Moving to Orlando- I'm almost there! Update 1/4 Arrival

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Hi, my name is Rachel and I am MOVING TO ORLANDO!!!

I've decided to write a trip report here, where people understand and get me.

Don't get me wrong. People are happy for me that I get to move where I've wanted to move for a long time. But the majority of my non-Disney friends and family...their reaction upon learning where I'm moving (and that it was my choice) is more along the lines of....'Florida?! Why??' and 'But....haven't you ever heard of 'Florida Man'??'.

Most people don't get that it's been a dream of mine for the past 15 years to move close to my happy place.

Anyway...how did I get to this point?

My boyfriend Brian(of 15 years, don't judge) and I met at Ohio State in Columbus Ohio where we both went to college. From there, we ended up in Austin Texas for a few years (where I met an amazing life long DIS'er friend, gotta shout out!). Then we moved to Kansas City (where we immediately met several more lifelong DIS'er friends!).

We've also had our dog, Sirius, along with all of our moves and adventures. He is the most excited about a one story house. Right now, we have an apartment that is over top our garage. Sirius is getting up there in age so he is super happy that we want a one story house so he won't have to navigate the stairs every time he needs to use the bathroom.



So right now we are in Kansas City. I worked hard and got promoted to project manager at my company. My very first project was a completely remote project. Knowing that, I decided to take a leap and ask my boss if I could live wherever I wanted. Which is only fair, since I had moved to KC in the first place to help out my work with another project that was based in KC.

To my utter amazement, my boss said I could live wherever I was happy. Which blew my mind, I didn't think he would say that.

Unfortunately, I had to bring my excitement down a bit when I realized we'd just signed a new lease for our apartment. We decided to stick it out and move when the lease is up, which is November 14 2020 (that date is circled with a mickey head on the calendar).

Brian just so happens to be taking online classes to get his welding engineering masters, so he is good with moving to Orlando as well. When he graduates he'll look for jobs there. The timing worked out and the stars had aligned!

And just like that, we were moving to Disney!! Well, I mean, technically the Orlando area. But as far as I'm concerned, we're moving to Disney!!!

It also just worked out that the DIS started to do their Moving to Orlando podcasts around the time we knew that we were moving. We ended up contacting Sean Faulk, and he is now our realtor.

So I hope I've managed to intrigue you enough that you'll follow along with our journey!

In future installments I'll be discussing our housing/neighborhood search, our de-cluttering efforts and so much more!

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

And just in reference to my trip report title, I find the lyrics to the Princess and the Frog's Almost There to completely relate to my journey. Wishing is all well and good, but sometimes if you work real hard (and have a bit of luck) you can make your own wishes come true.

I don't have time for dancin'
That's just gonna have to wait a while
Ain't got time for messin' around
And it's not my style

This whole town can slow you down
People takin' the easy way
But I know exactly where I am going
Gettin closer 'n closer every day

And I am almost there
I'm almost there
People down here think I'm crazy
But I don't care

Trials and tribulations
I've had my share
There ain't nothin' gonna stop me now
'Cause I'ma almost there

I remember Daddy told me
Fairy tales can come true
You gotta make 'em happen
It all depends on you

So I work real hard each and every day
Now things for sure are going my way
Just doing what I do
Look out Boys I'm coming through

And I'm almost there
I'm almost there
People gonna come here from everywhere
And I'm almost there

I'm almost there
There's been trials and tribulations
You know I've had my share
But I've climbed a mountain

I've crossed a river
And I'm almost there
I'm almost there
I'm almost there

 

[dolewhipdreams]

This is so exciting!



Excited to follow along. Are you guys renting at first or buying?

 

[princessbelle2015]

So happy you are moving to your happy place!

 

[stitchsnk]

Looking forward to following along your journey! I have yet to convince DH to move to FL, but in due time!

 

[disneyseniors]

What a wonderful story! I'm eagerly following along on your journey!

