? for people who drive to WDW

[krismomof3boys]

We are planning on driving to WDW from south central PA. This will be about 14hrs.

Has anyone else driven this distance (or close to it)?

My husband is pushing to leave in the evening and drive through the morning. (leave at 6pm arive 8am) so the kids will sleep through the night. My problem with that is, while we will be totally exhausted the kids will have slept and be ready to go when we're ready to collapse. I would rather reverse the times (leave at 6am arrive 8pm) but he fears the kids will go nuts being in the car that long.

Has anyone traveled from my general area and made it a 2 day trip by stopping in North or South Carolina and then getting up the next morning and making it to WDW?

Please, anyone from southern PA, MD who's driven with kids let me know!

BTW, I have a 5yr old (I don't think he will be a problem because he will know where we are going) and twin 18mth olds. The longest trip have taken is 3 hrs (to the beach) which hardly compares with a 14 hr drive.

Also, has anyone taken the auto train out of DC/VA? Any reports?

thanks

 

[Teri Zolman]

We don't live in MD, but we drove from Louisville, KY which is 13 hours. We left at 2pm stopped at 10pm in Macon, Georgia. Woke up at 6am and were in Pop Century at 10:30 am. I would not take that long of a trip in one night. My kids are 12 and 13 and they were alittle tired of it. I can not imaging 18 month olds. If you can I would drive until about 11pm, stop and get up in the morning and finish. That way you will all be rested. Just my opinion. On the way home we drove straight through, wasn't as bad.

 

[shaws2003]

We drove from Maine last month and my kids( DD7 and DS2) did great. Our thinkng was just like your husband's, we left at 4 pm hoping the kids would sleep during a large part of the drive. We stopped at a rest area in Maryland at around 3am so I could rest for a couple hours. A major snowstorm (perhaps you remember it?) slowed us down by an estimated 3 hours. We left the rest stop at 6 am still in snow and got to a hotel just north of the Georgia line at about 6 pm. We picked a place that had an indoor pool so the kids could "burn down" a little after being in their seats for almost 24 hours. The drive from the hotel, and I'm sorry I dont remember the name, was only 5 hours to Disney. I think the name was Ridgeland, or Ridgefield or something. It worked really well because the kids got a chance to stretch and we all got a good nights sleep so we didnt arrive at Disney wiped out. Hope this helps, and good luck!

 

[Disney Princess 6]

.....................................

 

[CPM]

When we lived in Boston we drove through the night like your husband suggested. It really worked well for us. We would leave around 7 and miss all the traffic in the heavily populated cities. We would try & keep the kids up later then normal and dive through until late afternoon the next day. We usually stayed overnight in GA so our drive the next day wouldn't be so bad and we would arrive in WDW refreshed. My DH did most of teh driving so I got to take cat naps. I would stay up with the kids when we stopped driving while he slept.
We still drive through the night when driving up north. It's just a lot easier to drive on the roads at night, less traffic.
You can even make it all the way! I would leave a bit later then 6, keep the kids up as long as you can in the car. Take some catnaps, maybe even nap during the day when the kids nap.
BTW, I've done the Auto-train many times! It's great but very expensive.

 

[kaylajr]

We live in upstate NY by Saratoga Springs
we drove 4 years ago with a then 4 and 6 year old we left at 7 am drove to raliegh ( is that NC or SC i always guess wrong)
than drove to orlando the next day
we took our time made plenty of rest stops and brought lots of snacks and activitys for the car
No problems on the drive
we had orginaly thought of driving thru the night
but then the kids would be rested we would be tired
we didn't thik that was a good way to start vacation

we are driving again in Oct they will be 8 and 11 and are looking forward to the drive They were not very impressed when we flew in 2002

 

[Shells9]

We only have a couple hours to WDW, but it's several more to visit DH's family. Dh likes to drive at night when DD is sleeping, so she is usually ready to go when we get somewhere, and we are exhausted.

We have a portable DVD player -- she can watch in the car, or we can plug it in the hotel and she can watch while we rest. She also likes small toys to play with, so I will buy a few playsets before we go, the ones with half a dozen or so figures in them, and give them to her a couple at a time so she is getting something new/different, every so often. When we reach our destination she has the complete set, and will usually pass some time playing with everything all together.

Hope some of this helps!

 

[tci1212]

We drive From Cape May, we usually leave at 2 am. Drive straight thru only stopping for gas and quick bites to eat. The ride is 18 hrs. The kids sleep until at least 7:00 am. By the time it is light out we stop for our 1st refuel. This yr we will be driving but we won't leave until the 1st ferry at 7:30 am. We will drive until around Ga, and spend the night. Your twins will brobably sleep alot, my son slept the entire trip when he was 4 yrs old. We departed the ferry in Delaware , it was 6 pm and he fell asleep and never woke until we stopped for breakfast in FLorida!

