What type of 2,000 mile driver are you?

[marius97]

What do you see as your preferred method for making the 2,000 mile round trip drive? We are looking at 20 hours each way (including stops). Assume that rush hour traffic can be avoided.

Leave in the evening and drive straight through so the kids are asleep for as much of the trip as possible.

Leave crack of dawn (or earlier) and get there midnight or later.

Stop over half way down for a night's rest and get there afternoon of day two.

 

[rkandmjsmommy]

Sept will be our first time driving...we plan to drive thru the night so the kids are sleepin...less hearing "are we almost here?"

 

[jandersonlj]

Driving straight through or all night can be really tough on the parents after you get to Disney. We used to drive all night, but we decided it wasn't worth how we felt for the first couple of days after. I would suggest driving as far as you can and then stop and spend the night.

 

[shalom]

I'd take a break and stay somewhere on the way. We didn't go to Disney, but my parents did the drive through the night thing when I was a kid, but back then you could put the kids in the back of a station wagon lying flat; that's not legal any more and my kids do not sleep on trips nearly as well as we did when we were kids. Took a lot out of my parents, too, but they did it visiting relatives so they didn't need to watch us that first day.

We've had better luck with kids sleeping in the car by getting up at the crack of dawn and waking them up just long enough to dress and transfer from bed to car. Some of them would go right back to sleep and sleep a few hours. It depends on the kid, though -- one of our kids never did sleep in the car.

I'd get up at the crack of dawn and drive as far as is comfortable the first day, then stay overnight somewhere on the way. It makes for a more pleasant trip all the way around, IMHO. And there's plenty to do if you get there in the middle of the day if you don't want to use a park ticket for a partial day -- Downtown Disney, the Boardwalk, touring the resorts, enjoying your own resort, etc.

 

[J3nn78]

We like to stop. We make the drive part of the adventure and vacation by finding cheap or free things to do along the way. We love driving. We drive down in about 3-4 days and home in 2

 

[cam&phoebsmom]

We get up early and are on the road by 5am. Kids stay in their jammies and we head out (this year we plan to be on the road by 4AM). I take te 1st leg of the driving since I always fall asleep after lunch, LOL.

We stop when we are about 3 hours out at a place that has an indoor pool so the kids can get moving and in to bed at a decent time, then get up in the morning and head out again. I do not think we would be in happy moods to try and drive through the night.

 

[mousebymarriage]

We have tried a few different departure times (very early a.m., late afternoon, early evening, midnight) and the time preferred by all is early evening and driving through the night. I have to say the worst driving time for us was when we listened to a couple of friends who said to leave at 2:30am. We put the kids to bed in comfy clothes and waited until the last possible second to wake them and put them in the car (DD was 9 and DS was 4). We expected them to go right back to sleep....WRONG! They were wide awake and wired. Unfortunately they had just enough sleep to give them a second wind and they couldn't fall back to sleep because they were soooo excited. We are making the trip again in 22 days and we will be leaving about 7pm!

*even the kids prefer the driving through the night scenario. We have a rule that the DVDplayers, nintendo DS, i-pods etc. must be off by 11 pm, the kids usually fall asleep pretty quickly and are surprised by how far we have gotten while they were sleeping.

 

[2DisPrincesses]

We drive all night while the kids sleep.

We leave early evening. Our first stop, the girls run around and little and change into pajamas. They sleep all night long and we get freshened up around 6 a.m. when they wake up. Then we have a sitdown breakfast and finish the drive.

 

[minnie mum]

Since we drive all the way from southern Ontario, we stop for the night. We can do the trip in 2 12 hr days, or 3 8 hr days (we both hate driving at night on roads we don't know well, and of course the days are short in winter). But we don't have children with us. Our feeling is that we really don't see the point of driving loooooooong hours, then starting the Disney part of our vacation too exhausted to enjoy ourselves.

Guess old age is starting to creep in.

 

[humalexis]

This is our first trip to WDW but we have driven to S Carolina and Maderia Beach in Florida. Starting out at about 9pm has always worked best for us. The girls are excited and chatty for about an hour and then they are snoring away! DH usually drives most of the night and then we stop for breakfast at a rest stop and I take over so that DH can catch a nap. DH is taking the day off work so he can sleep late and take a nap later in the afternoon too. I will be in charge of keeping the girls busy all day so they will be tired before we leave.

 

[kaffinito]

I like to stop overnight in a hotel. Otherwise I'm just too tired when we get there to have much fun on our first day.

But when the kids were little I would drive through the night to go on vacation - it was a lot easier that way.

 

[JoeCathyAngelina]

The 2 times we've driven to WDW from Boston, Ma; it's been, leave Friday after school at about 2:30-3:00, drive straight through stopping only for Gas, bathroom breaks and something to eat on the way to WDW. Go to the resort for a possible early check-in then head for Downtown Disney and walk around downtown Disney Saturday afternoon at 1:00.
No Big Deal.
On the way home we leave the resort at check out, 10:00 am and begin our drive back to Boston stopping only for Gas, bathroom breaks and something to eat.
If we ever drive down to WDW again; probably not, we'll do the all night drive on the way down and probably stop for the night on the way home.
Good Luck All,
Joe

 

[HHSTigerFan]

I like to leave around 2AM and drive straight thru from Illinois, kids will sleep until we are into KY, into Atlanta for a late lunch and WDW for a late dinner..

 

[distech0]

Our drive is a little over 2500 miles roundtrip. On our last trip we left about 8pm and drove through the night and through the day until we hit Tallahassee, where we stopped for the night; on 9 month old was a little restless the last few hour of that part of the drive, but did pretty well. We did an easy drive into Orlando the following day. We plan on repeating this in September with a 3 year old and a 9 month old.

 

[WDWLODGE]

We've driven from Pittsburgh 6 times. We've left at different times, but we drive straight through when going to Disney and we have stopped overnight a couple times on the way home. Our drives to WDW trypically take between 14 - 14 1/2 hours. One year we left after I worked a full day. We arrived at WDW around 7:30AM and made the rope drop at the MK. This is after we checked-in and unloaded our luggage since our room was ready. We stayed at The MK until about 4PM and made our way over to Chef Mickey's for dinner. Oh yea, I did all the driving, so by the time dinner was over I had been up for about 38 hours. Needless to say we won't be doing that again.

 

[jasko5990]

We drive straight through, leaving our house around midnight. Our trip only takes about 15-16 hours, which includes stops for food, gas, & restrooms. We've tried other departure times (2am, 3am, 2pm, 7pm, 10pm) and have found the midnight departure is best for us. We also stopped over halfway through on two different trips and found that it just wasn't as good as driving straight through. Our kids were 5 & 6 years old on their first trip, and are 15 & 16 now. Our daughter used to complain about the long drive, but since we started leaving at midnight she (& my wife & son) stay awake throughout the day before we leave, then go to sleep shortly after we start our trip. They sleep about 8 hours each, which makes the trip seem much shorter than it really is.

 

[powellrj]

We have tried over the years to drive through the night and have never been able to do it. Maybe its because we are always leaving right after work, but we always have to stop on the way down the first night.

We usually leave right after DH gets off work and drive until we are worn out and stop. We get up and leave first thing in the morning and get there early to mid afternoon.

Coming home is a different ballgame. We always leave first thing in the am and drive all day and get home after midnight.

 

[I Love Pluto]

We drive from Philly. We leave about 7 PM, avoiding the Washington rush hour mess.

It's also cooler at night, and we don't have to squint from the sun at all when driving. The daytime seems to take double the time than nighttime. It doesn't - but it just FEELS that way.