.

If you can afford it, I agree, you should fly. But if it isn't going to be possible, there are a lot of benefits of driving. Hopefully someone else will add theirs.

 

[TexasErin]

We live in eastern Texas and always drive.
We leave about 8:30am and drive to Tallahassee (sp?) arriving there about 10:30 pm. We get on the road the next morning usually around 8:30am and get to our resort at around 2:00 pm or 3:00 pm and then head off to the parks. We think Epcot is a nice first day since it feels more relaxed than some of the other parks. We are never too tired to enjoy ourselves. And I can't sleep while DH drives since I am too scared he will fall asleep at the wheel!
We don't mind driving. I say go for it, especially since you won't have tired or cranky kids asking, "Are we there yet?"

 

[bobcat]

Hi fellow Buckeye! We usually drive every year and I like the drive. I know I'm crazy but it's not a hard drive, just long. Also with driving I have my own car and don't have to worry about transportation there. I have driven straight through and won't do it again, but then I was the only driver and I got too tired. With two drivers it would be possible. Driving a minivan my gas costs are usually between $80-$110 round trip.

Flights from Columbus seem to stay between $150-$200 if you can be a little flexible. Delta flys a nonstop shuttle and is a 2 hour trip.

 

[Mickey Mom]

HI!
We always drive to Disney. From our home, it is 16 1/2 hours door to door, no stops. We usually try to do the bulk of the driving the first day when we are really fresh. We leave first thing in the morning (usually 7am), and plan to travel 12 hours. (We usually stop for the night around 9pm.) We always stay at a hotel that has a continental breakfast (it doesn't take as long as a sit-down restaurant and one person can eat while the other person is still getting ready----we have teens who like to sleep in, so we let them sleep in, and we will go down to get them something to eat. All they have to do is get dressed, and they eat breakfast in the car.) WE usually only have at most 5 hours of traveling left for the second day, so we get to the Disney resorts in the afternoon and have the rest of the day to check in at the hotel, eat a nice dinner, and maybe have a swim in the pool. (One year we went straight to Downtown Disney and did our souvenour shopping before checking in at the hotel.) We like to plan our trip this way so we are rested for our days in the parks. We also go gangbusters at the parks, so it is important to be well rested before you go to the parks.
On the return trip we usually stay at the park all day, have an early dinner, then get on the road around 6pm. We drive until 11pm, check into our hotel, then leave around 8 or 9am the next morning. It really doesn't matter if we get home late or not. Luckily my husband doesn't mind driving at night. It would be another story if I were driving the night shift.

 

[punkin]

I drove alone from DC area with 2 kids ages 10 and 4 last November. It was a lot easier than I expected. We left at 5 am and were in Kissimmee having dinner at 7 pm.

On the way back, my husband was with me (he flew down later) and we took turns driving, but on the way back it was very hard to drive straight thru because we were so exausted. It would have been better if we'd stopped somewhere for the night.

 

[loveswdw]

You may also want to check for flights in and out of Louisville if you live in Cinci. They are generally MUCH cheaper out of Louisville. I checked Cinci everytime we plan to fly and its always much higher. Louisville is only a little over an hour south of Cinci. Plus, the last several trips we've taken were direct flights (which is what I prefer ). My DH WILL NOT drive to FL. He just won't. Its about a 16 hour trip one way for us from here. 2 hours on the plane each way. So, 4 hours in the air, 32 hours in the car. No contest. FLY! FLY! FLY!

We always have ended up flying Delta and we've never paid over $175 per ticket rt. In fact, the time before last I got tix for $135 each rt.

Cinci just always seems to be higher even though its a Delta hub.

Good luck!
loveswdw

 

[baileybrad]

We live in Fairfield and living in Cincinnati, you know where that is. Before we had children we would drive down to Knoxville in the evening (4 1/2 hours or so) after work and spend the night with my parents. We would then proceed to drive down to Orlando or Daytona Beach the next day. We have driven and flown over the past 11 years or so depending on the time of the year, airline prices, amount of time that we had available, etc. We flew just recently in early December out of Dayton. We fly Covington or Dayton depending on price. We have a 2 year old and a 5 year old with another one on the way so we had to purchase 4 tickets. We decided after waiting 50 minutes to get through security and nearly missing our plane out of MCO that we would be driving this fall. If you are concerned about being tired...break up your trip into 2 days using the evening and most of the next day or driving way down into southern Georgia on a long first day and zipping down to WDW the next day in 3 or 4 hours. We have had good luck reserving "free" rooms at Hampton Inns using our HiltonHonors points. We tend to drive a longer first day now that we have kids. We actually enjoy the drive with our boys. We have a very roomy Honda minivan and like having the ability of packing things that we think that we might need....just the mirror opposite of how one has to pack when flying. Good luck in your decision making. One thing that makes driving much cheaper for us is that we always rent a vehicle when in WDW which makes the flying option even more expensive.

We have never found driving down to cause our vacations to be any less enjoyable or make us overly tired.

 

[tinaluis]

We drove to WDW in January, 2003 from Chicago and the drive really wasn't too bad. We have three DDs (6,4 1-1/2) so we stopped in Georgia just before Atlanta on the way down and in Nashville on the way back. All told, gas, meals/snacks and hotels for the way down and back was a little over $300. Even if we'd gotten really cheap airfare, the rental car would have killed us because we were there for 2 weeks. In the past I've been successful w/ a rental car through Priceline but I couldn't get one and we decided we'd give driving a try. I figure we saved about $800 driving vs. flying without taking into account any wear and tear on our van. We are driving again for an October trip because that one will be about 2 weeks too and car rental, on top of airfare, would kill us. Bottom line, I'd say drive especially without kids and drive straight through if you can. That's what we used to do before kids and it really was easier. The first day we were a little sluggish but after that everything was great!

