(CNN) -- Travelers across the United States arrived en masse at airports, hit the roads and boarded trains Wednesday, a day before the Thanksgiving holiday. "It's actually surprisingly not as much of a disaster as I thought it was going to be," said Rafi Samuels-Schwartz, 25, who was waiting at New Jersey's Newark International Airport to board a plane to Minneapolis, Minnesota -- a flight that was on time, he added. "It wasn't pandemonium, it wasn't a scene from 'Independence Day,' " he said. "I thought it was going to be considerably worse." The number of people traveling this holiday weekend is expected to increase slightly, compared with last year, although the number traveling by air is expected to decline, according to the American Automobile Association, a motorist and traveler organization.
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AAA predicts 38.4 million Americans will travel over the holiday weekend
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AAA attributes slight increase to improved consumer confidence
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Those traveling by air probably will decline to 2.3 million, from 2.5 million last year
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The bulk of travelers will be going by car, AAA says
AAA said the slight increase in the number of @placeholder travelers from last year reflects improved consumer confidence as well as "a growing sense among many consumers that the worst of the global economic crisis is behind us."