I've got a quick question for all of my Louisiana friends. We're going to be driving to WDW in July and I was wondering if any fellow drivers could give us some advice.
Here's the background info. We're a family of four (me, my wife, our 5-year old son and 2-year old son) and we're actually leaving the day before we're scheduled to check-in at WDW. We don't really want to waste a whole day, so we're driving the day before hoping to get our passes and get to Animal Kingdom right at park opening (9 a.m.).
The main thing is we're trying to decide if we should stop in Tallahassee or Gainesville and stay the night or should we drive straight through to Orlando and stay the night. We're leaning toward driving all the way and staying in the Orlando/Kissimmee area because it will be a much shorter drive to Pop Century (our resort) to get our passes and hop on a bus to AK.
The flip side is we're looking at a 12-14 hour drive to Orlando, which may be rough on the 2-year old, who gets tired of being in his car seat after about three hours. We are planning on stopping every three hours to let the kids run around, but that will turn a 12-hour drive into a 14-hour drive.
The negative to staying in Gainesville (et al) is that we're still looking at a 2-hour drive the morning we want to go to Animal Kingdom. The positive, obviously, is not having to drive the full 12-14 hours in one day.
Our last trip to WDW, we drove straight through to Fort Wilderness, but we did it from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. and our 5-year old (who was 2 at the time slept through the entire drive). Of course, the 12 hours on the road caught up to me a couple of days later when I hit a brick wall and just had to take a day off from touring to rest.
I guess what I'm asking is, do you think we're asking for trouble to make the entire drive to Orlando with two kids? And secondly, can anyone suggest a decent, cheap hotel that's close to WDW so that Sunday morning when we wake up, we'll only be a short distance from getting our passes and heading out to a park?
I realize my post is long and possibly confusing, so if you need me to clear anything up, let me know. Thanks in advance for all of the advice/answers.
Here's the background info. We're a family of four (me, my wife, our 5-year old son and 2-year old son) and we're actually leaving the day before we're scheduled to check-in at WDW. We don't really want to waste a whole day, so we're driving the day before hoping to get our passes and get to Animal Kingdom right at park opening (9 a.m.).
The main thing is we're trying to decide if we should stop in Tallahassee or Gainesville and stay the night or should we drive straight through to Orlando and stay the night. We're leaning toward driving all the way and staying in the Orlando/Kissimmee area because it will be a much shorter drive to Pop Century (our resort) to get our passes and hop on a bus to AK.
The flip side is we're looking at a 12-14 hour drive to Orlando, which may be rough on the 2-year old, who gets tired of being in his car seat after about three hours. We are planning on stopping every three hours to let the kids run around, but that will turn a 12-hour drive into a 14-hour drive.
The negative to staying in Gainesville (et al) is that we're still looking at a 2-hour drive the morning we want to go to Animal Kingdom. The positive, obviously, is not having to drive the full 12-14 hours in one day.
Our last trip to WDW, we drove straight through to Fort Wilderness, but we did it from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. and our 5-year old (who was 2 at the time slept through the entire drive). Of course, the 12 hours on the road caught up to me a couple of days later when I hit a brick wall and just had to take a day off from touring to rest.
I guess what I'm asking is, do you think we're asking for trouble to make the entire drive to Orlando with two kids? And secondly, can anyone suggest a decent, cheap hotel that's close to WDW so that Sunday morning when we wake up, we'll only be a short distance from getting our passes and heading out to a park?
I realize my post is long and possibly confusing, so if you need me to clear anything up, let me know. Thanks in advance for all of the advice/answers.
We will be leaving on May 29th (in the morning.) We are staying at SSR!!!!
