What time should we leave for our roadtrip from NJ to FL?

[Neotericisis]

Hey there!

We are leaving next Saturday from NJ to WDW. With bathroom breaks, fill ups, and food stop(s), I suspect it will take 20 hours to get down to Orlando (we have 4 drivers so we are heading straight down).

My FIL wants to leave at noon, my DH wants to leave between 4-6. My FIL wants the kids (DS 7, DD, 8, BIL 13) to be up when we pass South of the Border. My husband figures we will pass it on the way back home and that it is more important to have the kids sleeping for the majority of the trip (we figure by 9 they will be clonked out, whereas if we leave at noon, the road trip will seem much longer for them because they will be awake).

For all you roadtrippers out there- which time do you suggest?

Also, feel free to add any roadtrip tips. So far I have individual mini-coolers for each kid which will have their own personal snack arsenal, new ipads, portable chargers, a ton of activity book, and the Spot It Disney Pixar game I was going to do portable DVD players but decided not to. If the consensus is that the DVD players are a necessity I still have a week to order them!

Thanks!!

 

[roseaster]

Also from NJ. You want to time your trip so that you are nowhere near the Baltimore/Washington DC area at rush hour.

Other than that it depends on you and whether you prefer to drive at night or during the day. We prefer not to drive at night. We will drive until we are exhausted the 1st day, and stop and sleep at a motel and then complete the drive the next day. When my kids were little they sleep in the car regardless of the time of day.

My kids are good with just their typical electronics. Is this your 1st long road trip? If so make sure you pack some Dramamine, we discovered the hard way that we have one that gets car sick.

 

[ArielRae]

I agree when we drive we make sure we avoid rush hour for Washington DC.

We live in Burligton county so we like to leave at 1-2am if we drive during the day so we are thru DC before the morning rush hour. We stop for the night at either the Comfort Suites in Jacksonville, FL on airport Rd or Florence,SC at the Comfort Suites there (if we leave later in the day).

This year we plan to leave around 4-5pm to be thru DC after the rush and drive thru the night since it will be just DH and I for our couples trip.

South of the border is an ok bathroom stop if you really need one but we find it a dirty place. We like to make our Stop at the J•R store. We love taking a break and looking around the store. Nice place to get a trinket for the kids if they have been good. Also the bathrooms have always been very clean. We don't smoke but they do have a huge selection of cigarettes and cigars for sale. http://www.jrselma.com

 

[monorailsilver]

fyi, my sister made it from CT (hour from the GW) to Stuart in about 17 hours...yes she is crazy.

And we drove from that same area to Ft. Myers and it took us about 23-24 hours, but we did an overnight.

So when to leave...we left CT at 6am and were over the GW by 7 and have made it to DC at 11 and hit no traffic until we came to Richmond...road work! That was at least an hour, at least. We got off and took the side roads for a bit.

We stopped in Santee, SC at about 9:30 that night and still had 9 hours to go.

that's just to give you an estimate as to where we were when. Oh and we left the next am at around 7 and I know we were passing them Orlando at about 11:30-12 because I pulled out lunch amongst the big buildings.

Our kids were in 6th grade, 4th grade and 1st grade when we drove and even at night, close to 11 on the return drive home they were not sleeping in the car. Do your kids fall asleep in the car in the evening hours? Mine don't and won't, well unless they are under 2 or 3 years old. can you or the other 3 drivers sleep in the car? As much as I'd love to sleep when my dh is driving at night, I know I have to keep my eyes open for anything. Will you all be tired/the adults if you don't get a full night sleep? I know we were exhausted after the drive and we did a hotel stop.

If it were me and I was doing the drive in one day, I'd leave st 4 or 5 am. It's a Saturday so you won't have the work rush hour traffic.

Use the waze app, well dh drives with that and I check google since I can easier see the red lines. When we took the AT we went straight their DC at 11am because there was no traffic.

My kids each had a container of crap...books, markers, Chargers, etc.... We had one computer and 2 portable did players so they could watch movies and not fight over one.

They did have to read, aka put down the electronics too.t

We did Ispy and found one online that had more things, but I did delete some as my kids didn't need to see a drunk driver.


http://marydonahue.org/road-trip-bingo-or-scavenger-hunt

My kids play an alphabet game (it gets loud). Start with A and they have to find a word that starts with A. My sister tried this wi us last year when we were with her and she was screaming airplane, bush, car...and my kids had to tell her word, you need to find words.

I got a trip tik for each of my kids so they could see where we were, did they use it? No, other then to ask which page should we be on but at least once I switched them to the correct page they could see "how much longer".

Southern VA, the carolinas and Georgia are all pretty boring states. I'd rather be in traffic on the NJT! But we did see Maters family lined up down there along the side of the road (John Deere dealer or something like that).

 

[TwoMisfits]

Hey there!

We are leaving next Saturday from NJ to WDW. With bathroom breaks, fill ups, and food stop(s), I suspect it will take 20 hours to get down to Orlando (we have 4 drivers so we are heading straight down).

