Your opinion on driving (room NY)

DisneyBliss7

DisneyBliss7

''Ohana means family''
Joined
Jul 11, 2011
I'm sure this is a common question so I'm sorry I advance...

We always fly but this year to save money we are debating on driving. We live northern NY, Saratoga Springs. MapQuest says about 20 hours. We would drive straight thru. Is it really that bad? We have 5 kids ages 16,13,10,10, and 6. We will be driving our Honda Odyssey. We would have to leave on Friday around 4pm. We are checking in on Saturday May 6th-May 13th..Not sure how that will be with traffic. I'm more nervous to drive than fly!
 
Mapquest shows our drive to be about 14 hours. In reality it took about 16 because of bathroom stops, a severe thunderstorm, and traffic. We were able to avoid serious slow-downs.

Count on at least 22 hours. We wouldn't drive straight through at the beginning of the vacation, it's pretty exhausting. If your plans aren't able to be changed then let yourselves enjoy a resort day on arrival and get to bed at a decent time.
 
I am not going to lie, the drive just sucks!

We drive from southern CT to Ft. Myers with our 3 kids and my mother in our minivan.

We did an overnight because neither of us can pull an all nighter.

South of Richmond It got boring, nothing to look at, except as you got close to south of the border and all the signs.

My kids had a clip board with the license plates to find and a huge ispy list. I need to make them another, even my 15 yo wants one for our drive to/from Ft.Muers to marathon key.

We use waze and I looked ahead on the google map to see the red/traffic. I think the year we took the autotrain we drove straight thru D.C. That was at about 10:30-11 am on a Friday. No traffic.

The year we drove down, there was construction in the Richmond area which caused us an hour of time. We got off and took RT 1 for a bit.

My DH wouldn't let me drive so we stopped in santee SC for the night.

Oh and I used the I95 exit app but I think I used another one too. This way we knew what each exit had food and gas wise.
 


DisneyBliss7 said:
I'm sure this is a common question so I'm sorry I advance...

We always fly but this year to save money we are debating on driving. We live northern NY, Saratoga Springs. MapQuest says about 20 hours. We would drive straight thru. Is it really that bad? We have 5 kids ages 16,13,10,10, and 6. We will be driving our Honda Odyssey. We would have to leave on Friday around 4pm. We are checking in on Saturday May 6th-May 13th..Not sure how that will be with traffic. I'm more nervous to drive than fly!
Click to expand...

I used to drive straight through from CT with my family as a child. But that was when my parents did the driving so I didn't pay attention.. As an adult.. We drive every single summer from CT and we always always make it a two day trip.. It's long and tiring. There's always going to be traffic or construction. it's just a long trip lol I'd never do straight thru now, but we do have those extra days of vaca time. If you don't then you must drive straight thru I guess. Good luck!
 
Hopefully you have at least two adults that can split that. I always hit traffic in Orlando and you will hit some in Jacksonville with all the construction. The main thing is to take naps when you need to for safety. I'm more of a morning person myself. I was in Orlando last May when I found out about my father passing in Northern NY 21 hour drive. I left at about 2 am and made it almost the entire was with my husband taking the last 2 hours.
 
I used to drive from PA. I like driving because you can have a lot more control over your situation. No delayed or cancelled flights. You can eat when you want, stretch your legs when you want, go to the restroom when you want. it does take longer and there's always the possibility of hitting traffic but I'd much rather be stuck in my own car than in a plane on the tarmac! : )
 


I can drive 12 or 14 hours a day but I don't like it and the next day I am exhausted. My road trip strategy is to leave early, 6 or 7am and try to stop for the night by 5 or 6pm. We stay at a decent hotel, have a nice dinner, maybe take a swim and watch a movie in the room. This way it feels like vacation and the next day you are refreshed and can do it again if necessary.

We are 12 hours away from Disney. I could make it in one day easily but usually stop around Jacksonville with some time to enjoy the evening as described above. Next day it's an easy 2 1/2 hours and we enjoy most of the day at Disney.
 
I've take countless cross country trips in every direction. Most of my trips averaged 55-60 mph over the total length of a long haul. If you're 1,300 miles out, a 22 hour run straight through wouldn't be impossible. 20 hours would be pushing your luck as I would imagine you would need to be excessively exceeding the speed limit to make up for pit stops. Definitely watch your speed through unfamiliar territory to save wasting time visiting with law enforcement.