 

[dmonroe]

We always drive, but our drive is only 10 hours. We have done it in one day (by leaving very early in the a.m. and arriving at WDW by mid to late afternoon) and we have done it in 2 days (leaving after dh gets off work and driving to Talahassee). I prefer the one day thing. Ds is a good traveler as long as the tv is on!

This next trip will be the test, though! Our new baby will be about 6 months. We never did long car trips with ds until he was about 2.5, so we have no idea what to expect. I do know that we won't do the drive at night. I can't sleep in the car at all! I don't want to get to WDW and be wiped out from lack of sleep!

Any thoughts on the easiest way to do the drive with a 6 mo. old?

 

[ftwildernessguy]

We always drive and pull a 21 foot trailer from SE PA. This is our itinerary as of the last trip in November. Keep in mind, with a trailer we can't get the highway speeds you can when you don't tow - our top speed is about 60-65 mph and we have to stop a lot more often for gas, so my travel times will be longer than yours. We left at 3 am on Saturday. Arrived at Florence, SC at about 4:30 pm for the night. Up again and off at 4 am, arriving at FW at 2:30 pm. I have driven it straight down and personally I wouldn't recommend it - it took me at least a day to recover and feel like getting into my Disney mode. A Disney vacation is exhausting enough without trying to recover from an exhausting trip down.

 

[tiggercrazy]

We drive from Wisconsin so it is about a 21 hour drive. We always stop at dh sisters house near Atlanta. That is about a 12 hour drive. We like to leave very early in the morning (about 2am). Like tci1212 our kids sleep then until about 6:30 or 7:00. Then we stop for breakfast and stretch. What I do to keep my kids (ds-9, ds-6, dd-5, and dd-2) busy is have little surprises for them. Before we leave I put one thing for each of them in a bag. Books, a movie, toys, fun snacks. And every now and then when need be, I would pull out a bag and give each of them something new to do. This worked out really well for us, especially since we had two pretty long days in the car!

 

[Desnik]

We do the 18hr drive every year! We have done it all different ways. Driving through the night, like you said we were exhausted and needed a day to recouperate! Drove all day leaving at 9am and we were all tired of the car!! Twice we have stopped over night in SC and did 10hrs the first day, 8 the next. This worked out well, but we felt like it was taking forever to get there. This past vacation, in Nov. we left at 4am. The kids stayed asleep. We had gone to bed really early the night before. We arrived at 10pm. This was the best so far. My kids are now almost 6yo and 9mo. The best way to keep DD happy was the DVD player. She slept alot, so did the baby. We brought a couple of long movies, like HP and this really helped the time go by. I had lots of snacks to limit the stops and everytime we went to the bathroom we let DD run around to stretch. Leaving at the time we did we only had to be at a reststop in the dark twice. This is just something that is important to me with small kids. For some reason the car just makes kids sleepy! Expect them to sleep alot. Also things like the leapster, gameboy and such will keep older kids busy. My DD startedgetting car sick while coloring, because she had her head down. Try one of those lap desks to help that or just give them a toy to play with.
DH and I take turns driving and it isn't bad. We found when we left at 4am, it was a Sat, we missed the high traffic times in the usually busy spots like DC.
Good luck!

 

[ftwildernessguy]

Desnik made an excellent point regarding timing around DC. Timing is everything there. Try to hit that beltway as early as possible on a Saturday or Sunday. I have also found that if I drive to Harrisburg, take 15 down to Frederick, MD, then take 270 over to the beltway on the west side it is not as bad. The east side of the beltway tends to get the most traffic from the North headed South.

 

[mom2boys]

We're practically neighbors! We live in Frederick County, MD. We have driven to WDW 5x and flown once. In fact we leave one next Fri afternoon for WDW. We plan to pick our boys up from school (3:30) and drive for a few hours - probably make it into NC. Then we will get up bright & early Sat & finish the drive. We do drive straight thru coming home. Our 1st car trip our boys were 23 months & 3 yrs. Don't forget you will have to stop for gas & I can't imagine the toddlers going 14 hrs without a diaper change.

We did end up driving through the night to Hilton Head - it is about 10 hrs for us. We did not intend to do this. We left home in the early evening and planned to stop on the southern side of the NC/VA border. There were no rooms between Richmond & SC - none. We pulled into Disney's Hilton Head Resort at 6 am. We were extremely fortunate that our room was available. DH & I went in and went straight to sleep. However, our boys were ready to hit the pool, the beach, rent bikes ... Someone had left one of the resort's videos in the machine - they watched that and we tried to get them to watch another one but no dice. So I got up and took them to rent bikes - on one hour sleep. At HH we managed a low key day but if we had been at the parks, the boys would have wanted to hit the parks - full steam ahead.

