Help with finding rental home reviews

[largefamily]

We are a very large party of 14. We have found some homes in Windsor and 1 in the Hamlet of West Haven. Can anyone give me the pros and cons of each? We are deciding if it is worth the extra money to go to Windsor or if Hamlet is close enough. I am having a hard time finding reviews on any of the properties.

 

[lovetoscrap]

I am moving this to our Orlando Area forum. You should be able to find reviews and get advice over there. There is an entire subforum for Reviews in that section of our boards.

 

[sympatico]

West Haven is a little further out but easily accessible to I-4 and then up to Disney (15min). Windsor Hills is close to Animal Kingdom and lots of restaurants. Of the two I've only stayed at WH and it was good having all the restaurants on 192 in that area only 2 minutes away. AK parking lot in 5 or 6 minutes.
Check out Emerald Island for big homes also and it's in the same area as WH.
This is one in WH that we stayed in: http://www.homeaway.com/vacation-rental/p250801
And this one in Emerald Island just a couple of months ago:
http://www.homeaway.com/vacation-rental/p253707

Both WH and Em Island are great. WH has a larger community pool and playground, clubhouse etc but Emerald Island has better landscaping. Both have a 24 hr manned gate.

 

[dougsmom98]

To be honest, only you can decide what "close enough" is. We stayed in Windsor Palms one year, which is near Windsor Hills, and we have stayed in several developments near West Haven. It took 10 minutes to get to the parks from Windsor Palms and 20 minutes, maybe a couple minutes less, to get to the parks from the area near West Haven. The money we save is worth the additional drive time for us, so we don't mind staying further out. That being said, the first time we stayed off site in a rental home, I was glad to be staying in an area closer to the parks, because that gave me the bearings I needed to know where things were in relationship to each other outside of Disney. I got to know the 192 area really well, we ventured off down towards 27 so I could judge if that was an area that I would be willing to stay and it was, and then after staying there for a few years, we tried the area near West Haven and we really liked that. There are definitely fewer restaurant options in the immediate area of West Haven, but a quick hop on I-4 gets you anywhere you want to go.

Here is a thread about the area near West Haven from a while ago.
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2535619

Good luck.