 

[xlsm]

Yay! Looking forward to hearing about your plans and your big move. We live about 3.5 hours south of KC and love to visit, but I understand the desire to move on (especially during winter - we don't have much winter here, but you guys always seem to get slammed)

DH has had recruiters contact him from the Tampa area, and part of me wants to go so badly, but our kids will be a sophomore and a junior this year and it just wouldn't be the right time to go. I also don't know if I would enjoy living in Florida vs. vacationing at wdw. I'm so interested to see how the process goes and live vicariously through your experience.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

This is so exciting!

View attachment 507139

Excited to follow along. Are you guys renting at first or buying?

Hi Ann! Happy to have you along

Very timely question, I was going to talk about that in my next installment! Stay tuned.

So happy you are moving to your happy place!

Thank you very much!

I still have a hard time believing it's really happening.

Looking forward to following along your journey! I have yet to convince DH to move to FL, but in due time!

Excited to have you along!

Just keep working on him, you'll get there Where do you live now?

What a wonderful story! I'm eagerly following along on your journey!

Hi! Happy to have you along

Yay! Looking forward to hearing about your plans and your big move. We live about 3.5 hours south of KC and love to visit, but I understand the desire to move on (especially during winter - we don't have much winter here, but you guys always seem to get slammed)

DH has had recruiters contact him from the Tampa area, and part of me wants to go so badly, but our kids will be a sophomore and a junior this year and it just wouldn't be the right time to go. I also don't know if I would enjoy living in Florida vs. vacationing at wdw. I'm so interested to see how the process goes and live vicariously through your experience.

Have you ever made it out to Marceline?

We've actually only been in KC two years. I was born near Pittsburgh PA, so I definitely know what winter is. We were in Austin TX for about 2 years and it was glorious not to have winters. Honestly, I'd rather deal with the horribly hot and humid summers. At least you can still get some decent outdoors time at the early morning and late evening hours. In the winter I don't like to leave the house ever.

I have friends in Tampa and they love it. Very cute neighborhoods, at least where they are.

But I agree with you, moving a sophomore and junior would probably be rough on them.

Maybe in a couple years your DH can reconnect with those recruiters.

 

[Tallis]

Very excited for you! It's so amazing when dreams come true.

I moved to Florida 14 years ago and never looked back. No regrets.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

All right. We made the decision to move to Disney, er...Orlando.

What in the world do we do now?!!? Neither one of us has ever owned a home. We've lived in an apartment or a condo in Ohio, Texas and KC.

I always listen to the DIS Unplugged podcast while at work. Coincidentally, they had recently started up their Moving to Orlando podcast. I listened to a couple of those and immediately decided that I wanted Sean Faulk for my realtor. He has huskies too just like we do!

I got in contact with Sean and we started to discuss some particulars. Which was nice of him, since he knew we weren't even thinking of moving for over half a year.

Another good tip we picked up from the podcast concerned priorities in house hunting. Sean suggested that it was a good idea to pick maybe 2-3 sticking points and not to be too picky on the other things. So these are our top 3 non-negotiables:

1. backyard
2. location
3. at least a 2 car garage (we have two Challengers and they are my babies)

Really, all other things we can work with. We also know that we need to pay attention to things like the roof and water heaters and air cons. It's better to pick a house that has ugly paint but a new roof.

One of our biggest concerns was neighborhood shopping. We've only ever been to Florida on vacation. We didn't exactly take a lot of time to drive around neighborhoods and see what we liked.

We've been looking at houses for sale on Zillow and Redfin since December, it's given us a very good idea of what we can get for our money, but it's very hard to get a good idea of the neighborhoods which belong to the houses.

Brian and I both agree that we don't want to move blindly. We're nerdy enough that we're both very interested in traffic patterns, neighborhood vibes and the like. If I had my way I'd even scout out the block of a house I want to put a bid on to see if any neighbors hold rowdy parties or things like that.

So that puts us in a bit of a bind. Most apartments want you to sign at the very least a 6 month long lease. I'm so tired of apartments and really, really want a house. A lot of Orlando apartments also don't allow huskies. Who knows why, ours is the sweetest guy you will ever meet.


Look at that face.

