We drove straight through from North Bennington, Vermont to Winter Garden, Florida. No overnight stop, no splitting it into two days — just gas, food, and go. My wife did the majority of the driving; I took over for about 8 hours of the trip. The rest was all her.

Staying at the Hilton Aqua Sol

We stayed at the Hilton Aqua Sol in Winter Garden, Florida — the same place we stayed in 2024 when we got married. We loved it so much the first time that coming back was a no-brainer. It's close enough to Magic Kingdom that you're not spending half your day in transit, but far enough from the Disney bubble that you get some breathing room.

The hotel itself was clean, comfortable, and honestly exactly what we needed. We ended up spending way more time at the resort than we expected — which says a lot, because you never really do on a Florida trip. The kids loved it. They spent hours running around the grounds catching lizards, which became this whole unexpected obsession. And the water park was a massive hit — especially the water slides. They would've stayed there all day if we'd let them.

The mornings were easy, the breakfast got us out the door quickly, and coming back to a quiet room at the end of a long day was exactly right.

Winter Garden is a nice little area too. If you've only ever stayed on Disney property, it's worth knowing there's a whole world just outside the gates that's more relaxed and a lot easier on the wallet.

You can see my full review on Hilton Aqua Sol.

The Adults' Night Out

On Father's Day night — June 21st — we had the older kids (18 and 19) watch the younger ones so we could go out for some fun and headed out. The original plan was CityWalk. We took an Uber and arrived at 11:40pm, only to find out they close at midnight. We weren't about to go through security just to turn around and leave, so we called another Uber and ended up at Tin Roof instead — and honestly, I'm glad we did.

Drinks, live music, and a moment I'll never forget. The second we walked through the door, the band started playing "How You Remind Me" by Nickelback — the song I played at my father's funeral. It was Father's Day. That song, at that exact moment, hitting me as soon as I stepped inside — it felt like a sign. Like my dad was letting me know he was still watching over me. I was floored.

After we left the bar, my wife looked at me and said, "Let's go do the Slingshot."

I looked at her and said, "You're amazing. Let's do it." We did it once and she loved it so much she wanted to go again. Yep — back to back, and we loved every second of it.

(These videos contain language not safe for young viewers, so the audio has been removed.)

Now, this is a ride I did way back in 2002 when I went to Orlando with my father. Back then it might have been a different company running the show — Because the towers swayed a lot more and the chair was a repurposed ski chairlift with a lap belt. On the front of the chair was a mounted full size VHS camera to record your ride.

I so wish I could find that video. We did buy it back then, but this was 2002 — I haven't seen a VHS tape in years and I'd have no idea where to even start looking for it.

After that, we called it a night and got an Uber back to the resort.

A Resort Day

This was our day to just be at the resort, and it turned out to be one of the best days of the trip. We spent the whole day at the water park — the kids were in heaven, especially on the water slides. Once the water park closed, we grabbed some food and headed over to the pool that stayed open until 11pm. We grilled out and kept swimming. After the pool closed, we retired to our room, but we weren't done socializing — drinks and conversation kept going. Before we knew it, it was 1am. We'd planned to get up early to go see the Falcon 9 launch from Cape Canaveral, so we really needed to hit the hay.

The Falcon 9 Launch

The morning of June 23rd, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral carrying something new — a demonstration mission called Starfall. It's an uncrewed reentry capsule SpaceX is developing to enable rapid, point-to-point cargo delivery through space and eventually support in-orbit manufacturing. Think of it as a scaled-down successor to the cargo capabilities the ISS provides today, but designed to be reusable and operate at scale. Each capsule is about 10 feet in diameter, can carry roughly 2,200 pounds of payload, and reenters through the atmosphere to be recovered in the Pacific — similar to how they bring Dragon back, but for cargo, not crew.

This was the first time Starfall had ever flown, and it went up as the sun was rising over the Space Coast. A 6:53 AM liftoff. We'd planned to drive out to the coast to watch it in person — you can see launches from the Cape pretty clearly if you're close enough, and we were only about an hour and a half away. But we'd been grilling at the pool and stayed up until around 1am socializing and having drinks — got to bed entirely too late... and I forgot to set an alarm. I woke up at 5:55am, but GPS said it was an hour and a half drive — too late to make it.

I did manage to see it from the resort, though. Just barely. It was a thin bright streak climbing over the treeline for a few seconds, then gone. Underwhelming from that distance, honestly — nothing like being on the coast would have been. But still cool to say I watched a Falcon 9 go up on vacation, even if it was through half-open eyes from a hotel parking lot.

The Magic Kingdom

This was our one park day. Just Magic Kingdom. Over $1,200 just to walk through the gate — so no park hopping, no splitting our time across four parks in two days. One park, one day, full send.

And you know what? It was perfect.

There's something about walking through those gates and seeing Cinderella Castle that just doesn't get old. The kids' faces — that's what made the entire trip worth it.

