NotUrsula
DIS Legend
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2002
- Messages
- 20,044
Well, yes, the traffic is there, but in the areas around WDW it won't usually be moving very fast, since there is so much of it, and the signage is good enough that you usually have ample time to change lanes. (On property at WDW is different; on the interior roads people have an alarming tendency to speed and to stop squarely in the middle of the road for some insane reason.) Anne is right about 417 (the toll road from the airport to the WDW area) -- you'll find it looks just like the kind of highway you are used to, 4 lanes, wide median, not much traffic.
My comments about hills and winding roads were meant in terms of driving there as a stranger -- navigating by map in that kind of terrain means that you sometimes are on top of things before you realize it, including cross-streets you meant to turn onto, and you are so focused on staying on the road that you can miss landmarks easily, leading to doing things like slamming on brakes at the last second -- nerve-wracking. On Florida's wide straightaways, that kind of surprise is rare. The trickiest thing that I find in the Orlando area is the long on-ramps to the highways, which will sometimes make it time-consuming to return to your starting point if you accidentally make a wrong turn. (The area around USIOA has a lot of these, and my DH gets caught up in them all the time. He has issues with navigating
. I'm one of those people who drives around just for the fun of exploring, and once I've been somewhere once I will always be able to find my way back -- it just drives him batty. I had some time to kill when I was at a convention last year, so I spent seven hours checking out back roads in Orlando. The experience came in quite handy when I-4 turned into a parking lot on Xmas morning.)
Orlando, and especially the WDW area, *has* changed a lot in 15 years, but they have been putting a lot of money into signage along with all the new roads that have been built to relieve congestion. Sprawling though it is, the area has some of the most easily navigated roads in the entire US, in my opinion. The worst of the traffic jams are on I-4, so I'll admit to trying to avoid that route whenever possible.
PS: I'm not familiar with that Winn-Dixie, so for grins I googled it. If the map is accurate, the store is approx. 1/3 mile from the condo complex entrance, in a shopping center between the condos and the beach, more or less. The condo is about 1/2 mile from the beach as the crow flies, there appears to be a public access path a block over from where the street leading to the condo comes out onto Gulf Blvd. The condo address is 210 Medallion Blvd, Madeira Beach, Florida. 33708
My comments about hills and winding roads were meant in terms of driving there as a stranger -- navigating by map in that kind of terrain means that you sometimes are on top of things before you realize it, including cross-streets you meant to turn onto, and you are so focused on staying on the road that you can miss landmarks easily, leading to doing things like slamming on brakes at the last second -- nerve-wracking. On Florida's wide straightaways, that kind of surprise is rare. The trickiest thing that I find in the Orlando area is the long on-ramps to the highways, which will sometimes make it time-consuming to return to your starting point if you accidentally make a wrong turn. (The area around USIOA has a lot of these, and my DH gets caught up in them all the time. He has issues with navigating
. I'm one of those people who drives around just for the fun of exploring, and once I've been somewhere once I will always be able to find my way back -- it just drives him batty. I had some time to kill when I was at a convention last year, so I spent seven hours checking out back roads in Orlando. The experience came in quite handy when I-4 turned into a parking lot on Xmas morning.)Orlando, and especially the WDW area, *has* changed a lot in 15 years, but they have been putting a lot of money into signage along with all the new roads that have been built to relieve congestion. Sprawling though it is, the area has some of the most easily navigated roads in the entire US, in my opinion. The worst of the traffic jams are on I-4, so I'll admit to trying to avoid that route whenever possible.
PS: I'm not familiar with that Winn-Dixie, so for grins I googled it. If the map is accurate, the store is approx. 1/3 mile from the condo complex entrance, in a shopping center between the condos and the beach, more or less. The condo is about 1/2 mile from the beach as the crow flies, there appears to be a public access path a block over from where the street leading to the condo comes out onto Gulf Blvd. The condo address is 210 Medallion Blvd, Madeira Beach, Florida. 33708