Long term house rentals usually always want a longer commitment as well. Brian's sister suggested we talk to her friend, who works with a long term house rental company in Orlando. She suggested that they could work out something special for us where we sign a year long lease that has some special stipulation that we can give one month's notice and move out with no penalty. Don't worry guys, it kind of set alarm bells off for me too. I did go to law school, so I'll be sure to make certain it's legit. I'm also kind of not 100% that the situation will even work out.

But anyway, that is one option. I'm not 100% counting on it though. We'll probably re-visit it and talk with her friend in the next month or two.

We had also discussed taking a trip to Orlando to look at neighborhoods. We had a WDW trip for June that obviously got canceled. We'd planned on looking at neighborhoods then. As of right now, we have no plans to go down. Maybe in October. I would like to go down and neighborhood hunt, and ideally, if we do it in October we might even find a house available at the time in a good neighborhood and we could put a bid in.

Sigh, it's still something we're not sure of and moving time is creeping ever closer.

We also want a house that is very close to the Disney parks. Since I'll be working remotely and Brian will be attending classes online (and perhaps even getting a part time job at Disney or Universal) we don't need to base our location off a work office.

Right now, the Davenport area is a favorite. We seem to be focusing on neighborhoods to the south west of Disney parks.

This is a neighborhood map I pulled from MovingToOrlando.com Thats the DIS' website, it's been super helpful in our planning.



So Lake Buena Vista is where the parks are. Celebration is super close, but a bit too pricey for us. Champion's Gate is the red marker above Davenport, but I'm a little worried that Champion's Gate has a lot of vacation rental properties.

Anyway, Davenport has tons of nice/updated houses in the mid to low 200ks. Davenport also has another unique feature. Most of the houses seem to have caged pools.



That's a super nice one though. So as not to get everyone's expectations up, most look more like this:



We never really thought we'd like a pool, but these are kind of growing on me. I know that pools would add to the electric bill so we have taken that into consideration.

We are really big outdoors people, though. We have big plans for our backyard in Orlando. Most of these pool cages also have some sort of covered lanai as well. We'd like to build a small outdoor bar if we get a nice covered lanai. We haven't decided on the theme yet. Brian wants to go with an after WWII Tiki bar vibe, I'm going more with Jungle Cruise/Teddy Roosevelt Africa type Adventurer theme.

Anyway, even with Florida's humidity, we plan to spend a lot of time outside. So the backyard really matters to us. We're also really put off by houses that are right on top of each other. I'd like an actual backyard and if at all possible I'd like to have a fence to let Sirius have his space.

We actually found a house on Zillow a month ago that we both really loved. We'd have definitely gone to see it if it was posted closer to our moving time.

https://www.zillow.com/homes/34-Pine-Forest-Ln,-Haines-City,-FL-33844_rb/47319217_zpid/


That backyard is goals.



It's farther south then we would like, and in the northern edge of Haines City, which I've heard not so good things about. But this house....I hear the Hamilton song 'Helpless' in my head when I look at it.

Sigh. Definitely thought it'd been sold by now and when I went to find the pics, I see it's still available and had a 19k price cut. Uuuuugh I wish we were moving now. I'm having foolish thoughts. Someone talk me down.

I guess that's as good a time as any to end this installment!

 

[Tallis]

I don't know anything about Orlando area, except that's where WDW is.

But, if I was able to do things all over again, having a screen porch would be a priority. Having a screened pool, even better. I love being outside, but some years the mosquitoes are really bad here. Some years we don't see many, but there are still more creepy crawlies than I've experienced in other places. Screen porches are almost necessity.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

I don't know anything about Orlando area, except that's where WDW is.

But, if I was able to do things all over again, having a screen porch would be a priority. Having a screened pool, even better. I love being outside, but some years the mosquitoes are really bad here. Some years we don't see many, but there are still more creepy crawlies than I've experienced in other places. Screen porches are almost necessity.

Welcome!!

Which part of Florida do you live in, if you don't mind me asking?

Yeah, the more I think about it the nicer the screen and the pool sound. It's good to hear from a Floridian though, so thank you for your input about the mosquitoes. We do want to be outside a lot and I think if the bugs were really bad that might chase us inside.

