Driving from Toronto to Florida

Driving from Toronto to Florida is definitely quite the adventure. Our family has completed this journey twice in the last 2 years and both trips where very different. It seems to be a 50/50 split when it comes to people who prefer to fly vs people who prefer to drive. We prefer the drive for a few reasons the biggest of which is cost compared to flying. We also genuinely enjoy the time together as a family. I should mention (if I haven’t already) we have 3 daughters aged 7, 6 and 18 months.

Our most recent trip was in late November 2018 and we had some additional companions with us. My sister and my niece joined us so we had a full to capacity min-van with 4 kids and 3 adults. Which worried us a little since every seat would have a body in it plus luggage for 7 people as well as all the extra things a baby requires. Our trip was planned during a time of year where Florida weather can be very warm some nights and very mild the next. Some days you’re good in shorts and t-shirt, others you would need a light jacket and jeans. So we had packed enough clothing to cover both clothing options for every day. Plus we had all of 13 month old's necessities such as diapers, snacks, formula, her pack and play, toys and of course her stroller.

These are the 3 standard options Google Maps will give you when looking for directions between Toronto and Florida

On our last two trips we decided to take the I-95 S route. If you use Google maps to get your directions it will give you 3 routes and the I-95 S route goes right down the middle of the 3 options you’ll be provided. This route does include tolls in the US but the cost of the tolls will be under $5 USD one way. We really enjoy the journey through the mountains in West Virginia but during some times of the year the weather can be a little concerning along the I-95 S route. For example the week before we left for Florida the I-79 portion of the drive through Pennsylvania was closed due to a snow storm and a ton of accidents. Another weather related incident that occurred was during our drive we had decided ahead of time that our first hotel stop for the trip would be in Wytheville VA. We left around 2AM EST and arrived at our hotel around 1:30 PM EST. When we got there we received a weather alert that a storm would be rolling through around 11PM EST and would drop about 15 cm of snow. Wytheville is pretty high up in the mountains and driving down into North Carolina in slippery weather didn’t sound very ideal so we decided to cancel our hotel booking (which Motel 6 graciously refunded) and we continued on our way. We booked another hotel in Georgia as we wanted to get as far away from the risk of snow/freezing rain as possible. We made it to our new hotel at about 9:00 PM EST. Driving that distance on our first day meant we only had 5 more hours of driving until we got to our resort the next day.

So how did the kids do during this 19 hour drive? I was quite surprised they all did so amazing. My niece was 9 at the time and my 3 daughters were 6, 5 and 13 months. I didn’t expect any issues with the older ones as they made the trip the year before with flying colors. It was the 13 month old I was worried about. However she was a rock star the entire trip. Of the entire 19 hour first day I believe she cried for 5 minutes in total. Trick was keeping them all busy with a variety of different things. Our van has the built in DVD player which consistently played movies (unless everyone was sleeping). On top of that we had made small kits for the all the kids that included stickers, paper, crayons, activity books, coloring books, etc. We also bought some cheap dollar store toys for them to open up and play with along the trip. Each kid, including the baby had their tablet with them and plenty of snacks. We made sure to bring plenty of ready-made formula in a big thermos for the 13 month old so we could get her to sleep as easily as possible without having to stop along the way.

In terms of planning the route we decided to plan our trip about a year before we left. The reason we did that was due to the time of year we decided to travel. The week we chose in November was right after American Thanksgiving which was November 22nd 2018. Our first travel day was November 23rd 2018 which was a Friday. When I was looking at booking hotels along that route for that week the availability was pretty limited. We like to book the hotels ahead of time for multiple reasons. It gives us a goal and destination to aim towards. We generally aim to be somewhere in the middle of the trip after day one. The second reason is you never know what events could be going on in the area you are travelling too. I have hear of people travelling to Florida and stopping for the night after reaching their limit only to find out the area they are in is hosting some special event and the hotels are fully booked. So they are forced to continue on their drive until they can find a hotel. I like using Expedia.ca as they have a pay when you stay option which is great for situations like this. Essentially you book the hotel with a credit card way ahead of time but there is no hold fee and no cancellation charge as long as you cancel 24 hours before the check-in time. So if you decided to change the route a few days before you leave because the weather isn’t favourable then you can do so without worry. In our case this past November I booked my hotels along the I-95 S route as well as along I-75 S route. I preferred the I-95 S route because it’s a tad quicker but wanted to have options in the event the weather along our preferred route was not so accommodating. I checked the weather along our route 48 hours before and cancelled the hotels along our back-up route with no penalty.

This was about 2/3 of the luggage we took with us to Florida.

Packing the van we made sure to do the night before to so we didn’t have any “that doesn’t fit” surprises at 2:00 AM. A few weeks before I took all the empty luggage we had and made sure it would actually fit in our van again so we wouldn’t have any surprises. I knew we had a ton of luggage to bring and wanted to make sure it would actually fit with 7 people.

Make sure to bring lots of fun stuff for the kids to do. There was no whining or complaining the entire journey because they had a variety of things to do. I was totally expecting the traditional “are we there yet” but there was enough entertainment they were too distracted. When they got bored of movies they went on to coloring. When they got bored of that they went on to playing with their dollar store toys.

Picture of the girls touring the Cars section of the AoA resort. We ended up staying in the Little Mermaid section this time!

Now let’s get to the cost of driving and why we choose this cheaper alternative to flying. Last November when we drove to Florida the cost of fuel in the US was around $2.60 per gallon USD. Driving both ways the total cost of fuel was $320 CAD. We spent $120 CAD on hotels for the 4 hotels we stayed in. You can do this differently but we prefer to stay in Kissimmee the night before our Disney resort reservation starts. This way we can go to our resort first thing in the morning, check in and head to the park with a good night’s rest. It also allows us to make the most of our of park days. The total cost of our trip comes in around $500 CAD with food, gas and lodging. The cost of us to fly from YYZ to MCO during that time of year non-stop came in around $1400 CAD. Depending on the time of flight there and back you potentially lose 1 or 2 park days of your reservation. If you do have enough time to make it to the park you and your kids will probably be exhausted. You could always book extra hotel days at the resort to give you time to settle in, but that can add up very quickly.