Disney Travel: Wings and Wheels but No Caboose?

Let me add a new immortal phrase to the literary canon: Danny Cox has no caboose.

In an article that appeared recently on the Examiner, Danny Cox evaluted the relative merits of flying or driving to Disney World, but he ignored a viable third option: riding the rails.

I hate to fly. Whenever possible, I travel to Disney aboard Amtrak leaving Philadelphia in the afternoon and pulling into Orlando early the next day. The cost of a sleeper cabin is substantially more than the cost of a flight, but it's relaxing, the meals are free, and I can take all my bags into the room with me.

But I've flown, too. And driven. I know people - the Mad Max'ers - who drive to Orlando over insane distances as their kids mature, pass puberty, and fill out college applications in the backseat.

I spent what seems the best part of my childhood in the backseat (as my father drove his latest big-ass Ford slowly, ever so slowly, from its dock in Scranton, Pennsylvania).

Danny presents three common-sense criteria to help you decide whether to wing it or wheel it: distance, money, and lodging. The third criterion, lodging, is less relevant, since people who stay off-site can (and often do) rent a car, though the rental expense itself then becomes a factor.

Trains, clearly, are the red-headed stepchildren in this scenario. When I travel by rail to Orlando, I rarely meet more than one or two families en route to Disney with me. Most likely that's because train stations are far less ubiquitous than airports, and the best rail experience of them all, the Auto Train, is convenient only for those living near Lorton, Virginia, its point of departure.

So let's forgive Danny Cox his lack of locomotive love, especially because he has plenty of Disney love that he shares almost daily in his column for the Examiner and that every Disney traveler (wing, wheel, or rail) should make their first port of call. (Sorry for bringing ships into this...)