Living in Minnesota, our trips have always been on a plane and have always been in the winter.
Work a full day, let kids go to school (we always pull them out for 5-7 days). While everyone's gone (I work from home) I get all of the last minute things done at home, drop the dogs at the sitters, and sometimes get the carpets cleaned (they get to dry for a whole week with no traffic!).
When everyone starts arriving home, I have them double check their rooms and load up the car. We head to a hotel by the airport to check in overnight. Even though we live less than an hour away from the airport, Minnesota roads during morning rush hour in the winter are very unpredictable and cause us to sleep restlessly all night anyway. By staying in the hotel, we not only are sure we have everything, but even if we oversleep, we're minutes away from the airport. And when the kids were little, it was much easier to check a hotel room quickly (I pack just what we'll need for the night in a separate suitcase and then leave the winter stuff we wore in the car), than to check the whole house for stuffed animals that got set down, tooth brushes, etc. As an added benefit, the hotel has a package where they keep our car the entire week, feed us breakfast and provide the shuttle to the airport. When we return our car is cleaned off (of snow) and warmed up.
We normally arrive by 3pm on Friday and head to DTD. At this time of year, the parks close early and it's not worth it to us to use a day. Most of the time we have more friends/family arriving on Sunday, and that's when we check into our DVC resort. The two nights prior are for us to get groceries, check on "the lay of the land" and get ready for our guests. Our actually itinerary changes each trip and is dependent on what the people who are joining us want to see.
Our only other RULE is that, when traveling with other people, we ALWAYS use the last three days of the trip for just our immediate family. Even if the rest of the group will also be there, we leave them and go somewhere else. Normally, this means as the DVC members, we stay DVC Sun - Thurs, and then Friday morning we all split up and stay elsewhere on property Fri - Monday. Sometimes the other family goes home, sometimes they move to a different hotel. We usually head to Fort Wilderness and stay in a cabin. The kitchen allows us to use up the leftover food, and it is so relaxing. By giving ourselves those three days to ourselves, we are able to say all week, "We'll do that after we all split up." We then get to see things the others didn't want to see.
The funny thing is during planning the other family always says, "But when we split up, we can still meet to do stuff, right?" and I'll say, "We'll see how it goes." By the end of the week, we've all been so glad to have our own space that we never arrange to meet up with anyone again. We've always had amazing, fun trips, but we've just all been ready for our own time.
When us kids were younger, we would leave super early in the morning so that us kids would sleep for the majority of the trip. We would typically have hotel reservations just past Atlanta where we would stop for the night. Now, that we are all older, we have been making the drive straight through. My dad drives the whole way (he refuses to let anyone else drive). Mile-wise it is supposed to be around a 19hr trip but we keep improving our time each trip. We made it this year in 13 hours I believe. Anyways, we always have a cooler in the front seat full of coke and water (flavored water for me). Our "co-pilot" sits in front who is either me or one of my brothers. The co-pilot helps my dad navigate through traffic, hit the right exits, and point out rest areas and gas stations. The co-pilot has to stay awake for the entire journey so that someone can keep my dad awake. He likes to eat sunflower seeds to keep awake! We typically stay offsite for our first night so once we get there everyone takes a nap and then we hit DTD to get the spirit going!
's! I suppose that is ONE tradition I hold to on most visits. 
That 'thing' was not right!
