peyjax : Now when I see an airport all I see is long lines, rude people, tight seating, and anxiety. Not my idea of glamorous or fun.
I simply don't experience this ? You can have long lines in traffic jams on the interstate driving too if you want to add that. Can I say one thing ? CAPITOL BELTWAY.
I'm just saying. Fly in and out of FL 3-4x a year on average the security lines, while daunting to look at most times, we find to move very smoothly and orderly ? Never more than 15 min in line. Orlando is one of the better airports too. And I must say, Philly is getting better too. We drive 1 hour to get to the Philly airport----but have also gone out of our way and driven to Newark, Atlantic City and even as far as Baltimore to fly down if the fare was good.
I don't find either flying or driving all the way to FL "glamorous". And talk about tight spaces. Yes. Airplanes can be tight for sure.....but it's all of a less than 2.5 hr flight for us. So no biggie. Being cramped in a car for over 1,000 miles is just as tight. And nowadays, I'm amazed at all the stuff families with young children pack. I see double strollers and car seats getting checked at the curb all the time. We don't experience anxiety either with flying, but I can respect the fact that some do. Rudeness. Gosh...that's everywhere.....even in WDW. Can never ever escape from that unfortunately. But I hardly find that airport/flying specific.
I can certainly understand how people who cannot get decent air fares would want to fly. I honestly can see that. We are lucky in Philly because PHL to MCO has lots of good competitive airfare.
But in my eyes, when you drive, you do have the hidden charges (extra snacks and meal stops, sleep overs at motels, and more importantly to us, is the wear and tear on our vehicle. A round trip of over 2,000 miles a couple times a year is definitely a liability. We have broken down on the road too and I can tell you from first-hand experience, there is nothing worse than that to put a major damper on a vacation. It was back in 1994 on a trip from PA to VA to visit Williamsburg. Our transmission just went. No warning. Car just died. We had our mechanice do the usual oil change and tune up prior to the trip and he said all was good before we left. I had 3 small kids in the car at the time (ages 1, 3 and 6). Luckiy, bil and sil were driving with us. But they had two young kids of their own. We were about 30 miles away from our hotel thankfully. Bil had to take his family to hotel, then drive back to get us and bring us to the hotel while we sat on the side of the road with three little ones in VA Aug heat. Our 5 day stay was ruined by struggling to get tow trucks, our warranty company to pay bill (they refused and because we were in another state, the mechanic would not take a check from us).
We were a young couple and only had like 2 credit cards --neither which had enough open on them for the bill which was close to $3,500 ! So we had to rent a tow bar and rental and tow our car back to PA. We had enough for that.
Had other car problems on the road---nothing that severe. The last one was 2005 when our car started overheating on I-95. Got to Orlando and dh had to take it to a mechanic down there...losing a full day of vacation.
So to me, this is one of those hidden "costs" you take on when you choose to put that many miles on your car. And then again, I find the lost vacation days that we work so hard for, another one liability. It's literally that we are losing 4 vac days between the two of us (and I only get like 10 a year), when you calculate the time you need to use going back and forth. And my dh nor I never feel up to going back to work the day after we've been on the road for 2 days. We both feel sort of "hungover". Like some experience jet lag on long flights....we experience "road lag"
Lucily there's options for everyone....but just felt the above issues should be mentioned when driving. Since we experienced them first-hand, I would never doubt that they could happen when we drive. We just drove my dd's car down to FL in Feb. She goes to college down there. I got out and kissed the ground and the car that we made it with no issues !
Maria
Though I cheated and flew out of Buffalo most often. 
