Did you fly or drive Cory? We are going to plan to go again end of next year when the twins are 2 and my son will be 5. I dont really want to sit in a car for 15 hrs but I also dont want to drop that much cash on plane tickets.

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We ended up driving (17 hours over two days) for a couple reasons:
1. It was much cheaper (for the five of us to fly it was going to be almost as much as the the actual vacation cost)
2. We planned to spend a week in Tampa at my mom's too (also, we had a dog that we dropped off there first).
If we were going just to Disney, we probably would have flown but the extra week made having a car necessary plus, having a car was really useful at Disney (driving to Target or if we were running late and wanted to just drive to an appointment at downtown disney instead of u sing Disney transportation, much quicker).
We broke it down to two days (drove to Georgia on day one, stayed at a hotel in Hinesville, GA) and then drove the next day (stopping at my wife's grandparents in Gainesville for lunch) then to Tampa. Flipped it on the way home (stopped in Radford, VA on day one, made it back to PA on day two). We purposely avoided 95 through VA, NC and SC and took 81 through through Va to 77 and then down to 26 to 95. Much less traffic (not that you have to deal with that).

My thoughts on the drive:
it was a breeze driving down. We have a minivan with DVD player so the kids watched movies colored, etc. It helps that my kids have bladders the size of basketballs (day one we left at 6:30, stopped for lunch at 12, gassed up...and stopped at the hotel at 6, I couldn't believe we only stopped once).
Driving back wasn't as pleasant, the kids were overtired (2 weeks of late nights/playing hard/sharing a room makes that happen) and sick of each other so they were very whiny. If it was up to me I wouldn't have stopped and just driven the 5 hours to get home that night, but my wife wasn't having it. She wished we had driven the whole way though the next day when the kids were even worse. Next time, I'm going to suggest we start the drive at 6 pm and I'll drive through the night and she can take over in the morning so we can get the drive done in one night/morning.

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Thanks, I was thinking leave in the evening so the kids sleep through the night in the car and I'll just deal with being tired the next day. I dont want to stop for the night if I can help it

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I love Disney World/Land. I'm not a big fan of the FastPass business though. Still haven't figured how that reduces overall wait times. Yeah, maybe you wait less for a couple rides, but you'll wait MOAR for the other ones while FastPass people stream by you.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

The longest wait we had for anything was 30 minutes. Having fast pass really helped with the high demand rides (7 dwarfs mine train was at least an hour and a half if no fast pass) so it helps with the high demand rides. My problem with it was that the mine train was broken on the day we fastpassed it, which made us have a problem getting other fastpasses that day and to get that ride later. Also, after the third ride, you can pick a fourth fast pass, but if your third ride is later in the day you have no real choices (the high demand rides have all their fast passes done by noon). An other problem: we fast passes space mountain (woo!) but my youngest was too short, so his fast passed wasn't "counted" so when we went to get a fourth fast pass, we had to wait for our appointed time for that fastpass to clear out (the time frame was 2:00-3:00 and it was 2:15, so we had to wait another 45 minutes) before we could pick a fourth...and at that time our choices were the jungle cruise, the tea cups, or the magic carpets, that was about it, unless we waited to wait until midnight to ride peter pan's ride or splash mountain but my kids were going to be sleeping at that time.

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see, all this is WAY to confusing. I just want to walk around and go on rides when I feel like it. Not have my day all scheduled out running this way and that to make sure I hit my FastPasses. Yeah, sure I COULD do that, but then all the FAstPass lemmings make my waits much longer. back in the day E tickets cost so much the lines weren't that long. yes I am that old.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

You've pointed out a bit of my problem with it. They need to commit or get rid of it, let people schedule as many fastpasses as they want a day with the restriction of one per ride or don't do it at all. This only three then more rule doesn't work.

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Then go to Disney during one of the off peak times. We went in September one year and it was real nice. Not long lines, not a lot of people there.

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

I went in October a couple years ago. Got a tropical storm that set the record for most rain in a 48-hour period.

You'll just have to trust me on this one.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Then maybe you ought to find something else to do.

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

Hey Matt,

How was the trip...I'm going to Florida with the family next week and plan to do two days at Universal. Any tips for tickets, fast passes, dining, etc?

Thanks

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If you are staying on the grounds take advantage of the extra hours all you can. May have to get up early or stay up late, but it is worth it.

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2018
#ExtendLafleur
10 More Wins

I wouldn't spend the money on the fast passes. You can get on most of the rides even quicker by taking advantage of the free "single rider" line. You aren't guaranteed to sit next to each other, but you'll be together up until you get on.

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Look over there! A dry ice factory. A good place to get some thinking done.
Did I forget to mention, forget to mention Memphis? Home of Elvis and the ancient Greeks.