I am starting to find that the flights from the Boston area to the Orlando area for school breaks are starting to be on the ridiculous side of expensive (I could seriously fly to Paris for less). I’ve done all the little tricks of flying out of other airports to anything but MCO but I’m seriously considering driving for our next trip. It would be Me, DH and DD 13 . We live about 40 mins north of Boston. I’d love an any tip and tricks to make this as painless as possible, especially avoiding the NYC area/GW bridge. Is it realistic to leave on a Friday early evening and arrive Sunday midday? What are good stopping places along the route for someone who doesn’t want to drive through the night? What else am I missing and how can we keep our sanity?
Adding @QwertySC who has driven from upstate NY, which I assume joins up with your route somewhere around NYC. I’m not sure I recall anyone driving from Boston specifically but @StinsyLinson, @melcort10 and @OBNurseNH live in that area. I’m probably missing others.
Friend we are neighbors, almost
I won’t drive to WDW. Waaaaay too long for me. Maybe not for the drive down but the drive home would feel interminable
Have you looked at flights out of the other airports? I was feeling discouraged but was eventually able to find flights about $150 each way/$300 RT out of MHT
I have done it once when we drove my niece to her stint in the Disney College Program. We left around 2pm from Central Mass on our first day because I was working. Our first stop was the Hampton Inn and Suites in Edgewood, MD. Next day drove to the Fairfield Inn & Suites in Santee, SC. Then it was the final push to Disney. We arrived at 10:30. Found a few stops we wanted to make along the way (had our first Buccees experience). It wasn’t bad at all. But I’m not in any rush to do it again!
Is that an A.M. I assume?
Yes I’m looking at all options. I have time to track prices and my banking window is not till January, so I’ll keep looking- but we are warming up to making the drive, or actually going to Europe 
We would have to see her school schedule to decide if we want to have her skip school to leave early Friday, otherwise we would have to wait until the afternoon- but regardless if we can make it close by Saturday night, our check in would be Sunday.
Yes
I’m WNY and then drive out by Pittsburgh. But Thank you for thinking of me.
I’ve never done it, but I can ask around, because I know people that do it regularly.
We just drove our RV from Philly area. You go slower and RV so we took 3 days going down. I don’t know how out of the way it is from Boston but we took 81 down to avoid DC area to 64 and didn’t get in 95 until SC. Stop at the Buc-cee’s - they really are amazing.
For routes, we just used Waze. I don’t know if we just had an extremely lucky few days, but we didn’t hit traffic. In thinking about it some more, I think the biggest negative we had was the car! We were driving so my niece could have her car there, so we took her Chevy Cruze. Really tiny and we were crammed in there. I think a bigger car would have made a big difference!
Oh, and a good playlist! We had 3 generations on our trip, but the playlist was amazing and worked for all!
@Jsanta26 I am following this thread because I did grab flights on JetBlue for April vacation. I have a cruise booked so we are flying Sunday/Friday. I am a little concerned because I have been reading a lot of scary reports that JetBlue has been struggling lately. If something happens I will drive.
This past April I flew out Friday night and I am shocked how much higher flights are for next April. This is the first time I could not book a direct flight. It was over $800 per person each way direct when I booked. It is now over $900.
I have known a few people that drove multiple times to wdw every year. Some of them rent a car to make the trip. (Saves their cars from all those miles).
I’m seeing the same. But, I did some digging this morning when I was up at 5 am (I don’t sleep anymore, yay late 40s 
) and we are looking at possibly driving to Albany NY and flying from there (found $215 jet blue direct flights)
the airlines are just price gouging in the northeast for school vacation week, it makes me so angry! 
Really tough to fly the weekends of February and April vacation. We did it once and had a miserably late night and slept a few hours at Hyatt MCO before getting the bus to Port Canaveral. You can’t do it with a cruise, but I usually fly on weird days for those vacations - like Monday thru Thursday of vacation week. The flight prices are insane. DS is headed into senior year, so we will be stuck to the college vacations soon!
I used to take DD out of school the week before vacation, but now she’s in middle school and that really ain’t possible. Plus with me working an office job now instead of the hospital, I can’t manipulate my time off as much, so I’m kinda stuck.
I did points one way and paid about $320 for the cash flight. I have been paying $215-260 for recent flights. I am hoping JetBlue gets over their recent operational issues.
How long is that drive to Albany?
It’s about 4 hrs. So we will leave the night before and get a hotel room. But still better than a 23 hr drive!
From where we live it takes about 12 hours to get to WDW. Of course this depends on traffic, weather, etc. but 12 ish is typical. We have done it in two days and in one long day. I would say if you are used to long drives it is doable. If 2 hours in the car makes everyone want to scream, don’t try it. If you haven’t taken a road trip of any length before I would not suggest this be your first, although having Disney at the end might make it easier. It really comes down to if you think your family can manage it. If you decide to drive let us know. I have lots of tips to make the trip bearable.
Wow that’s nuts!
I can’t imagine that won’t level out as time passes. I can see being leery of taking that gamble in the current environment but it would be an interesting experiment to track. I find that around 90days out is when you begin to see more palatable pricing. In fact, just this week I was able to cancel and rebook some November flights MHT to BOS and I got 36,000 points back (Southwest). Harder to do with trips booked on cash anymore but my general point is that when we originally booked I was like OUCH! But right around 90 days it was vastly improved.