Toll road question

[nchulka]

We are driving to Orlando for our first trip. I understand there are some toll roads. I remember reading that some people had inadvertently driven past the toll booths using the speedpass type of lane and then gotten a ticket in the mail. We are going to be driving in the middle of the night and exhausted from 20 hours in the car. Is this likely to happen? Are they easy to miss? Do you need exact change or are bills okay?

 

[PrincesCJM]

We are driving to Orlando for our first trip. I understand there are some toll roads. I remember reading that some people had inadvertently driven past the toll booths using the speedpass type of lane and then gotten a ticket in the mail. We are going to be driving in the middle of the night and exhausted from 20 hours in the car. Is this likely to happen? Are they easy to miss? Do you need exact change or are bills okay?

From what I remember, the Sunpass users stayed straight on the road, while cash customers had to veer right to pay. Sunpass users do not slow down to pay so it's safer for the cash customers to "leave" the road then join back up. Bills should be okay for the tolls on the road. I feel like it's only the exits that you may need exact change to pay - especially if it's late at night. floridaturnpike.com and sunpass.com might also be able to answer the questions also

 

[free2div]

Its easy to see which lanes are which..you have to start slowing down quite a ways before you reach the booths. I know the turnpike have people 24 hrs..not sure about the others around. Huge flashing signs!!!!

 

[Detailor]

I think it depends on where you're coming from.

If you're traveling down I-75 then you'd take exit 329 to Florida's Turnpike (aka Ronald Reagan Turnpike) toward Orlando. Then you'd likely continue to either exit 267a (Western Expressway/Route 429) or exit 259 to go onto I-4. I'm pretty sure that there are three lanes at the exit 259 toll plaza (the one on the left is attended and they'll make change for you, the middle lane is an exact change lane, and the right lane is the one that you will want to avoid - it's a Sun Pass only lane). I'm not familiar with the situation for exit 267a but I think that there's a toll plaza on the exit there, too. But 429 is also a toll road and I believe that the toll plaza is built as part of the regular roadway (if that's right then there's no veering off for the cash booths there). I think that that's the only toll booth until you get to the an exit (and I'm not sure that all of the exits have tolls).

Others on this post have talked about the pay lanes being separate from the Sun Pass straight through lanes on toll roads. I know that that's the case for SR 528 and SR 417 which are the east-west roads that are to the north and south, respectively, of the airport where most of us travel toward Disney from but if you're driving from an out-of-state location then these probably won't apply to you.

Dick Taylor

 

[Kat&Dom]

We are driving to Orlando for our first trip. I understand there are some toll roads. I remember reading that some people had inadvertently driven past the toll booths using the speedpass type of lane and then gotten a ticket in the mail. We are going to be driving in the middle of the night and exhausted from 20 hours in the car. Is this likely to happen? Are they easy to miss? Do you need exact change or are bills okay?

The signs are very clear about being Sunpass lanes. You do have to be careful about turning off as we got lost one night (my brother insisted on using GPS and it got us hopelessly lost because it would tell us to turn after we had driven past the turn off lane). Anyway, there were a couple of turn offs that if we would have taken them, we would have gotten hit with the Sunpass charge.

Most of the paying tolls are to the right as a PP indicated. The Sunpass lanes are usually in the middle.

You do need exact change. I think that we hit every toll booth within a 20 mile radius of Disney. Some were 75 cents and required exact change, the tolls that were $1 usually were manned 24 hours but we did come across many that you just threw the exact change into the basket then the light turned green for you to go through.

You get about a 1 mile of warning that you are coming up to the toll booth and how much it is. Just make sure that you have lots of change on you. The night that we got lost, we spent $8 in tolls. Good luck!

 

[DOOM1001]

Most of the major toll booths in Orlando I believe still have options to pay with cash or use Sunpass,however in one of my last trips I took I think I was on the East-west expressway and got off at an exit I believe by Semoran and with my sunpass out of balance I was luckily able to find the change for the toll since it was an unattended one,so make sure just in case carry some change with you.Down here in Miami most of the tolls have switched or are switching to what they call open road tolling,they took away the toll booths so the cars just pass under the transponders that either take the money out of the sunpass if you have it and if you don't have one they send the bill to your house,but if you don't have a sunpass you get charged more.for example for me to get to work they have four .25 cent tolls with sunpass but if you don't have it it becomes four .40 cent tolls sent to your house.