 

[kstinw19]

I used to live in Orlando and I would rule out the northern part like Winter Park and Winter Garden. Winter Park is quite nice but can be expensive. But Winter Garden is nice too, and even though it might appear to be farther away from Disney, the back way takes you right to MK. I used to commute daily when I worked there. Good luck! P.S. I also lived outside of Columbus for a while...Go Bucks!

 

[LizzyDragon]

Welcome to Florida! My boyfriend lived in Davenport for a while. We jokingly called it Cowtown as his neighborhood was next to a cow pasture, and not much else. The challenge with Davenport is that it's just not near much of anything. Some development was coming in when he moved, but not much. It's a bedroom community. To get to Disney from Davenport is about a 30 min drive in non-rush hour traffic. To downtown Orlando is about 45 minutes.

Haines City is even more remote- it's about 35 min drive to Disney.

Screened-in pools are common here in FL. If you get a pool that doesn't have one, it's usually an option to get it added on (not sure on cost). Besides the electrical cost, you'll also need to look at other maintenance costs such as pool chemicals/cleaners, water costs and the time put into maintaining the pool.

I've lived in Florida all my life- most of it in Central FL. Feel free to post more questions about living here.

 

[DaisyDuck001]

I used to live in Orlando and I would rule out the northern part like Winter Park and Winter Garden. Winter Park is quite nice but can be expensive. But Winter Garden is nice too, and even though it might appear to be farther away from Disney, the back way takes you right to MK.

Curious, why would you rule out Winter Garden?

 

[hmsTigger]

Traffic is major concern around I-4 Stay away from areas where you have to use I-4 or 192. Altho we do like Lakeland area.
Kissimmee is close to turnpike, WDW, and fast on and off major roads to go south or east/west in the state. Especially, if you want to enjoy the beaches on either coast.
Winter Park is very nice but a little pricey. East coast Merritt island is nice but abt 45 minutes from Orlando/WDW But you will not be spending all your time in WDW Consider what other activities you will enjoy especially being in a warmer climate.
Most pools and outside areas have lanai or some type of screening.

Good Luck with your research and move. Will follow along................

 

[martikus]

You won’t regret a pool in Florida. We lived in Sarasota for 5 years. Truly you will live in the pool. And having a lanai over it is AMAZING. We didn’t find it that expensive to maintain and this was our first house so it’s not like we were rolling in money .

buy a couple beach cruiser bikes when you move in. The flat roads make biking amazing. It’s the one thing we miss since moving to NC.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

I used to live in Orlando and I would rule out the northern part like Winter Park and Winter Garden. Winter Park is quite nice but can be expensive. But Winter Garden is nice too, and even though it might appear to be farther away from Disney, the back way takes you right to MK. I used to commute daily when I worked there. Good luck! P.S. I also lived outside of Columbus for a while...Go Bucks!

That's good to know about Winter Garden. We def wouldn't mind a nice back road drive to WDW. Really sounds like we should stay away from I-4.

O-H!

Welcome to Florida! My boyfriend lived in Davenport for a while. We jokingly called it Cowtown as his neighborhood was next to a cow pasture, and not much else. The challenge with Davenport is that it's just not near much of anything. Some development was coming in when he moved, but not much. It's a bedroom community. To get to Disney from Davenport is about a 30 min drive in non-rush hour traffic. To downtown Orlando is about 45 minutes.

Haines City is even more remote- it's about 35 min drive to Disney.

Screened-in pools are common here in FL. If you get a pool that doesn't have one, it's usually an option to get it added on (not sure on cost). Besides the electrical cost, you'll also need to look at other maintenance costs such as pool chemicals/cleaners, water costs and the time put into maintaining the pool.

I've lived in Florida all my life- most of it in Central FL. Feel free to post more questions about living here.

Thank you!

That's good to know about Davenport. I'm not sure if we'd mind being out in the country, I grew up in a very small town and it took a while to get to stores or any entertainment. I might want to stick with farther north in Davenport to be closer to Disney.

I don't think we'd ever even considered Haines City, it's just that one particular house that we've fallen in love with.

Thank you for the offer about answering questions I'm sure I"ll have a bunch.

