How many miles/hours do you drive before stopping for the night?

[DaddyDisneyMan]

Good Morning All,
Hope everyone's day is going well. We are getting closer to our family vaca (39 DAYS!! WOO HOO). We are driving from Detroit and heading down to WDW (1200miles). How far have you all driven before stopping for the night? I will be the only driver. We are leaving at 6am, with hopes of hitting Macon, GA; maybe even further if I feel up to it.

 

[Mikester71]

Good Morning All,
Hope everyone's day is going well. We are getting closer to our family vaca (39 DAYS!! WOO HOO). We are driving from Detroit and heading down to WDW (1200miles). How far have you all driven before stopping for the night? I will be the only driver. We are leaving at 6am, with hopes of hitting Macon, GA; maybe even further if I feel up to it.

Congrats on getting closer to the big day! I WISH we were only 39 days out from our next trip, but sadly, it will be a while for us. But it always goes by so quick, so I know our trip will be here before too long too.

I see we are practically neighbours. I live an hour north of you in Sarnia, Ontario (across from Port Huron, MI). It looks like we basically will end up with the exact same drive schedule, as I left our house at 5am every trip (4 of them since 2005) which means we would have been driving through your neck of the woods on the I94 around 6ish each time. My wife and I usually switch out every few hours though so that we both can stay fresh behind the wheel. In all honesty, I usually start out like gangbusters and go for a long stretch before my right leg starts cramping up and then I can only go an hour or two at a time after that. So I am fortunate that my wife doesn't mind driving long distances, for all of our sake.

I started keeping a driving journal that I take with me each trip to write down when we cross over into each State and when we stop for meals or gas and that. It probably seems like a stupid idea to most people, but after I did it that first time and took it the next trip, I kinda liked being able to see where we were in comparison to the same time the trip before. I write down gas prices and how much it took to fill it up and where we pulled over each trip.

Anyways, to the point of your thread. Like I said, we leave at exactly the same time as you from exactly the same starting point and take I75 all the way down before pulling over for the night in either Adel, GA or Valdosta, GA between 10-11pm, depending on how bad the weather was on the way down (we've hit wicked snowstorms the past couple of trips) and how many times we stopped for fuel and food. We wake up the next day and leave around 9ish and usually pull into Pop Century in WDW between 1-2pm. On all four of our trips, we've driven straight through without stopping on the way home and I don't think I will be doing it ever again. It really takes more out of you than one would imagine.

Sorry for the long post. Hope you all have a wonderful trip and enjoy the drive down!

 

[Mikester71]

You are very welcome!
One more thing I would recommend if you are driving on a weekend night - when you are closer to knowing when/ where you want to stop (Macon, Tifton, etc.) you might try googling a few hotels off of 75 on your phone and calling ahead to be sure they have availability. Out of a ton of trips down 75 we've only encountered every hotel being booked up twice, but both were weekend nights - I think tournaments were the reason. Now we call ahead and if they say they have a ton of rooms we just go with the flow - if they say they are nearly sold out, I'll go ahead and make the call and pick a stopping point.

I think you are dead on with your estimate of arriving at the resort no later than 5pm departing from Macon. Probably even a little earlier. Have a great trip!

I second this. Seeings how our trips were always during our (Canadian) Spring Break in March, I learned after that first year to book a reservation a month or two in advance and just make sure that we drove our butts off to make it to that city (usually Adel or Valdosta, GA) for the night. It is NO fun driving 16+ hours only to pull off of I75 and spend another hour or so looking for a vacancy somewhere. Happened once and will NEVER happen to this guy again!

 

[DaddyDisneyMan]

Congrats on getting closer to the big day! I WISH we were only 39 days out from our next trip, but sadly, it will be a while for us. But it always goes by so quick, so I know our trip will be here before too long too.

I see we are practically neighbours. I live an hour north of you in Sarnia, Ontario (across from Port Huron, MI). It looks like we basically will end up with the exact same drive schedule, as I left our house at 5am every trip (4 of them since 2005) which means we would have been driving through your neck of the woods on the I94 around 6ish each time. My wife and I usually switch out every few hours though so that we both can stay fresh behind the wheel. In all honesty, I usually start out like gangbusters and go for a long stretch before my right leg starts cramping up and then I can only go an hour or two at a time after that. So I am fortunate that my wife doesn't mind driving long distances, for all of our sake.

I started keeping a driving journal that I take with me each trip to write down when we cross over into each State and when we stop for meals or gas and that. It probably seems like a stupid idea to most people, but after I did it that first time and took it the next trip, I kinda liked being able to see where we were in comparison to the same time the trip before. I write down gas prices and how much it took to fill it up and where we pulled over each trip.

Anyways, to the point of your thread. Like I said, we leave at exactly the same time as you from exactly the same starting point and take I75 all the way down before pulling over for the night in either Adel, GA or Valdosta, GA between 10-11pm, depending on how bad the weather was on the way down (we've hit wicked snowstorms the past couple of trips) and how many times we stopped for fuel and food. We wake up the next day and leave around 9ish and usually pull into Pop Century in WDW between 1-2pm. On all four of our trips, we've driven straight through without stopping on the way home and I don't think I will be doing it ever again. It really takes more out of you than one would imagine.

Sorry for the long post. Hope you all have a wonderful trip and enjoy the drive down!

Wow! You post was MORE than helpful. I appreciate the response. It was extremely detailed

 

[erstwo]

Wow! You post was MORE than helpful. I appreciate the response. It was extremely detailed

Hey! Bumping this up - not really much to do with your post above, but wanted to be sure you saw this.

I drove 75 from North of Atlanta to south of Tampa (and back again this past week. The construction traffic between Macon & Tifton is killer right now. Hit it at 8 pm-ish going down & mid afternoon on the return trip. It was bad both times.
I mention this because I know you said you might try to push further than Macon and I didn't want you to be caught in an extra hour or so of traffic late at night unaware. I still think its a good idea, but just keep the construction in mind.
Also - traveled down on a Friday & had a heck of a time finding a hotel room again. Didn't follow my own advice! Ha!

 

[DaddyDisneyMan]

Hey! Bumping this up - not really much to do with your post above, but wanted to be sure you saw this.

I drove 75 from North of Atlanta to south of Tampa (and back again this past week. The construction traffic between Macon & Tifton is killer right now. Hit it at 8 pm-ish going down & mid afternoon on the return trip. It was bad both times.
I mention this because I know you said you might try to push further than Macon and I didn't want you to be caught in an extra hour or so of traffic late at night unaware. I still think its a good idea, but just keep the construction in mind.
Also - traveled down on a Friday & had a heck of a time finding a hotel room again. Didn't follow my own advice! Ha!

Thank you a TON for this post!!! I owe you a BIG TIME! I will probably stop my trip at Macon and book the hotel today! I will let you know how it all went. We are only 18 days from our trip.

 

[mets7]

Last year we drove straight through from St. Louis which is about 15hours with a 9 and 6 year old. We left around 6pm and drove through the night. My wife drove all the way to the Florida border or until the sun came up then I took over and brought it home. We didn't have plans to do much that first day except rest and then get up the next morning ready to go. Good luck and enjoy.