Prior to moving to the Orlando area (it will be three years at the end of May), I looked at a ton of information. I knew that I wanted to be within a half hour to 45 minute drive from WDW. I started researching all the towns that met the qualifications. I narrowed it down to Dr. Phillips, Gotha and Windermere. I scheduled a two week vacation at WDW and contacted a real estate agent who agreed to show us new developments (I wanted to build my dream home) during our visit. I found my current development and fell in love.
It was challenging to build a home long distance. After our initial visit, I made two more trips to Orlando prior to our move. DD and I flew down for a few days to pick out lots for both my home and a home for my sister. Two months later, my sister and I flew down for four days. At this point, our homes were nothing but slabs. We spent a day picking out the colors for the outside and then spent a day at a decorating center where we literally picked out every detail for the interior of our homes (cupboards, tile, carpet, paint, plumbing fixtures, light fixtures, etc). It was totally exhausting. We did not see our homes again until the day we moved in. Amazingly, it worked out great. We love our homes.
During the building process, I kept asking the builder when the houses would be finished. He kept telling me the same date. I had a really hard time accepting this, because homes never came in on time in the midwest. A builder might tell you six months and you'd be lucky if you got into the house in ten months. Here, the builder told us six months. The house was finished in six months. They have huge crews and don't tend to have weather delays.
One of the things that made moving half way across the country relatively easy was that we didn't move much. We sold most of our furniture prior to the move. Moving furniture is so expensive. It just didn't make sense to move the furniture that I'd had for a long time. We had huge garage sales and got rid of a lot of stuff we didn't need. We rented a large UHaul for the boxes and miscellaneous and I hired a friend's husband to drive the truck to Florida for us. We sold our cars (which were about 4 years old) and we flew to Florida where we met up with the truck and our things. The hardest part was moving our animals. Even if we had wanted to keep our vehicles, there is just no way we wanted to drive that far with four cats and two dogs (one a large dog). I arranged with a pet moving company to fly the animals to us after we moved into our new homes. We'd boarded them with the vet in Missouri for three days before they were picked up for transport. They all made the trip very well.
I purchased appliances and beds for our Florida homes through large national stores while in Missouri and had them delivered, from the Orlando branches of the same stores, the day after we moved into our homes (refrigerator, washer, dryer, large screen television and sleep comfort beds for both DD and I). We spent the first two nights sleeping at the Animal Kingdom Lodge until things arrived and were set up. That wasn't to much of a sacrifice!
The next week, both my sister and I purchased new cars and returned the rental. We put quite a few miles on them searching furniture stores for the perfect additions to our homes. It was a blast!
The only thing that didn't work out great was DD's high school. She started her junior year at a new school. She really wasn't crazy about the school. It was so crowded and they really didn't want to work with us when DD needed to be gone for auditions. I moved her to a private school for her senior year. It was wonderful. DD loved it there!
All in all, it was a stressful few months from the time we decided to move until we were settled in, but I'd do it again in a flash. We are very happy here!
) so I can't help you with schools but I'll tell you what we did when we decided to move. I knew I wanted to live near Disney, preferably no more than 30 miles away. Then I got a map and marked 30 miles out in a circle. I made a list of the towns and got as much information about them as I could. Not having to worry about schools was a major plus but when you get older there are other points of concern like doctors and hospitals. 
