I’ve been to Florida three times in my lifetime, once in 1987, then in 2002 and finally, 2006. And all this time we have gone to only one place, Disney World in Orlando.1987 is somewhat a fuzzy memory to me. We flew in from Mississippi and stayed with a friend in Tampa. I traveled with my Mom.
In 2002 we went to Florida with my Wife’s cousins. They came down from New York and met us in Virginia, and we all drove to Florida from there. Funny things happen when you have a caravan of four vehicles, no one has a GPS and you have passengers who need a lot of bathroom breaks. For one thing, you get to see and experience all the rest area along the way, and you tend to take long breaks. We left Virginia on a Thursday afternoon. We got to Orlando, Sunday at noon.
Before this trip I have never really traveled south. I've always gone up north I-95 from Maryland. I had to pay a toll fee but the rest areas were all inside the interstate highway, had gas stations and restaurants. Going south from Maryland, there were no tolls to pay but the rest areas only had vending machines that did not make decent coffee. If you wanted to eat you either brought your own (which we did), purchased from the vending machine or left I-95 in search of a restaurant. The worst rest areas were in Florida. These seemed to be barely used. Maybe it was because of those huge signs that read in part “Rest Area not Patrolled at Night”.
2006. Learned a couple of lessons from the last trip. First, bring a GPS. I had the Garmin Street Pilot i3. We had a few quick stops but otherwise drove the whole time. The trip took us about 17 hour.
We stayed at the Westgate Lakes Resort and Spa in 2002 and 2006. It is very nice place. If you rent a unit and there are more than 2 people in your group, make sure to ask for the main area of the unit. This is where the main kitchen, huge bath and plenty of space can be found. The smaller half is, now how shall we say it, a little too small. You will find plenty of activities if you are not that determined to take on the crowds at Disney World. The resort has swimming pools and bike trails you can use, you will also find a lake that you could go boating in. As for us, we came to visit Disney World.
Disney World was great, what can I say? The kids loved it; one week is definitely not enough to see the whole place. On this trip the kids started looking for more excitement, the kind of rides that teenagers crave. So we took a day off Disney and visited Universal Studios. I can already see that the next time we visit Florida, we, or rather the kids, will be going to Universal rather than Disney World.That other lesson I learned? I need to avoid the hot, sticky months of July and August. It is hard to get anything done when you are trying to avoid a complete meltdown, literally. November or December is perfect.
! The perfect solution for most situations you will encounter. I started out on the lighter side, opting for the Garmin Street Pilot i3. Despite what I have heard, I had some reservations about using a GPS. The GPS may not function as advertised and I did not want to be tied to an expensive unit I could not use or appreciate. Needless to say I was sold. The Street Pilot does a pretty good job of giving turn-by-turn instructions, arrival time among others. When I chose the Street pilot I knew the small screen size (1.3 x 1.7 in) might become an issue later but I figured, I needed to hear the instructions, not read it. As I gained more experienced with the GPS, I found situations where you did need to take a quick glance at the screen and read some of the information displayed, like street names. Now while doing so in the daytime was not much of an issue, the black and white screen was hard to read at night. I also learned that the turn-by-turn instructions can be confusing when you have two or more exits close to each other. Thankfully by this time newer, more advanced GPS had come down in price and was now more affordable to the masses, like myself.