 

[mimi_marie]

We have done the 13 hour drive twice before and we have flown once. In February will my my first time going with little ones. Mrs. T (the woman I babysit for) and I are taking her two dds (ages 6 and 8) to Disney World and thanks to my fear of flying, we've decided to drive! We're planning on leaving at 8 am on the Saturday morning and driving until we're within an hour or two of Disney. Since she will be doing most of the driving, I will get some rest in the car and then when we get to the hotel, she'll be able to rest while I entertain the girls. She has a portable DVD player in her vehicle and a friend of mine is going to hook up the girls' ps2, so they can stay busy throughout the trip. Your kids are much younger, but I hope this helps! E-mail me at mindy_nsu@hotmail.com if you need anything.

 

[sdamico71]

I have driven to Disney a few times. Always wish to do it straight through, but something always happens and we don't. Last visit (October) was great. Here's what we did.
We planned to leave super early on Sunday and we were checking in Monday. Planned to drive straight through, or find a place along the way to stay. Ended up leaving Saturday at 3PM. Had the car packed a lot quicker than we thought we would. Got in car, got started, and off we went.
Traffic was minimal through Virginia. No back ups - pretty much straight driving at speed limit. We made it to South Carolina around 1AM and stayed overnight. Got up around 7, and started again, making it to Disney by 1. It took us around 14 hours total. I was the only driver.
I used the map from Yahoo as I felt that was a more realistic map and kept me off I95 for a while. Last time we went, we went I95 the entire way. Hit way too much traffic through Maryland and Delaware.
I try to keep my kids up so that they will sleep the same times that I do, but my little one loves to nap.
I don't recommend leaving late and driving straight through, as I don't like stopping to use the bathrooms at the rest stops at night and walking to the restroom door in the dark. Plus there are a lot of truck drivers on the road (not bashing truck drivers) and they are pushing the speed limits hard. I hate being stuck behind trucks for long periods of time.
If you want more info, PM me and we can chat.

 

[cinder1]

We live in the Dallas, Texas area and we just got back from driving to WDW. It's about a 22 hour drive with lots of stopping. We've done this drive both ways--straight through while kids slept and stopping at a hotel and I have to say stopping at the hotel along the way was soooooo much better. When we drove straight through, DH and I were very tired when we arrived, but the kids were well rested. We have a DVD player for the kids to watch movies (they take turns picking a movie). This is great. Really helps. This time, our 2 oldest (8 and almost 7) also had their own CD players and a few CDs which was also nice. We had plenty of snacks and drinks. The youngest (turned 4 while we were at WDW) was the best on the road. He watched his movies, played with a few toys, ate a bunch of chips, but didn't complain. We just stopped whenever anyone had to go to the bathroom and stretched a bit. We stopped a lot less on this trip since we spent the night in a hotel. We would not hesitate to do a 14 hour trip. And before we drove to WDW, the longest drive we'd done was a 4 hour drive with only 2 kids. I'm looking forward to going again.

 

[myboysmom]

We are planning to drive from Wisconsin. We have never taken a long road trip, but we are going to try. It should be 22-23 hrs for us.

We have a DVD in our SUV. I have been buying pre-viewed DVD's at the video store and hiding them away. I can get them at buy 1 get 1 free or sometimes buy 1 get 2 free! I plan to wrap them up and give them out as attention span needs it.

This year Santa brought a GameCube, it will plug into the DVD player. That is going along too.

We hope to leave after school (4 p.m. or so) and get 4-5 hours under our belt and then stop for the night. Put our long day in the next day (12 hours or so) that will leave us with only 5-6 hours the day we plan to get into WDW. Get up early and put the last behind us. On the way home we will push it to do it in 2 days.

Wish us lots of pixie dust! Our boys are 10 & 5.

 

[mom2boys]

We put our 13" tv in the van - strap it down with bungie cords & wedge it between the seats so that it can't become a projectile. DS asked this morning if he could take his new "video game machine". It is made by Nemco and has the old 1980's style arcade games including PacMan & at least 3 other games. The "system" sells for about $20 & is really just a joystick attached to a small box. It attaches to the input jacks on the tv. There are at least two choices of game set available. For those who don't want to bother or don't have the room for the full fledged game system, these might be an alternative.

(Bad MOM - hasn't paid much attention to the game system - didn't even buy it for them - it was a gift)

 

[stacy2197]

We drove from Wisconsin last year. It was suppose to be a 24hour drive. We hit lots or road construction, Lots of traffic, a couple of accidents(one we were stuck for 3 hours), and stopped alot for the kids. The trip took well over 30 hours I think it was about 32 hours. I tought we would be pulling into a hotel close to Disney and instead we stopped it Atlanta cause I was asleep at the wheel. Please if you drive check for road contruction before you leave. We were so tired by the time we got home. It was terrible.