Well, my husband drove. We live a good 18 hours from Disney, but it was the most economical choice. Round-trip flights and airport parking would have cost us $1,067.53. We spent $446.45 on gas, tolls, and resort parking fees, which saved us a grand total of $621.08.
Although the savings are great, spending 18 hours in the car with three small children is not for the faint of heart. To make it less painful, we drove through the night. Since he would be doing the driving, my husband slept before we hit the road at 2 a.m. in order to power through the bulk of our trip. Sure, we had to wake the kids up to get them in the car, but they fell back to sleep within minutes of pulling out of our driveway. We were also able to break it up with a stop at my brother's house which, luckily for us, happens to be just around the halfway mark.
Another great way we found to break up a long drive with kids was to take advantage of the numerous Chick-fil-A restaurants. There seemed to be an abundance of this particular fast-food chain the further south we went, and they all had fairly large and surprisingly clean play areas — perfect when the kids needed to stretch their legs and blow off some steam.
Driving also allowed us to ensure that we had everything we needed. Although our resort offered cribs, they are on a strict first come, first serve basis, and we were informed there was no guarantee that one, let alone two cribs (we have one-year-old twins) would be available. Since we drove ourselves, we just brought our own portable cribs. Had we flown down and a crib (or two) was not available, we would have had to spend an additional $100-200 on brand new Pack 'n Plays, which we would then have to schlep or ship home.