Walt Disney World: A St. Louisan’s Guide to Getting There
There are many, many voices out there on Walt Disney World, including how to get there and what to do when you’re there. My aim here is to talk about The Most Magical Place on Earth through the lens of someone living in St. Louis. Every origin city for a Disney World vacation has specific considerations, and the 314 is no different. Having lived in St. Louis for my whole life and done the Disney thing in some different ways, here’s what I’ve learned.
Getting There
There are two primary ways to get to Walt Disney World from St. Louis: flying and driving.
Flying from Lambert International Airport to Orlando International Airport
Let’s talk about flying first, since it will be the default option for most STL –> WDW travelers. It’s definitely the fastest, with a typical flight running about two hours or so from takeoff to touchdown.
Your first step will be getting to Lambert, for which you have some options, including parking your car in an airport lot, taking an Uber or Lyft to the airport, or having someone take you to the airport. They all have different costs and considerations that we won’t get into here. We’ve done all three over the years. Uber and Lyft take some getting used to — it can feel strange riding in someone’s personal car — but the rideshare services do offer regular drivers going to and from Lambert. (It’s wise to read up on rideshare safety before using Uber or Lyft for the first time.) If you park at Lambert, lots C and D are the cheapest, going for $10-11 a day as of mid-2025.
If you’re looking to fly nonstop from Lambert to Orlando International — and I’m assuming you want to fly nonstop –there are three airlines that do so. They are Southwest, Frontier, and Spirit.
Southwest is the most popular option, as it offers multiple nonstop flights both ways each day. It also is one of just two carriers in Lambert’s Terminal 2 (Google Maps link), making it easy to get to on the St. Louis side and not too hard to find on the Orlando side. As of mid-2025, Southwest does assess fees on checked bags, although carryons and personal items remain free.
Frontier and Spirit are both budget carriers, which can save you money especially if you are traveling light. Both do assess fees for luggage, though, so if you’ve got carryon luggage and / or checked luggage it can eat into the savings, even taking into consideration Southwest’s new bag fees. In addition, Frontier and Spirit don’t run nearly as many nonstop flights: as of mid-2025, Frontier runs one nonstop each way between St. Louis and Orlando, while Spirit runs them a few times a week. The times can be early or late depending on the flight as well. And Frontier and Spirit are both a part of the larger Terminal 1 (Google Maps link) at Lambert.
Long story short, Southwest is our favored air option for getting to and from Orlando, but if you’re really trying to pinch pennies Spirit or Frontier may at least be scoping out.
Traveling from Orlando International Airport to Walt Disney World
Years ago, Disney offered a free shuttle from the airport to resort hotels. That, sadly, is no longer the case. Your options for transportation here are many, including Uber or Lyft, a taxi, a rental car, or Mears Connect, a shuttle run by the company that used to do Disney’s free shuttle. Depending on your situation, such as the number of people in your party and their ages, one may be better than another. I recommend researching prices on all of them.
One tip here: if you go Uber or Lyft, I suggest booking before leaving the indoors, and making sure you verify your driver’s name and plates before putting anything or anyone in the rideshare vehicle. Drivers will never ask you to work outside the app or ask for cash. Orlando International is a high-tourist area, and some scammers know that.
Driving to Walt Disney World from St. Louis
You can also drive from St. Louis to Orlando, which I have done before. The most direct route is taking I-64 East out of St. Louis to I-57 South near Mt. Vernon, IL, then picking up I-24 East until you get to Chattanooga, TN, then I-75 South, which passes through Atlanta, GA and into Florida. Orlando is not far from I-75 South along Forida’s Turnpike (FL-91). It’s about 1,000 miles each direction if you take that route. On paper, that’s about 15 hours each way, but for a trip of that length plenty of things can change the time, including construction and traffic issues. In my experience, the drive is more likely to be longer than shorter.
Most people can’t or won’t make it one day. Atlanta is a popular overnight stop, as it’s a big city along the route that has plenty of hotels. It’s about 550 miles (~8-9 hours) to Atlanta from St. Louis, leaving — on paper — and additional 450 miles (~6-7 hours left). If you can’t make it to Atlanta, Chattanooga is a little less than 500 miles from St. Louis.
Your mileage may vary, but we budget about $500 for gas, tolls, hotel, and food for our family of four doing a round-trip drive from St. Louis to Orlando and back again. That can fluctuate depending on your car’s gas mileage, your choice of lodging, and the cost of gas and other expenses.
The drive to Orlando is a long one, and not for everyone. I can tell you that I much prefer flying over driving, especially on the return trip when I just want to get home. It’s great knowing I can be leaving for Lambert in the morning and be sitting down for dinner at Disney World … and just as great knowing I can leave for Orlando International in the morning knowing that I’ll be back at my own dining room table in STL for dinner.
Parking at Disney World
Whether you need to worry about parking at Disney World depends on how you get there. If you flew into Disney and then paid someone else to get you to the resort, congratulations: you’re in the Disney Bubble, as they say. Disney operates a large and efficient resort transportation operation, which I’ll talk more about in a moment.
If you brought your own car or got a rental car, you’ll need to park. Some parking, including most resort parking, is free to resort guests. Disney Springs is also free to park. Disney charges for parking at all its theme parks, which prices dependent on the vehicle type.
Costs and Considerations

