Driving to Disney....[from Boston; any tips?] - Page 3 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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Yes, under no circumstances take 95 through DC; go around on the east side of the city. And really, Richmond is no problem even during their "rush" hour; we usually hit the evening one coming back from Florida and it's 20 minutes from one side of the city to the other, no problem.
Have agree with taking Bypass around DC and NOT taking Richmond Bypass. We took it once and it added about 30 min to our trip And it is a very boreing segment almost all marshland If timing is right we find we are in out of the city limits in no time.
Some others have suggested the book Drive I 95 we picked it up 2 years ago and found it had some great info. Plus can give pretty good ballpark on how far from one end of each state to the other.
Have to agree with taking Bypass around DC and NOT taking Richmond Bypass. We took it once and it added about 30 min to our trip And it is a very boring segment almost all marshland If timing is right we find we are in out of the city limits in no time.
....the other thing that bothers me about the Richmond by-pass ...other than the added time expenditure and boredom ...is that it re-connects with I-95 several miles south of Petersburg ...which is one of the last "major" areas for food and fuel until you get to Emporia ...which is another 40 miles away. I hate having to get off I-95 at some obscure exit ...and then have to take some even more obscure secondary road a mile or two in order to get fueled up.
After playing around with that GasBuddy website, I am very tempted to make the 1,265 mile journey from Rhode Island down by car. It's estimating only $103.04 for the round trip of 2,530 miles! Depending on flights next time, we just may try it...especially if we decide to go in the summer when I'm off work.
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GasBuddy is estimating our fuel cost at $250 round trip. Add in our $62 hotel room in Savannah and our total cost is just over $300. Plane tickets were at least that per person.
After playing around with that GasBuddy website, I am very tempted to make the 1,265 mile journey from Rhode Island down by car. It's estimating only $103.04 for the round trip of 2,530 miles! Depending on flights next time, we just may try it...especially if we decide to go in the summer when I'm off work.
....I say ....go for it!!
....It's really a great drive ....you get to SEE the country ....and ...with gas prices as they are now (I just paid $1.89/gal) ....I'm tempted to take the drive again this fall.
After playing around with that GasBuddy website, I am very tempted to make the 1,265 mile journey from Rhode Island down by car. It's estimating only $103.04 for the round trip of 2,530 miles! Depending on flights next time, we just may try it...especially if we decide to go in the summer when I'm off work.
I'm curious. Do you have a hybrid? We drive all the time from Tennessee, and we've generally spent, depending on the ups and downs of gas prices, around $230 round trip. We have a small SUV, which gets around 20 mpg. This trip it might be a little less, but I can't imagine getting by for much less than $200, even at $2 a gallon.
It is killing me that we are not taking my Prius on the Disney trip. It would cut our fuel cost in half. But we are taking a van FULL and our round trip fuel estimate plus a hotel room still came in cheaper than one ticket for a flight. I will say I assume gas will be back up to the $3 or higher by the time trip comes around and we still will not go over the cost of ONE ticket.
our estimate was $102, but we have a Prius for 2250 mile round trip
Quote:
Originally Posted by rphstearns
It is killing me that we are not taking my Prius on the Disney trip. It would cut our fuel cost in half. But we are taking a van FULL and our round trip fuel estimate plus a hotel room still came in cheaper than one ticket for a flight. I will say I assume gas will be back up to the $3 or higher by the time trip comes around and we still will not go over the cost of ONE ticket.
Have to love figures from these two posts. We drove one of our two Prius's on our first two trips and round trip 1860 miles took like 45 gals each time. The Motor Coach not so good 100 gals diesel each way but still cheaper than CAMP for our Dogs
I had a 2004 Prius and got an average of 47 mpg on the last trip in 2012 although at one point we hit 60 mpg and it was wonderful. I just bought a 2014 PriusC and around town here we are getting 49 mpg on average. We haven't done a long trip yet, but I'm not expecting it to cost very much.
I'm curious as to what kind of car snacks other people pack and how they do it. I clean out the coffee creamer bottles and fill them with nuts, cheerios etc and everyone has there own bottle. We usually have beef jerky, string cheese, apple slices, peanut butter and jelly and bread (for on the road lunch), usually some form of cookie and candy, gum, flavor packets for water and lots of water. I also always pack a roll of paper towels.
this trip I plan on placing an order with garden grocer to restock for the way back.
I'm curious as to what kind of car snacks other people pack and how they do it. I clean out the coffee creamer bottles and fill them with nuts, cheerios etc and everyone has there own bottle. We usually have beef jerky, string cheese, apple slices, peanut butter and jelly and bread (for on the road lunch), usually some form of cookie and candy, gum, flavor packets for water and lots of water. I also always pack a roll of paper towels.
this trip I plan on placing an order with garden grocer to restock for the way back.
.....the individual bottle idea for snacks is pretty good ...I like that. I usually re-use them as penny storage when I empty my pockets every night.
....we never really had "little ones" on the trips to WDW ...so portioning the snacks wasn't an issue. Our daughters were 9 and 14 yrs old on our 1st WDW trip drive ...so passing a bag of pretzels or chips around wasn't an issue. And with a mini-van ...one had the middle row seat ...and the other the rear row ...all to themselves. We had a cooler in the back with some sodas, etc ...but both of them really were into iced tea / iced coffee by then ...so we just refilled the coffee during our fuel stops. The peanut butter filled cheese cracker were always a take-along snack for us too (got a box of them in Costco before the trip).
....for the most part I really think they slept 90% of the trip ..or were on their phones texting friends.
.....my snacking, as the only driver (by choice), was the multiple bottles of Manhattan Special (espresso soda) that I brought. I know my wife liked the snack called "Just The Cheese" ...which is baked cheese ...in little 1" inch diameter disks. (we eat them on low carb diets).
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I've packed the Jif to go packs and the pre-sliced apples. I make our own trail mix with chocolate chips, cheerios,nuts & raisans. Gum. Drinks - water, juice boxes and soda. Some sort of sweet too - candy or cookies.
We always bring a cooler for our water, soda etc. Gogurts or cheese sticks are always good. Last time I went to Costco and got a big thing of rice crispy treats and some other kind of snack. My kids barely touched them so this year I think we'll go with a box of crackers. They're teenagers so like JerseyDads kids they sleep, watch a movie on their phone etc. Not much burning of calories.
For the kids we get Scooby Snacks and Meow Mix Mom and Dad get some GoldFish Bottled water, Gatorade, Seltzer assorted cold cuts and bread for sandwiches But have major Cracker Barrel stop planned for some time during day
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