My FIL wants to leave at noon, my DH wants to leave between 4-6. My FIL wants the kids (DS 7, DD, 8, BIL 13) to be up when we pass South of the Border. My husband figures we will pass it on the way back home and that it is more important to have the kids sleeping for the majority of the trip (we figure by 9 they will be clonked out, whereas if we leave at noon, the road trip will seem much longer for them because they will be awake).

For all you roadtrippers out there- which time do you suggest?

Also, feel free to add any roadtrip tips. So far I have individual mini-coolers for each kid which will have their own personal snack arsenal, new ipads, portable chargers, a ton of activity book, and the Spot It Disney Pixar game I was going to do portable DVD players but decided not to. If the consensus is that the DVD players are a necessity I still have a week to order them!

Thanks!!

I'd leave at 6am, since you're doing a Saturday. I detest driving on a Friday or Saturday night (with the drinking and partying in the summer that's entailed) and you couldn't pay me to want to drive the overnight hours. Not to mention, you'll be driving when everyone else is driving to vacation spots south, so you'll want to beat them to the road (since a lot of them don't usually do highway driving).

 

[donac]

Also from Jersey here Monmouth County

I would leave between 4 and 5 am. We left at 6 one Sat morning and got stuck in Va for over an hour. Dh and I don't like to ride at night so we would rather get up super early and drive. We still made it to southern Ga that night and had a short trip to DW the next day.

 

[Neotericisis]

Thank you guys so much! The Dramamine is a great idea. My 2 have gone as far as VA, but thats only 6 hrs away. I don't know about anyone else in my party, so its best to be on the safe side. My 2 kids and I can sleep in the car (esp. since we'll have travel pillows). My DH not so much, and I'm not sure about everyone else. I don't expect too much traffic through the DMV corridor since it is a Saturday, but I think its better to leave bet. 4-6 just in case. This way it will be 7-8 by the time we get in the DMV area, and by the time the drunkards come out we will be on mostly empty roads (ie: southern VA/NC/SC).

I haven't been to South of the Border in years. Actually, since I was a kid when my parents owned apartments in Tampa (we went down every year for the whole summer to make upgrades to the apartments etc.- can you bleieve I have never been to Disney or Busch Gardens not even once?!?!?). I don't remember much except for neon lights and them selling fireworks. I could totally skip it all together but FIL is all about it. If the kids were up and saw all the lights they would be excited, but other than that, I don't think they would care much as there really isn't too much to do. I will put JR's in Selma on my list! As a kid we always stopped a Petro for Iron Skillet meals and clean bathrooms, I would love to relive those memories with my kids.

I love the Waze app as I can "beep hello" to other drivers and see any issues ahead as far as accidents etc. Google maps is better for rerouting traffic though.

If it were up to me we would be flying, or at least staying over in SC like I used to as a kid, but alas, I am not the captain on this trip so they are dead set on driving straight though. Wish us luck!

 

[tami82]

We leave around 3:00 a.m. But we stop in Georgia. My husband had played around with the idea of leaving late afternoon but we wouldnt go,straight through. That's a lot of driving for one day, I would recommend a stopover.

 

[joannamet]

My parents always left for road trips at about 4 AM. There were 4 of us kids so they just put us in the car in our pajamas with pillows and blankets. By the time we woke up it was time for a break and some breakfast and a chunk of the trip was over. It was great for them because they had a few less hours of 4 kids arguing over, well, everything. It was great for us because we had a few less hours of tedium in the car. Also, if you leave at 4 AM you'll get there at about midnight so you can still get a decent night's sleep and be ready for your first day of awesomeness at DisneyWorld.

 

[AnnaS]

Our usual and preferred time is 3 am (we have also left at 9 am and very early afternoon). We stop overnight. Last two times in Jacksonville which is where we aim to stop now. Prior trips GA or SC. We have driven straight through a few times but not the norm.

 

[Melissa_E]

I would leave between 4 and 5 am.

I was going to suggest this as well.

 

[Thing 1]

I certainly would not plan your start time around South of then Boarder. We stopped one year and OMG it was dirty and run down and nothing more than a couple gift shops were open. They had ice cream for sale and of course DS wanted some....uhhhh that would be a NO. You can load the ipad with movies and down load apps and games and they should be good. Be sure they have ear phones they are comfortable with. Snacks are great. We make sure we spend some time interacting together too. Games such as car tag search, guess the person, read aloud, trivia games, etc are great memory makers. Audio books for everyone are great too. One of our favorite things to do is buy a big bag of jelly belly beans and we play guess the flavor. We also give DS about 5.00 to spend on any junk food he wants at ONE gas stop. Somewhere like QT is really great. It's really a special treat.

 

[jvz82]

We have a 27 hour drive. When we were kids my parents left after work around 4 or 5 pm so we could sleep fairly quickly after starting out. I liked that because it made our drive seem to go faster. On the other hand, that brings us into Orlando later at night. Then we'd getup super early to go to the parks and with the time change were exhausted. This time around were going to try leaving in the morning so we get to Orlando by lunch time. That gives us the entire afternoon to hang out at the hotel and relax before a big day at the parks. The downside is being awake all during Illinois. Suuuuuch a long state.

