Price Comparison - Fly vs Drive

[toystorymom]

Thanks for sharing your experience Buzz! We will be driving from MA in June and are in the planning stages right now. Our hope is to make it to SC, spend the night (or at least part of it), and then leave bright & early to be at WDW by lunch. Our long travel day will be a Sunday so I'm hoping the traffic will be lighter. Obviously flying is faster but with 5 of us, it is just not possible financially. Plus, we took a long flight with 2 of the kids last year and that wasn't exactly easy either, lugging car seats, carriages, etc plus the expense of renting a car. This was all pre 9/11, and we still ended up sitting at the airport for hours due to a delayed flight.

I'm glad to hear that driving can be a positive experience.

If you have any other tips I'd love to hear them. Thanks!

 

[Figaro]

We have always flown to Orlando, and only drove for the very first time the first week of February. Our situation is a little different, since we have to drive almost three hours one way to get to the nearest big airport (Minneapolis), and so by the time we've done that, paid to park the car, and gotten over to the airport, we have never spent less than 12 hours from the start of the trip until we arrive at WDW. It takes us almost exactly 24 driving hours to get to WDW. So what we do is leave very early in the morning, drive for 16 hours to just north of Atlanta, stay the night in a cheap hotel, get up early and drive the final 8 hours to WDW.

Both of us were quite nervous about driving, as we had never taken a long car trip together. And to our surprise, we absolutely LOVED the entire drive. It was so relaxing.....no pressure to run, run, run and then wait, wait, wait(smile). We would drive for about four hours, stop to get gas, stretch, go to the bathroom, get back in the car and drive some more. We listened to music from our cd collection, talked and talked, enjoyed the sights, and just plain had fun doing it. Until flying becomes less of a pain, we are probably going to drive, at least for the time being.

On our next trip, we are taking 2 full weeks and going to spend some time on the beach at St. Pete's before heading over to WDW. We love having our own car (no fumbling for the wipers when it starts to rain), and we love being able to travel at our own speed, and on our agenda instead of the airlines agenda. Plus packing is so much easier, and we can bring a cooler and groceries from home, and don't have to take the time to go to a supermarket when we get to Florida.