The Orlando area is a little larger than the St. Louis metro area: the Orlando metro area currently has a population of over 2.9 million, compared to the population of 2.8 million that lives in St. Louis and the surrounding counties. Orlando is a fast-growing area, though, and it shows: the infrastructure struggles to keep up with the traffic. If you’re a grizzled veteran of St. Louis interstates during rush hour — be it 270, 70, 64, 44, or 55 — you can handle Orlando. Just don’t expect to like it.
If you don’t want to fuss with traffic, our family is big fans of Disney resort transit. WDW uses a network of buses, monorails, gondolas, and boats to ferry people around. It’s busy, but it does move efficiently, so we felt like wait times for transit were fair, even during busy evenings. We stayed at Pop Century, which has gondola access to EPCOT and Hollywood Studios via the Skyliner and bus access to Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom. All of them got us from point A to point B at a good clip.

You may also wonder about how Orlando weather compares to STL. Orlando in the winter is mild, with temperatures that will remind you of St. Louis in October or April — 70s in the day and 50s at night is common. During the summer, Orlando can get quite hot, with daytime temperatures in the 90s … in other words, a lot like St. Louis. I heard more than a few travelers at WDW lament the heat and humidity, but to us it felt like what we dealt with in The Lou.
Another familiar sight in Orlando: the region has some grocers common to St. Louis, including Walmart and Aldi. We used Aldi to deliver to our resort via Instacart, which saved us some money. Better yet, I was able to do a lot of the prep work back in St. Louis, so once we were at the resort all it took was a couple of clicks to get our order rolling.
There are a million other considerations about Disney World that aren’t St. Louis-specific. I’ll leave those to other people.
Things to Do

This section could be an entire post — an entire series, really — because Disney World is one of the largest resorts in the world. There’s a reason people keep coming back even as the costs go up: there is no shortage of activities just in the Disney Bubble itself, not including other nearby attractions like Universal or Sea World.
And those activities are truly unique. With apologies to Six Flags St. Louis, River King Mine Train is not the same as Seven Dwarves Mine Train. I love the St. Louis Zoo, but Animal Kingdom is an altogether different beast. Nothing in the 314 is quite like eating in Cinderella’s Castle.
The atmosphere at Disney World feels like an envelope from the larger world, from the themed restaurants to the incredible nighttime spectaculars that close out each evening in three of the four parks. WDW works hard to earn its title as an entertainment kingpin.
Our Thoughts

Going to Disney World from St. Louis is a journey — literally, since it’s 2,000 miles round-trip to a spot in another time zone. It helps that Lambert has direct flights, and it also helps that St. Louis weather helps prepare travelers for Orlando’s hot summers, but it’s still a trek. With research and preparation, it can be a fun trip, if an expensive one.
One of the hardest parts of Disney is, in our experience, getting back. I’m not just talking about the bills, although there are plenty of those. I’m also talking about the post-Disney depression, which is real. St. Louis does have some ways to help you cope some, but for the most part you just have to work through it.
Still, our family found that taking the trip from The Lou to The Most Magical Place on Earth was worth the trip, especially if you have a handle on the logistics. That starts with getting there. Figure that out, and you set the stage for a memorable vacation.