I95 from PA

[pluto40823]

Hi everyone. Hope this is the right spot to post this. We are planning our next vacation (August 2008) and are thinking of driving. For anyone that has driven 95 from the Philadelphia area to Disney, do you have any places to stay off 95 in Georgia? Also do you need reservations in August or can you just stop? We hope to drive as long as we can. I am thinking Georgia will be about it. Thanks. :mickey:

[hrmmary]

We drove a couple of years ago from DE. and stopped about half way just before the S.C. border. They have very nice welcome centers as you enter each state with clean restrooms and lots of information. They also carry those discount travelers guides with coupons for hotels. You could chance it and check those out if you will be arriving before 6 or 7 P.M. but later may be risky to try to book in Aug. :mickey:

[snifflesmcg]

I have driven to Florida quite a few times (from PA). I know there are always great prices on hotels off of RT 95. Personally, I would stay in SC. My family had an incident in GA in 1988 and since then I try to stay away. I don't know if you are a AAA memember but you can pick up a "Tour book" for the southern states and they have motels/hotels listed town by town. Also, (and this is just a thought) you can pick up this book that I used to own that has saved me more times than I can even tell you. I don't remember the name off hand but I know I bought it at Cracker Barrel and you can also find it in some truck stops. It gives you a run down of everything on each exit on major highways in the 48 continental states. It gives you hotels, shopping, restaurants, gas stations.....everything you would need to travel on the road. I think it goes for about $15 (maybe $20) but it's the best money I ever spent. I'll try and find the name of it for you when I get home as I am at work. Good luck with your travels.

[EvilQueen2006]

I drove down in April one year (school vacation week). I stopped at a place in Savannah, GA.(can't remember the name). It was the first place we saw off I-95 and there was no problem getting a room for the night. It was nothing spectacular, but it was clean and gave us a place to sleep.

[LouRodriGIS]

I agree with EvilQueen2006...stay in Savannah. I'm from Philly and we have stayed in Savannah a number of times on our way to Florida. It's about 650-700 miles to Savannah so plan for a full day of driving. The nice thing is that on Day 2 you'll only have about 250-300 miles to drive to Orlando. There are plently of places to stay in Savannah. I'd try TripAdvisor to see how people rated the places but you have all of the major brand hotel chains.

[LIGHTNING MC-DAD]

We drive each year from NY. For the most part we drive straight through but we have stopped a few times at I believe exit 2 in GA off I-95. We have stayed at the Hampton Inn there. Was fine for us and we did not make any reservations.

[wdw_bound]

We stay at the Holiday Inn Express in Walterboro, SC (about an hour from the GA border) when we visit DH's family there. I can recommend it as being clean, reasonably priced and a fairly decent continental breakfast (with homemade waffles).

If you make it to Savannah, I can recommend the La Quinta in Richmond Hill (one of the Savannah exits). We've stayed there on our way to WDW and it is spotless, as well as reasonable and has a good continental breakfast. It's about four hours from there to WDW, not counting a prolonged stop at the FL welcome center for a nice potty break, samples of OJ and letting the kids walk around the wild life footprint displays.

[ariel03]

DH and I drove down and gave ourselves an extra day and stayed in between north and south carolina and went to paromount carowinds park for the day for some fun and relaxing to break up the drive and left that next morning.

[pluto40823]

Thank you everyone. One of the biggest things is stopping without reservations because we don't know how far we will make it before saying we need to stop. 2nd biggest is someplace clean. We have had bad experiences with not so clean hotels. We will take all the recommendations with us. Thanks again.

[kakn7294]

We've stayed at La Quinta in Savannah about 9 years ago. It was nice at the time. There are a lot of places to stay around the Savannah exit. That's what I would shoot for if we were to stop overnight again, but of course, we'd be driving from Pittsburgh.

[snifflesmcg]

BTW, the name of that book is called "The next exit". I found it online for $12.95.

[PrincessEmmasMommy]

I also vote for the last exit in South Carolina (I Think it is Hardeesville). Lots of choices (we prefer the Sleep Inn). They are in the coupon book, but you can only use the coupon if you are not making reservations because it is for walk ins only. Call them when you get to NC/SC border and see how full they are. Estimate your time from there and ask about their availability that night. From this hotel to Orlando it's about 6 hours if you go early in the a.m.
Good luck!
Jen

[vamaggie]

Never had to do this but we once traveled w/o ressies and drove til we got tired. What I would suggest is figure out from the chain hotels what are along the way and when you get close to wanting to stop (like an hour or two) cal lthe hotels in order of preference and see who has rooms. We did this when traveling to New England and decided to stop about 1am. We actually got further than we thought so we were glad we did not have to stop to accomodate a hotel ressie. Good Luck!

[Flower]

We usually stop at the States welcome center and pick up the hotel saver coupon books.

Our past trip we drove pretty much thru Georgia and stopped at exit 3 I believe. The nice thing was when we woke up in the morning it was a short drive to the Florida Welcome Center so we all got our Florida orange juice! From there, it was not a huge drive to Disney.

One thing we learned about 'stopping in' at a hotel, ask what rates they offer. They will sometimes charge you more if you request a ground floor room.