Lodging on the way?

[Aaron_of_London]

We are doing the drive in two stages.

The first stage will take us to somewhere in Kentucky.

Where's a good place to stay?

 

[Susan--Ontario]

Hi,

Kentucky is between 6 and 9 hours from London, ON so it depends on how long you want to drive the first day. We have stayed in Richmond, KY (there are lots of restaurants etc there). We love the Hampton Inn in Dry Ridge. We usually stay at the Hampton Inn in London, KY on the way home. If you are travelling after the American thanksgiving then you won't have to worry about booking the hotel before you leave home. That way you can just play it by ear. Who knows what the traffic and weather will be like.

Last year we went the first week of December and we drove through a freezing rain storm in KY, TN. It was snowing when we left London. Hopefully you will have clear skies and warmer weather.

 

[maryliz]

There's a really nice Holiday Inn Express in Dry Ridge/Owenton KY. There's also a Colonial Inn in Berea KY that we used to stay in on our way home from Florida. I don't believe it included breakfast though, but it was really reasonably priced and had nice room. If you can get a little further into Tennessee, there's a Comfort Inn at exit 141 that includes a great breakfast, and the rooms are really nice. This is the hotel we now always stay at on the way home. The exit also has a Perkins restaurant at it, in case you're hungry when you stop

Mary Liz

 

[CindyAnn]

Hi Aaron and welcome to the Dis! I'm cutting and pasting from my response to a similar thread a few months ago. We really found pushing along as far as we could on the first day made our second day much more pleasant, and gave us a very reasonable arrival time. Since you're leaving from London, you have a few hours advantage over us! As noted below, we found the two Jameson Inns we tried to be clean and comfortable and reasonably priced.

"We used the I75 last December/January and I have to second (third? fourth?) the praise for Dave Hunter's book "Along the I75". For our family (DH, DS9, DD6, me) it was the first time we'd driven to Florida.

For what it's worth, we started out about 6:45 a.m. from Toronto on Friday December 27th and hit Lima, Ohio for lunch and Georgetown, Kentucky for dinner (where the kids changed into their pyjamas). We stopped for the night in Cleveland, Tennessee (just north of Chatanooga) at about 10:45 p.m. at a Jameson Inn, and by this time the kids had been asleep for about 2 hours. The cost was $68, including taxes and a continental breakfast. The total mileage for that day was 1,358.2 km. We lost some time that day with a rush hour delay in Cincinnati, construction, and a prolonged lunch stop.

The second day we hit the road at 6:30 a.m., stopped for lunch just north of the Florida border, and drove up to our WDW hotel at 6:09 p.m. (956.2 km, for a total distance of 2,314.4 km). Since it was a Saturday we had lighter traffic, even through Atlanta.

We definitely liked the idea of driving further the first day and having an easier second day. The book was helpful in telling us, for example, where we could find an exit with both a McDonalds and a human fast food outlet for the adults. It also helped with finding name brand gas stations and suggested Jameson Inns as being clean, reasonably priced and reliable. (We found that to be true, and also stayed in one on our way home).

We'll be using the I75 on our trip this December, too."

Have a great trip, Aaron!

 

[cottontail]

Hi:

Cindyann has the right idea, do your biggest push the first day.

We usually leave between 4 and 5 a.m. and drive til 5.p.m. About 12 hours, we are in Hamilton. I try to pick a motel that offers a continental breakfast the next morn, for a quick getaway around 7 a.m. I pack lots of snacks for the car and usually lunch the first day.

I try to book two motels about an hour from one another. But I pick the ones that automatically cancel at either 4p.m. or 6p.m. When I figure out exactly which one we will stay at I call and confirm BEFORE the cancellation time to secure it.

You can also just drive and find a motel. We usually pick, hampton inn, comfort inn, fairfield inn, amerihost, and country inn and suites is now a fav of ours.

Deb.

 

[dsneygirl]

Another tip is to stop at state's welcome centres and pick up their coupon books. We were able to stay at a Jameson in 2 nights for about $45 each time.

 

[cottontail]

Yes each of the states welcome centers are great for coupon books for motels.

Plus when we went we used their washrooms as they were the only welcome centers with people actually working in them. We just felt a little safer.
We would also pull off the hwy to wendy's, mcdonalds etc to buy something small and use their washrooms.

For Canadians wendys is great with their 99cent meals. When we went we spent $1.61 Canadian for each American dollar spent. yikes but this trip was planned for 5 years and I did not want to wait any longer to get back to wdw.

Have fun,

Deb.