The last week in August we are planning to spend a week at Disneyworld. Mkm and I are very big Disney fans, and the kids have been there once already. We went in 2005 a few months after Shayna was born. We deiced to go then because we felt that we cannot keep pushing it off until the youngest is old enough. We own a time share near Disney at Westgate Vacation Villas and our week is the week after Thanksgiving in November. Since this is a dead time at Disney, we decided to go then. Avi was almost 5 and not yet in Kindergarten so it was no big deal to take the kids that week.
We had a great time, and we always knew that we would come back again in a few years. I am not sure what prompted going this summer, but I think my in-laws had something to do with it. So we traded our November week for the last week in August and off we will go.
I will probably blog about our preparation for our trip over the weeks until we leave and even try to blog while at Disney.
To start, we decided right off the top that we could not fly to Florida this time as it is way too expensive. When we started talking about the trip, everything was based on the idea that our in-laws would come as well and we would drive down in their SUV. We could only imagine what it would be like with the three kids and our in-laws in a car over two days, but we realized it was the only way to afford it. Everything was agreed and we traded our week at the timeshare and we got a 2nd until for our in-laws for the same time.
A month later I was thinking about the trip and with the rising costs of gas, I was curious what it would cost to drive down there. I looked up the SUV on the internet to get the size of the gas tank and the approximate mpg. After all of this, and figuring 4 tanks of gas each way and two nights at hotels on the way down and back, I came up with about $1200. This was being conservative and it would probably be more.
I then went to the Amtrak website and looked up the cost of the Auto Train. The Auto Train is a special train that runs from Lorton Virginia (20 miles south of DC) to Sanford, Florida (just north of Orlando). You get there at by 2 pm and they put your car in a special carrier and you travel by train and get in the next morning at 9:30. Dinner and Lunch are included. So this was going to cost $1400. We have to drive the 4 hours to Virginia from New Jersey so the cost will be closer to $1600. That is probably between $200 and $400 more than driving (plus gas prices are not going down so who knows?)
This will allow us to get to our resort at about noon rather than 10 pm on Monday and we will be able to go to the first park on Tuesday having had a pretty restful day on Monday. On the way home, we will be home by 3:00 pm or so and the kids will have a good night sleep since they will start school the next day.
Next Disney blog will talk about some more of our plans for the week.
Watch this commercial from 1971. I think it’s kinda scary!
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wTcH49N-8A]