Google Maps and Map Quest certainly don't account for fuel, food, and emergency toilet stops. The toilet breaks are a huge factor and become more of an issue the more people there are simply because you never know when someone will suddenly need a toilet.

Pulling all nighters can be extremely dangerous. I had to stop attempting them when I was about 30 years old. Now, if I even get a hint that I could fall asleep, I find the nearest place to get some rest even if I'm within a couple of hours of my destination. Hotels and an extra day driving can be expensive. Running off the road due to falling asleep at the wheel can be deadly!
 
We drive from Pennsylvania and it takes us between 16 and 17 hours. But, you have a few more hours than us. On our last trip we left at 6:20 and arrived at Disney Springs at 10:45. It was awesome because it gave us an extra day in the park. The way home we stayed in NC over night.

The ride down is fun. We are ready for a vacation and we're nice and refreshed. The ride home is torture. Especially when we get to DC and we want to push through to sleep in our own bed. I'm not sure what we're doing this year, but I'd like to break it into two days.

My brother did it in a Honda Pilot with his wife and five kids (18, 16, 14, 12 and 10) last year. They loved it. But, we grew up driving all over the east coast. :)
 
fifthdimensiondweller said:
I used to drive from PA. I like driving because you can have a lot more control over your situation. No delayed or cancelled flights. You can eat when you want, stretch your legs when you want, go to the restroom when you want. it does take longer and there's always the possibility of hitting traffic but I'd much rather be stuck in my own car than in a plane on the tarmac! : )
Click to expand...

AND pack whatever you want. Full sized bottles of shampoo for everyone
 
I am from Long Island. If you leave upstate NY on a Friday at 4 pm you will be passing the NYC metropolitan area around 6 pm. That can be nuts. It will take you much longer to get from the George Washington Bridge or Tappan Zee Bridge, through New Jersey (the turnpike!) towards south jersey. I would assume anywhere from 60-120 minutes added on at this time. If you can alter this time it will be a big time saver.
Also, if you change the time, remember to avoid Washington DC area between 4 and 7 pm, as that will significantly add to your time.
I found the kids were easier to travel in the car with when they were very young. Mine are 11-13-15 and now they are stir crazy sitting, but all kids are different.
I won't do a straight drive through. I think my family would need the overnight rest to get out of the car, stretch our legs, sleep, etc.
 
Mapquest/Google maps give you the time frame if you drive straight through without stopping for meals, bathrooms breaks, hitting traffic jams, road construction, etc. We drive from Northeast PA and have never even come close to what they claim the time it should take. I just don't have it in me to drive straight through anymore, but you may be much tougher than I am! LOL! We always stop overnight for the trip. Have a safe trip, whatever you decide.
 
We are from NJ and we would rather drive than fly. I have 2 kids and we have driven the past 2 times down to Disney. Both my kids have ipads so thats a HUGE help on the drive plus for my older kid I make up fun "trip journals" for him to do along the way. For example as we drive through maryland I might have him tell me what aquarium is in maryland and what type of sea life could you see there. Then he would go on his ipad and look that up and write some information down about the baltimore aquarium. Then like for Washington DC when we drive through that area I might ask him to name 3 land marks and give me some reasons why they are famous. Anyways its something fun for him to do, its educational, and its sort of like a treasure hunt type thing. He loves it. We also split the trip up. We don't drive straight through. Its a tough drive and we want to feel refreshed when we get to Disney so we usually drive to Florence, SC which usually takes us about 9-10 hours depending on bathroom breaks and traffic and then to get from Florence to Orlando it usually only takes us 6 hours. We usually get into Disney about 2 or 3 in the afternoon that day. Which gives us some down time to chill at the hotel and I usually make dinner reservations a little later on arrival day like 6:30-7, so we can still go in an enjoy at least a 1/2 day park if we want to. We were laughing over christmas break we took a weekend trip out to Michigan (we drove there as well). I said to my husband, if we can drive all the way to Disney we can surely drive to Michigan no problem. Well let me tell you it was seriously the worst drive of my life! So much worse than driving to Disney! That PA turnpike is seriously a drivers worst nightmare, lol. When we got home my husband even said he would rather drive to Disney three times than have to drive that drive again, and my husband would probably rather fly to Disney, but I am scared of flying so we drive, lol. Anyways its a really nice drive I think
 
I have driven from southern CT to orlando many times. Sometimes it takes 18hrs, sometimes 22hrs. Whether as a child and parents driving or myself as an adult we have always driven straight through. This year though I am stopping in South Carolina, I had free points and want some extra rest:laughing:
I always leave at night, around 7/8pm, that way I miss ALL the major cities' traffic;NYC/NJ,Philly, D.C., Richmond. I am passed all of these before the sun comes up and am in Orlando by the next evening.
2 years ago we were taking a friend to his father's house in Sanford,FL which is directly on the way to Disney so we stopped at a Comfort in there for the night. In the morning we were 30mins from Disney refreshed and ready to go :)

I think it's very do-able to drive straight through, though I am used to driving coast to coast and never had to do it with children in the back seat (well, some fellow travelers are debatable) I have faith in you though!! Good Luck!!
 