 

[powellrj]

We like to leave around 4am. That lets us sleep. We have tried to drive straight through the last couple of years and we are too old to do it anymore. My favorite way is to break the trip up and make it over 2 days so we arrive really refreshed.

 

[closenough]

We did the drove straight through from Jersey last summer (and again in a few weeks.) 17 hours from Union County, NJ to the Magic Kingdom. We left at 6pm and arrived at 11am. We were only two drivers but had no trouble at all. With 4 drivers straight through will be easy peasy.

 

[MomTo3PrincessesInNJ]

We drive down from South Jersey a few times a year and we've tried leaving at all different times of the day and we have found that leaving our house around 6 p.m. works best for us. We make sure our three kids eat a good dinner and they are already showered and in their pajamas before we put them in the RV. We drive down our motorhome so we don't really stop for food or bathroom breaks however we do stop every 4 hours to fill up with gas. My husband likes to drive straight through and we usually arrive to Fort Wilderness around 2 p.m. the next day. We stop in Pooler Georgia to go shopping at the Walmart right off of 95 to get our groceries for the week and we also have breakfast at the Chick-fil-A there. I make sandwiches in the RV and we eat lunch on the road and then we make dinner when we get to our campsite in Disney. I want to get to Disney as fast as I can so I'm glad we don't make stops on the way there. Coming home we don't have a set routine sometimes we stop and camp overnight half way back, and sometimes we drive straight through, it's up to my husband.

 

[EvilQueen2018]

I may change our plan if I find out dd is like my son and won't sleep on the drive, but as of right now, we are leaving at night.

I'm in NC and it's an 11 hour trip for us but I figure it will be about 13 if we travel by day because my 5 years old will need to stretch out and burn some energy. I'd prefer do do it in 11 at night though so everyone can get there faster. I can go without sleep and nap when we arrive. Since dh will be rested with the kids, he can take them swimming while I sleep.

I can not spend hours in the heat without sleep, so I also have to plan around my check in time. I don't want to arrive at 8am and be locked out until 2pm.

Since check in time may be a factor, I may have to make a day trip. If so, we are getting up early so we can be there by dinner. I don't want too much fast food on the road and I won't stop and sit uncomfortably waiting on food after sitting in the car for hours, knowing I have to get back in the car for several more hours.

To make a day trip tolerable, I've planned tons of snacks, videos, and car activities. The kids will have age appropriate road trip binders and my Disney binder to check out.

We are surprising the kids with the trip minutes before we leave, so they will want to learn about the trip on the way. All activities and videos are Disney related, as well as however many Disney songs I can play before dh puts his foot down.

We are spending the day at Daytona before we come home so that will be a night drive that I'm sure everyone will sleep through.

 

[lennyd]

I would leave by 5am and I don't think it will take 20 hours it takes me about 20 and I come from Long Island try and let the kids sleep as much as possible on the way and I hope you have dvd and iPads for them

 

[Neotericisis]

We did the drove straight through from Jersey last summer (and again in a few weeks.) 17 hours from Union County, NJ to the Magic Kingdom. We left at 6pm and arrived at 11am. We were only two drivers but had no trouble at all. With 4 drivers straight through will be easy peasy.

We are in Mercer County (Princeton area) so I figured this will be us as well. When I was a kid we always left super early (like 4 or 5 am) and my job was to get travel coupons at a truck stop and pick the hotel (pre-internet days). My main objective back in the day was a nice pool LOL. My DH and FIL are the front runners for the travel portion of trip, so I'm just trying to avoid drama (I am in charge of all the FP and actual park logistics). I'm letting the men be men, but I can't say I agree with everything. The date of arrival is our first day in MK, but I have our first FP for 3:10 pm (Splash Mountain) just in case. I'm hoping to arrive by at least 10 am and then have a few hours to rest before heading to MK. We'll see what happens. We are doing a full day of MK again on Thursday so a late start of the first day is ok. I just don't want to over-do it and be exhausted for our first day.

 

[scrapquitler]

Hey there!

We are leaving next Saturday from NJ to WDW. With bathroom breaks, fill ups, and food stop(s), I suspect it will take 20 hours to get down to Orlando (we have 4 drivers so we are heading straight down).

My FIL wants to leave at noon, my DH wants to leave between 4-6. My FIL wants the kids (DS 7, DD, 8, BIL 13) to be up when we pass South of the Border. My husband figures we will pass it on the way back home and that it is more important to have the kids sleeping for the majority of the trip (we figure by 9 they will be clonked out, whereas if we leave at noon, the road trip will seem much longer for them because they will be awake).

For all you roadtrippers out there- which time do you suggest?

Also, feel free to add any roadtrip tips. So far I have individual mini-coolers for each kid which will have their own personal snack arsenal, new ipads, portable chargers, a ton of activity book, and the Spot It Disney Pixar game I was going to do portable DVD players but decided not to. If the consensus is that the DVD players are a necessity I still have a week to order them!

Thanks!!

I would aim to leave at 10PM. Then the kids can go right to sleep and hopefully sleep until 7am or so. If your 20 hour estimate is good, you'll arrive at Disney in time for dinner, a swim and bedtime the next day.