Fellow NBer!
Yes, we did this in June/July 2015 with our kids who were 5 and 8 at the time. We bypassed the major cities and instead took 81 to the 77 to 26. We split it up over 3 days. First day we drove to Scranton, PA. Was about 12 hours driving. Next day we stopped around Orangeburg, SC. I think it was around 10 hours driving that day. We also stopped and toured the Shenandoah Caverns that afternoon in Virginia. Then the 3rd day we slept in and drove the rest of the way into Florida, which I believe was around 5 hours. So, leaving from Woodstock, NB, we made it in 27 hours (driving, not allowing for breaks, gas etc...).
We used
www.hotelcoupons.com and got great deals on hotel rooms. They were all directly off the highway, very clean, had full hot continental breakfast and had pools. Never paid more than $60 US for a night. We brought an electric cooler and packed snacks, drinks etc... so we had free breakfasts at the hotels, picnicked for lunch (sandwiches, fruit etc), and then bought supper. I think our total cost for the trip for hotels, gas, meals, tolls was right around $800 US. Could have been a bit less, but my husband kept up with flow of traffic which averaged about 80 mph, so definitely burned through fuel.
I know at the time, it saved us I believe $600+ over flying, when we factored in the rental car we would have needed for 11 days.
One thing we did, too, was bring our soccer ball and football with us, so whenever we stopped at the rest stops for gas or to eat etc... we all got out and played a bit to stretch our legs. That definitely helped.
Would I do it again? My husband would, yes. He has no problem with driving. And... he's afraid of flying, lol. Myself... I'm torn. Honestly, the drive down was great. We had never driven farther south than Boston before, so we really enjoyed the trip - everything was new. Plus, we had the anticipation of DISNEY!!! The drive home I found killer. The first day was okay. The second day was hard - the kids were exhausted, tired of being in the car, starting to fight, there was nothing to look forward to, I wasn't feeling great (I left Florida with a sinus infection brewing and a pain in my leg), we took a wrong turn and ended up driving through the hell that is Hartford at rush hour. I remember sitting in a gas station in CT, wanting to cry, and wishing with all my heart we could have just hopped on a plane and been home! We pushed through hard that 2nd day and managed to get to Portland, ME. The third day, we did some shopping at the outlets at Kittery before we left, and honestly, it was better. We knew we were close to home, and we had reached that exhausted, giddy/silly stage of, "Who cares what the heck goes wrong now?!" which served us well as we missed a poorly marked on-ramp and ended up off-roading our SUV through a median ditch to get back onto it
We all had a lot of great laughs that day on the drive home.
In a perfect world, DH would drive and kids and I would fly down and meet him. But that isn't exactly my definition of a "family" vacation, and it makes it far more expensive. So... yeah, I would do it again.
Tips we gleaned along the way:
- Plot your drive carefully to make sure you are not bypassing any cities near rush hour (we had an almost 2 hour delay by Columbia when we got stuck in the rush hour traffic jam).
- Pack as many snacks/drinks etc... as possible to save time and money
- Find hotels that offer free breakfast
- Allow a full day off the next day after you've arrived in Florida. Driving (whether you split it into 3 days, or drive straight through), is EXHAUSTING. You need to have time to recuperate. We didn't do that, and jumped right into Epcot the next day, and then went 4 days straight before taking a break. BIG mistake. By the end of that stretch, we had hit a level of tired that really did slow us down the rest of the trip.
- Likewise, allow a full day off the day before you leave, to get rested up for the return drive.
- If you have young children and you're packing stuff to entertain them, don't pack
too much. I think we packed half the toy room, lol. It was a mess everytime they had to climb in and out of the backseat.
- If your kids eat chicken nuggets in the backseat, make sure they were all eaten and not left unnoticed on the floor of the car. Because otherwise, when you find them 2 days later after they've been sitting in the scorching heat of a Floridian summer, you will find a pile of maggots.