I haven't driven to WDW but I would love to from Montana though I would plan for it to be a longer trip with me and the kids and maybe a friend with or without kids along for the fun. Have the husband fly down and meet us later. I have been straight through as a passenger to the Los Angeles area 3 times ( 1 by a coach bus) and can say that Salt Lake is much easier when your not hitting it at rush hour. I imagine that any larger city that does not have a loop would get bottle necked during heavier times, even scheduling a longer meal stops on the outskirts during those times help.
 
We drove from MA in our Odyssey. As others have said, there are definitely things to consider and plan for: avoiding NYC/Philly/DC during commuting hours (6-9am; 4-7pm minimally); bathroom, gas, and food breaks; unexpected traffic and construction delays even in remote areas; and the sheer boredom of driving through long stretches of nothing but trees (NC and SC in particular). On the plus side, the Odyssey was a great vehicle for the trip and we took way more stuff than we needed, just because we could. Our drive time was much longer than the predicted 22 hours but we also stopped frequently so our then 2 year old could stretch his legs, get the wiggles out, and see new sites. And because we needed the break! (DH and I drove to FL straight through as 20-somethings but now that we're older, it's not as much fun).
 
I actually live not far from where you are. We drive to Virginia every year for vacation and those 10 hours are about as far as I can stand in one day. Can I make two suggestions? If you're able to, leave early in the morning. I'm talking like 4am early. You hit almost no traffic until around 6 or 7am and by then you can be to Pennsylvania at least. (We stop every two hours for bathroom breaks).
My second suggestion is to avoid the thruway. If you do that then you can avoid NJ traffic as well as DC traffic. I wish I could remember the route numbers, but DH does the driving and I'm directionally challenged.
I hope you have a great trip and make fun family road trip memories!
 
We typically fly when we go to WDW, but one year we drove. The distance for us (me, DH, and two boys) is an 18 hour drive, but it took a little over 20 hours with pit stops, traffic, etc. While theoretically it seems great to do it all in one day, I wouldn't recommend it. It's exhausting, especially on the way home. We never could have driven it all in one shot after doing Disney.

We did the drive over two days both down and back. We packed a huge cooler with as many snacks, drinks, and sandwiches as we could, and I'm not going to lie...it was nice to have a minivan to just load up. When we fly, we always have to be strategic about what we pack. When we drove, we could (and did) bring everything AND the kitchen sink.

We had a great family playlist of music that we could all enjoy on the way, and we played a hardcore license plate game. Driving from the midwest we saw over half of the 50 states in license plates! We tried to make the drive as fun as possible with movies, games, etc, but at times the drive was tedious and boring. That's just what you sign on for with a long car trip.

We are headed back to WDW in June, and in trying to figure out how to save as much money as possible, DH and I talked at length about the merits of driving again. Our oldest is now 15 and has his driver's permit, and he needs driving experience before turning 16, so it was attractive to consider with three drivers in stead of two. However, we crunched the realistic numbers and opted to fly. We guesstimated how many gallons of gas we used on our trip, added up the food we spent on the road (because even with a huge cooler, we still spent money on food on the way home), added up the cost of the hotel on the way down and on the way back, and decided that while flying is still more expensive, it's not hugely more expensive...it's only a few hundred dollars more.

The biggest thing that I caution you to factor in may sound silly...the Disney depression on the way home. It's a real thing, especially when you drive. You have a long time to think about how awesome the vacation was and how sad you are that you are reentering real life when you get home. The trip TO WDW was fun and exciting because we had the anticipation of being there to look forward to. We all were pretty crabby, and tired, and Disney depressed on the way home. Needless to say, the trip home was NOT pretty.

Whatever you decide, I wish for you a magical trip filled with lots of pixie dust and many amazing family memories! Travel safely!!:drive:
 
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