Milwaukee to Disney: Where to stop, eat

[oande2004]

Hi All:

We'll be driving from Milwaukee in Sept. We plan to do two nights down, I night back. Any suggestions for where to stop, stay, most importantly eat? Also, any suggestions of things to see on the way down?

Thanks!

 

[ParrotBill]

Have you planned your driving route yet?
(maps.google.com can help)

What time will you start, and how long do you want to drive each day?

Give us an idea on these, and I am sure you'll get some suggestions back!

Edit:
Just looked at the route and you will pass through Nashville, Chattanooga, and Atlanta... plenty of things to stop for along there!

 

[oande2004]

We were planning to head Indianapolis to Nashville to Atlanta to Disney. We were thinking of staying in Chatannoga and then maybe Valdosta or just inside FL to stay the second night. Since we have 5 year old twins, we were planning to drive early (start around 5am) and do around 10-12 hrs/day. At this point we are pretty flexible in terms of exactly where to stay and stop. If anyone has done this type of route and has ideas, we'll take them!

Thanks!

 

[JanB]

Chattanooga is no more than about 10 hours from Disney. If you're planning on driving 10-12 hours per day, you can feasibly go all the way from Chattanooga to Disney in one day.

Chattanooga to Atlanta is about 2 hours. Atlanta to Valdosta is about 5 hours. Valdosta to Disney is about 3 hours.

If you want to go almost all the way to Disney from Chattanooga, you could stay that last night in Orlando and be ready for Disney the next morning. Or you could drive Chattanooga to Ocala -- you'd have about 1.5 hours to drive the next morning to Disney.

What day of the week would you be driving through Atlanta? If it's a weekday, leaving Chattanooga will mean you're entering the Atlanta area around 7AM -- you'll be in the middle of the morning rush. You would likely want to drive around Atlanta via I285 --- although that can be almost as congested as driving through downtown. Early mornings on weekend days are a bit better ---- but you still want to check the online Georgia Navigator site to find out about planned construction. For example, right now, some of the southbound lanes through downtown Atlanta are closed for repaving --- making driving downtown a royal headache.

Actually ---- If you plan to drive through Atlanta on a weekday, traffic will be smoother for you if you can make it to the north side of Atlanta (Kennesaw, Marietta, etc.) the night before. If you're leaving from that point at 5AM, you'll be much better off the next morning. Even so --- check Georgia Navigator online before you hit the road. And listen to AM750 as you drive through Atlanta.

There are plenty of places to stop and eat after you get south of Atlanta, again in the Macon area (you'll take the I475 Macon bypass), in the Valdosta area, in the Gainesville and Ocala areas -- really quite regularly all the way on I75.

My primary advice, though, would be to carefully plan when you'll be driving through Atlanta.

 

[mm6mm6]

We live in Illinois, just south of the Wisconsin border. Milwaukee is 1 hour's drive north for us. So you're just an hour more to WDW than we are.

We've driven to Orlando 7 times now. Here's a conglomeration of our past drives.

We leave at 4:30am. This way you get around "the horn" of 80/94 south of Chicago at the Indiana border and get yourself southbound on I65 before all the traffic starts. You must avoid this. Must. If you leave at 4am, you will be fine. Probably at 4:30am you will still be okay. Any later and you'll hit traffic and stuck or going 25 in a 55 which will really slow down your whole trip.

We take the bypass around Indianapolis because you'll be hitting it around rush hours. It's very fast. Remember that the speed limit once you hit Indiana is 65 or 70 and then it's 70 through Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida. Cruise control at 78 and you make good time.

We've stopped at the Kentucky welcome center at the border and picked up coupons for the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green. Also the Lost River Cave (boat tour through an underground river) in the Mammoth Cave area. Both of these are right around lunch time. You can stop for lunch and do a tour.

We've made it past Chattanooga (Expensive hotels for overnight and some pretty bad neighborhoods too. We stayed there once and there was barbed wire around the hotel grounds. We asked where to eat and the lady at the hotel said she wouldn't recommend going out, just order in pizza or something. Geez.) and usually stay just over the border into Georgia. There are many hotels at good prices before Atlanta with close by chain restaurants (Red Lobster, Outback, TGIF, Joe's Crabshack, Olive Garden, etc).

In Atlanta, we stopped at The World of Coca-Cola and it was pretty neat for the $15 adult admission price. They open at 9am and we stopped because the timing was right.

Be sure to stop at the Florida Welcome Center! It's been there for decades and they still give everyone a fresh orange juice (or grapefruit juice nowadays too!). You can also get brochures on Disney (individual maps of the parks and a "times guide" that can be very helpful to know before you get to WDW) and other places. Great reading for the kids in the car.

It's fun to see the palm trees for the first time and get a pic with the Welcome to Florida sign!

We usually get to WDW around 2 or 3 or 4 pm, even with these stops.

You can stay anywhere north of Orlando so that you can arrive on your first day at WDW in the morning and go to a park. But it can be done in just two days.

On the way back, we usually stopped in Tennessee or just into Kentucky.

The Great Smokey Mountains are really neat to driver through!

It's not a bad drive at all. Have fun!

 

[oande2004]

Thanks so much for the advice. It is tremendously helpful! (the pics are great too!!). We plan to leave Sat morn so we hopefully won't have as much traffic in Chicago. We just want to arrive fairly early Mon so we can hit Hollywood Studios (we have reservations for lunch at the Playhouse Disney buffet-the kids will love seeing the little Einsteins). Again thanks, we can hardly wait!

 

[JanB]

That's great that you'll avoid weekday traffic in Chicago and in Atlanta.

I do still recommend that, shortly before you leave, you check online for any planned construction through downtown Atlanta. As they are doing re-paving, it will be on weekends (Fri evening through very early Mon), and it will be either Southbound (like it is this weekend) or Northbound on any given weekend. When they are doing the paving, there will only be a couple of lanes open for a couple of miles in that direction. It takes forever to drive through it.

So, if the construction is taking place in the direction that you are driving, then you'll want to avoid driving through downtown --- go around the perimeter (I285) instead.

Have a great time at WDW!

 

[zulemara]

I have done the drive from La Crosse to Orlando about 5 times. I always drive to Nashville and stay there, then continue to Orlando the second day. I had a GPS on my last trip and it routed me around atlanta traffic with great ease. It was fantastic!

No recomendations from me on where to stop or eat. My focus is on the destination, not the journey, but I know others view it differently. The one thing I would say is DON'T stop at the dairyqueen/gas station at the FL/GA border! They wouldn't know a work ethic if it bit them in the ***! I've had several bad experiences there. 45 minutes for a hamburger? yeah, exactly!

 

[D&DDisney]

Done this drive many times.
We can make it all the way to suburbs of Atlanta before stopping. We hit the road very early and can get through Chicago w/o hassle.
My only advice is...if you are running low on gas near the FL boarder, get gas in GA not FL!!!!! Gas goes up quite a bit at the boarder. We're talking 20-30 cents a gallon here.
Have a great trip!