Ahhh…the good old AAA Trip Tiks…my parents still get those! 
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I am a science teacher so we may check this out if we go this way - thanks for the tips!
Yep, I thought the same about Google and Waze. It doesn’t happen often, but we have seen differences occasionally. The Garmin we have does get updates, but it’s not quite as quick on them as Waze is. Mainly, we just like to see how many minutes we can peel off the original arrival time!
I would still get TripTiks too until just recently because the kids liked to hold them and turn the pages, etc., but when they changed the format from the long skinny ones to the size that I could just print out at home, they became less appealing. 
I live in metro Atlanta (just north of the city).
Driving through ATL sucks. But - if you can avoid driving through these times on weekdays—
6:30am - 9:30 am and 2pm -8pm, you’ll be able to avoid a good chuck of traffic.
Weekends are always lighter, too.
Good luck!
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We are another crazy Minnesota family of 5 that has driven down to Florida/Disney many times since 2010. Three weeks ago, after making our way through Atlanta on the way down, we decided to reroute through Alabama on the way back, as we would have hit Atlanta at mid-day Saturday. Side note: we’ve also driven to Gulf Shores, AL and Destin, FL from MN, so we have done similar routes through Alabama in the past as well. The route back through Alabama was longer, but not having to deal with the possibility of Atlanta traffic on the way home made up for it. Some of the smaller roads between I10 and I65 went a bit slower than I would like, but all in all, it was an ok option.
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We had a similar experience on the 75 in Atlanta. A truck overturned (I still can’t figure out how) and there were rolls of toilet paper strewn about everywhere.
That made a funny mental picture. 
This surprises me. I guess living here we are used to it? Driving through Atlanta is torture.
That does seem to be true. I have no idea why traffic is so bad in Chattanooga.
We used to travel through Georgia and now only drive through Alabama.
Less traffic and no time difference for us.
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We don’t cut into Georgia at all but go down to I10.
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Really considering this more and more
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Georgia isn’t really too bad at the early morning. I drove ( yes I did! Once to Savannah and once to WDW within two weeks from Ohio) Rush hour is horrible. If you drive through at 8 am on a Sunday, it is beautiful! The key is drive at the right moment. The Georgia mountains are beautiful off of I-75.
Yes the drive is definitely beautiful and I would miss that. In order to go through Atlanta early morning we would have to start driving from our home at 10pm the night before. While that would help the traffic congestion issues, I’m not a fan of all night driving with the family.
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It’s not ideal, but that’s what we are doing next week from here in Michigan. We bought a pair of noise cancelling Bluetooth headphones so we could still listen to music/podcasts and hear directions while it’s quiet for everyone else to sleep. We will also switch off drivers every 3 hours or so in the night. If we leave around 4pm this, we hope to make it to Florida but 2 or 3 the following day… But it could be 5 or 6. My only hope is that we make it before dinner so that we don’t have to eat that on the road also.
We’re from Indiana and have gone through Alabama but we’ve also gone through Knoxville, the Carolinas and down I-95. Both are similar distance (I-95 is slightly closer) but I do prefer going though Atlanta if it make sense. We’ve left late night/early morning the last couple of trips. That way the kids will still be asleep for a big chunk of the drive. We usually plan to hit Atlanta early morning just before rush hour and have had really good luck getting through that way.
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We’re in northeast Alabama and always go through Atlanta. On our last trip, we chose to drive overnight. We drove through ATL around 2-3am and it was WONDERFUL. Almost zero traffic. We’re planning to do the same thing on our next trip down.
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We are just a couple of hours south of you in Tupelo, MS. We are going to go spend the night in Dothan AL the Thursday night a week before Thanksgiving. Then we will go through Tallahassee and on down to Orlando.
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IMO it really depends on what time you would be dricing thru Atlanta. We are also from STL and have made the drive 4 times in the past 5 years. We have been thru on weekends and it wasnt bad. Our first trip we went thru about 2pm on a friday afternoon and it wasnt bad. Coming back home we have hit it on weekdays around 7pm and again not bad. So if you plan to be driving thru between 6-9am or 2:30-7pm it might be messy and then I would consider the Tallahassee route.
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I made reservations for the drive down using both routes - hotels are able to be canceled by noon the day of. So, I will also take weather into consideration the day or two before we leave and then decide. Thanks for everyone’s input!