The one thing that really got me — all the characters are tucked away in meet-and-greet houses now, and you wait in line like it's a ride just so your kids can see the characters they love. When I was young, the characters walked the parks. You'd round a corner and there was Goofy, just hanging out. That doesn't happen anymore, and honestly, that made me a little sad. We waited in line to meet Mickey, but skipped the rest — if we'd done them all, we'd have spent most of our day in queues instead of on rides. That was a disappointing reality we learned the hard way.

The Fireworks

Happily Ever After is still the closer, and it's still worth staying for. But I'm not going to undersell it — this show is absolutely incredible. The projections on the castle, the music, the way the fireworks light up the entire sky over Magic Kingdom — it's not a little fireworks show at the end of the night. It's a full-blown spectacle, and it hits different when you're standing there with your family.

And then Tinker Bell flies. I mean that literally — she comes down a zip line from the top of the castle, soaring right over the crowd with the fireworks going off behind her. The kids lost their minds. Honestly, so did I. It's one of those things where you've seen it in pictures and you think you know what to expect, and then she swoops over your head and you realize you absolutely did not. That moment alone — Tinker Bell flying over us with the castle lit up and the sky exploding in color — that's the image that's going to stick with me from this trip forever.

The Moments That Mattered

The rides were great. The food was fine — we didn't manage to grab churros or Dole Whip this time around, but they're still on the list for next trip. But the moments I keep thinking about aren't on any map.

The way my daughter grabbed my hand during the fireworks. The fact that they all fell asleep in the car on the way back to the resort, and I just sat there in the quiet feeling like this was exactly the right call.

The Drive Home

We drove straight through on the way back too, but we took a different route than the way down — we wanted to swing through Washington, D.C. so the kids could see the capital. The detour and heavier traffic made the drive home about 27 hours total — roughly two and a half hours longer than the trip down. The map below shows the path we took home.

Along the way, we made a couple of stops worth mentioning.

The Savannah National Wildlife Refuge

Right on the border of South Carolina and Georgia, there's the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge — and they have a wildlife drive you can take right through it. This was my fourth time visiting, and I always try to make this stop when we're in the area. The kids had been asking about seeing alligators in the wild, and this delivered — they loved it just as much as I did my first time.

The Laurel Hill Wildlife Drive is a 4.5-mile, one-way dirt road that winds through the heart of the refuge. You take it at your own pace — some people breeze through in twenty minutes, satisfied with spotting one or two gators from the car — and if you're wondering whether a bigger vehicle can make it, we took our 15-passenger low-roof Ford Transit through with room to spare, while others spend hours pulled off along the canals with binoculars and cameras. We fell somewhere in between, but the kids would have stayed all day if we'd let them.

The refuge itself has been protected land since 1927, when it was first established as the Savannah River Bird Refuge by executive order — just 2,352 acres set aside as a sanctuary for migratory birds. Over the decades it grew to over 31,000 acres spanning both Georgia and South Carolina, split by the Savannah River. Before it was a refuge, much of this land was rice plantation territory, and the old hand-built rice levees and water control structures are still visible along the drive — they're what now form the impoundment dikes that keep the marsh habitat thriving.

And yes, the alligators are real and they are wild, but they're not looking for trouble. There are no recorded alligator attacks on visitors at the refuge. As long as you stay in your car and keep a respectful distance, you're in very little danger. These are wild animals in their natural habitat, not theme park attractions — which is exactly what makes it special.

It added over an hour to our trip, but the looks on the kids' faces made it completely worth the detour. There's something about watching them spot a gator in its actual habitat that you just can't replicate in a zoo.

Washington, D.C.

We also stopped in Washington, D.C. I wanted the kids to see the White House. Turns out that was easier said than done — there were events happening around the Capitol that week, so we couldn't get close enough to actually see it. On top of that, we hit D.C. around 5:30 in the morning, so everything was shut down anyway. The kids got to say they've been to Washington, even if the White House will have to wait for another trip.

The map above shows about as close as we could get without parking and trying to go through security — not that we were going to try. We'd been driving since noon the day before and none of us had slept, so adding a security checkpoint at 5:30 in the morning wasn't happening.

Next Time

We didn't plan this trip for months. We didn't document every step. We just went, and it turned out to be one of the best things we've done as a family.

I wouldn't change a thing about how we planned — or didn't plan — this trip. Sometimes spontaneity is exactly what makes it fun.

We'll go back — but next time, we're splitting the drive across two days. Driving straight through was stressful and really tiring, for both of us. I drove 24.5 of the 27 hours on the way home, and that's not something I want to do again. The funny thing is, all of the kids were amazing on the drive — even our three-year-old was only fussy for maybe an hour total across the entire round trip. It was the adults who needed the recovery, in-fact I felt like I needed to use more PTO just to recover from my PTO.