Thanks for the suggestion! @shawthorne44 summed it up perfectly, sounds like we are very similar in travel preferences! To add to that, we like to get our money’s worth out of our resort days, so arriving late at night feels like a wasted resort day for us. This year we added an extra day on the front end of our trip so we will have two resort days to relax and rest up from the trip, then we head to the parks! We are doing this schedule: 2 resort days, 3 park days, 1 resort day, 2 park days, 1 resort day, 2 park days, 1 resort day, then departure. So a total of 12 nights, with 7 park days and 5 resort days. Since we only go every three years, we like to stretch it out!
I really do appreciate all the ideas, so keep them coming! What seems obvious to one person sounds crazy to others, and vice versa, and I will be the first to admit that sometimes I overlook the obvious flaws or solutions!
Count me as another one who believes you can do this. Our family usually starts around 5 PM in order to arrive at 5 PM the next day. Even though Maps says 21 hours is plenty, it always takes us 24.
Avoiding traffic, after what I encountered two weeks ago in Virginia, is a very important strategy IMO.
Somehow traffic on a roadtrip is the worst! I’ll never forget when we came home from Nashville after the full eclipse. Everyone else in the world was going home too and on that road. We were totally stopped for a long time.
As long as you’re being cautious about avoiding over-tired driving, I can totally see wanting to time your drive to avoid traffic.
I don’t see that bell services hours would matter really? You can just leave your luggage in the car until whenever.
I would think you can’t really start your resort day until either the pools, shops, or restaurants open? Not sure there’s any point in arriving before that to just kill time hanging out somewhere? So maybe plan to grab a few hours sleep somewhere and arrive when something to do opens?
I’d be thinking where the most comfortable place to grab that sleep is. If it’s the car, I’m not sure how open Disney hotels are to car sleeping? Maybe a rest area, or Walmart’s have a reputation of generally being ok with letting you sleep in your car in their parking lots.
But in terms of comfort (this is a vacation, after all!) I think I’d have ID-ed a couple places super cheap along the route in to grab a few hours sleep if you do make great time. (Places unlikely to require a reservation.). You could start calling ahead when you’re a couple hours out.
Man that Disney Walmart is hopping at all hours! Sleeping where there is a lot of activity seems safer than a random
Walmart.
@EMgoblue - I stretched our budget by checking into a very inexpensive hotel just outside the world (there are soo many) for our first night. We had overnight bags just for that stop and left the big bags in our van. We had stopped elsewhere in Florida to see family first and arrived mid afternoon at the hotel and used the time to do needed pre-immersion into the world things. But I’d consider that for a short rest option. Or even just for a shower.