Where to stay for NASCAR & Universal?

[angel2931]

My hubby and I are planning a trip to FL in february to go to the Daytona 500 and we also want to go to Universal. Would we be better off staying by Universal and traveling to Daytona for the the day or 2 or staying closer to Daytona and traveling to Universal for the 2 days? Is there a nice hotel in between? Any suggestions would be great! Thanks!!

[drhama]

Parking and getting to and away from any track on race day is a time consuming proposition. Could make for a very long and frustrating day if you stayed any distance from Daytona.
Parking (although expensive) and getting to Universal is no problem.
If it were to me, I would get a hotel in the Daytona area for the race and move to a hotel in Orlando for Universal.
Guess it just depends on where and how you want to spend your time in your car.
Hope that is helpful. Enjoy the race.

[faline]

We've gone to Daytona a couple of times. Good luck getting a decent place to stay at a reasonable price any where near Daytona. When I researched places to stay, I found myself getting further and further away and did not very much like the accommodations I was getting. So, instead, I booked us at Disney and we drove over. On one trip, we only went to the 500. On another we went to two races - one a few days before the 500 as well as the 500. Yes, it is a long day and you need to start out early in the morning to get to the race track. But that's really no different than our experience in driving to Louden from Massachusetts for the races there.

If you plan to combine your trip with one to Universal, I'd suggest looking to stay on site there. We've stayed at the Royal Pacific and really enjoyed that resort. We could walk from there to the parks and the walk took us right through City Walk. There is also a boat from the resort to City Walk.

For Daytona - we had some better luck taking back roads to the race. On the first trek out, we took the major highway but discovered a backup being created by newscrews out filming the cars heading to Daytona! In essence, they were creating the news the were filming! Taking back roads worked for us almost all the way to the track on our second trip EXCEPT this was the trip that President George Bush decided to attend so traffic got a bit mucked up by that! Getting out of the race was the worst! On our first race, we tried to get out immediately after it was done and all roads were backed up. It didn't help that the race ended early due to rain so everyone left the track at the same time. On our second go-round, we decided to attend an after race party. That would have worked better except that the promised busses to return us to our car parking lot did not start running for an hour or so AFTER we were ready to leave - there was quite a crowd of unhappy folks waiting for busses that night!

Bring lots of patience with you if you want to attend the Daytona 500! Don't know if you've been there before but the track is HUGE! We never even made it around to the back side of the track!