Although promotions for the film aired on Disney Channel Australia, a confirmed date for the movie to begin screening in theatres was never given. The film was released direct-to-DVD instead. The review aggregator at Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 12% based on 73 reviews, with an average rating of 3.3/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Filled with shrill gags and middling slapstick, "College Road Trip" is woefully short on comic imagination." Metacritic gave the film a score of 34 out of 100, based on 46 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". "The New York Times" gathered positive reviews toward the leading cast's performance. 411 Mania gave it a final score of 7.5 out of 10 based on several reviews and managed to give it a positive DVD and film review. The film also received positive reviews from Blu-ray.com, "Kansas City Star" and several other publications including the "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette". The film also received negative reviews from "USA Today" and "San Francisco Chronicle". In its opening weekend, the film grossed approximately $13.6 million in 2,706 theaters in the United States and Canada, ranking #2 at the box office. The movie continued on to gross $31,117,834 to finish off the month and closed with earnings above $45 million in domestic territories. The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray on July 15, 2008. Both the DVD and BD releases contain the following bonus features. "College Road Trip" sold 439,809 copies in the first week of release pulling in $8,030,648 of additional revenue for the franchise. It has sold a total of 1,004,834 copies since its release and made a total of $18,461,049 in DVD sales. In May 2008, Disney Press released a book based on the movie written by Alice Alfonsi. The novel has the printed original movie poster as the cover.