 

[erikthewise]

You're not crazy, but I'd say don't panic yet. Continue to plan for both choices.

As others have pointed out, consider different airports -- Louisville, Indianapolis, Dayton, Columbus, etc. I live near Dayton and often fly out of Columbus but seldom out of Cincinnati as the fares tend to be much higher.

(note to loveswdw: It's more expensive BECAUSE it's a Delta hub! Delta controls the majority of the gates, making it difficult for other airlines to compete. As a result Delta can charge pretty much what they want.)

The downsides of driving are obvious: you lose two days of vacation compared with flying, it can be exhausting, and you never really know how your kids will hold up until you try it.

If you believe in "operating costs" for your vehicle, driving can be expensive too. This is a tough call. If you believe that your vehicle will last forever and 2000 additional miles are meaningless (you may be right if it's a Honda!), then operating costs are minimal but still run 10-15 cents a mile. But if you believe figures that say the total operatings costs average around 35 cents a mile (ignoring fixed annual costs such as insurance, etc.), then that alone is $700.

 

[Pat_Elliott]

If your only concern is cash, then plan to drive, but keep looking for tickets. Check a range of options daily. Airtran runs some deep cuts, Southwest occasionally offers friend's fly free deals, etc. I often use US Air and via their web site punch in my flight data but choose "flexible" instead of a given date. Then I see if they have the date to suite me in their lowest price catagory.

Regardless, when it comes to the "cost" of driving versus flying, I've never made the numbers add up in favor of flying, especially when you factor in two extra days of vacation killed.

However, if I have the time to burn, I find driving superior. As you see in these posts, that's a pretty subjective thing. I like dtauer's list, and most anything I could add to it would be suplemental to that list. But beyond the fact we like to see the country, the biggest advantage we see is not being contrained by suitcase space.

We're driving in June (I live in Central PA, by the way) after flying the last couple of trips, for several reasons. My wife has a professional event in Savannah and we figured boy, is that closet to Orlando. She's going to be six months pregnant at that point. Never a fan of flying and doubly scared of it after 9/11, the presence of an unborn child and the situation in Iraq has her saying "hey, I'll go, but I'm not flying." So I'll fly to Savannah (I figure I'm as safe up there as going around the Beltway on a Friday night) and drive her to Florida and back to PA. Before she leaves, I'll pack every blessed thing we own in the back of the car that might be useful in Orlando, including extra coolers (and shoes, we always seem to have to cut down on shoes). I find driving to be an excellent expirience.

The downfalls of driving: Cabin fever (can hit at any time). Road weariness. The ever-fluctuating price of gas (and June's not looking good). Dealing with traffic. And with flying, when you get to the airport, you're almost there....

None-the-less, we look forward to driving. As for blasting down there or taking an extra night, personally I've tried it both ways and we've decided on a third way. Blowing down in one swoop (it's about 18 hours for us) meant leaving at 5 AM and getting in just a bit before midnight. The next day, we were toast, just terrible. The next couple times, we drove halfway, to southern NC. There was something mentally taxing about waking up in the AM and realizing we'd done all that driving the day before and were only halfway.

Our solution, and we've done it twice, is to drive from here to Savannah, GA, which is about 13 hours. We leave at six, we're in Savannah in time to get situated in a hotel, have dinner, and get to sleep at a decent hour. When we wake up in the morning, we're only 4 1/2 hours from Disney. We normally leave by seven AM. Knowing we'll be having lunch on the Boardwalk kind of removes the mental doldrums.

So my suggestion: Bomb most of the way, but have a five hour or less drive on day two. Don't try to blast down there in one shot, your first full day in Disney will be spent watching the paint peel in your resort. My opinion, anyway.

Pat

 

[ToyStory Fan]

For a 15 hour drive - no brainer for me, drive and go straight thru. 2 years ago we went straight thru from NY (about 35 miles north of NYC) did it in 18-1/2 hours. There's a trick to doing it though...you don't leave really early in the morning to get to WDW for the morning or afternoon...you leave at night to get there just in time for check-in or around dinner time. You need to sleep during the day you leave (critical or the trip won't work). The other benefit is that you get the "nighttime" part of the trip done when you are "fresh" as opposed to when you are looking for a bed.

True flying gives you the opportunity to get right to the parks, but you still (probably) won't be able to check-in.

Last year we did the short stopover (just to have dinner and sleep really) at Hilton Head (leaves you with about a 5 hour ride to WDW) That works too, and if travelling with children is the one I'd recommend.

 

[AnnaS]

We always fly. Every year I tell my dh we are going to drive and he always wins. I hate, hate, hate flying. We are flying down in April and July and I wanted to try Amtrak. Last year we drove to Pawleys Island, S.C. We went with our friends. We could of driven straight through but since we had the time we stopped over-night and in the am we were at our condos in less than 3 hrs. It was not that bad breaking it up and having friends to chit, chat in between helped us and the kids. If you do decided to drive, please stop over - don't do it straight through. If it's the two of you, great, no yelling and fighting in the back seats.

 

[DisOrBust]

I would think for the 2 of you the cost of flying would outweigh driving. We are a family of 5 and my DD will not fly anymore so we havce driven 23hr straight thru twice now. Its not as bad as you think!