Traffic is major concern around I-4 Stay away from areas where you have to use I-4 or 192. Altho we do like Lakeland area.
Kissimmee is close to turnpike, WDW, and fast on and off major roads to go south or east/west in the state. Especially, if you want to enjoy the beaches on either coast.
Winter Park is very nice but a little pricey. East coast Merritt island is nice but abt 45 minutes from Orlando/WDW But you will not be spending all your time in WDW Consider what other activities you will enjoy especially being in a warmer climate.
Most pools and outside areas have lanai or some type of screening.

Good Luck with your research and move. Will follow along................

I've heard some not so great things about Kissimmee, is it just a few particular areas of Kissimmee are bad and the others are ok? Is the area ok when you get close to WDW?

Our other major entertainment activity that we like to do is watch movies. Having lived in Austin for a few hours we are very enamored with Alamo Drafthouse. I know Orlando is getting one, but I think it's near the Doctor Phillips area. Which seems like it's a bit pricey for us. But we do like movies so we'd like to be near a movie theater.

You won’t regret a pool in Florida. We lived in Sarasota for 5 years. Truly you will live in the pool. And having a lanai over it is AMAZING. We didn’t find it that expensive to maintain and this was our first house so it’s not like we were rolling in money .

buy a couple beach cruiser bikes when you move in. The flat roads make biking amazing. It’s the one thing we miss since moving to NC.

Thanks for the thoughts on a pool. At first, we didn't even think about having one. The more I think about it the more I think it might be nice. The houses with pools also seem to have the cages and lanais along with it. And the thought of a shaded, caged area in the backyard sounds really nice.

I'm not a super good bike rider. Never rode when I was little buy my boyfriend has one. That's something to think about, we do try to be active when we can.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Decluttering: I'm at the Point Where None of this Sparks Joy

We've been attempting to declutter since we moved to Kansas City 2 and a half years ago.

The move date is creeping every closer, so we've put it into high gear.

The plan has been to move from room to room and space to space, and to focus on the smaller areas so it doesn't get too overwhelming.

The bathroom went ok. We just felt a bit bad throwing out some products, but most were old anyway.

We went through all the movies and video games and were able to get ride of at least an entire shelf. I was kind of torn with the Disney/Marvel movies. Now most of them are on Disney+, and we have digital copies of most anyway. I still don't really want to get rid of the physical copies.

This weekend we've been focusing on the spare bedroom/office. Today has been posters/art. This is not even half of the posters.



You don't work at movie theaters for about 10 years of your life without accumulating a lot of posters. Some of these I don't even think I've looked through in years.

I've also been slowly working on my travel box, which is in the back of that picture. A lot of my old Disney/Universal/other travel documents I've just been taking a picture of and then throwing it away. Just to have the little remembrance but not have to keep the paper around.

I also have a ton of Disney souvenirs/giveaways that I'm not quite sure what to do with. I don't really want or need them, but also feel bad throwing them away.

It's my ultimate goal to have looked through everything we have and make sure that nothing is coming on the move that we haven't looked through and decided that we want to keep.

 

[ORD2KOA]

All right. We made the decision to move to Disney, er...Orlando.

We also want a house that is very close to the Disney parks. Since I'll be working remotely and Brian will be attending classes online (and perhaps even getting a part time job at Disney or Universal) we don't need to base our location off a work office.

I've seen you have a lot of good advice. I'd like to add a couple of things.

The house (awesome!) that you showed us is a 55 minute drive from Epcot. It looks close, but not so much. I'm on the east side (opposite of Disney) of the Orlando Airport and it only takes about 35 minutes. We've been thinking about moving west to be closer, but some of the subdivisions near Disney take just as long to get there. I've been checking commute times using the Epcot Toll Gate as my destination to give me an idea if it's closer or not. Roads and streets don't work here the way they do in the Midwest (I'm originally from Chicago). There's no grid, so keep that in mind. Even if it looks close, it may not be.

Also, if you're looking in and around Davenport, inquire about sinkholes in the area.

And, you may want this to use for a reference when trying to figure out where to live:
https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/fl/orlando/crime
Good luck!!

PS - Do you want to know that the heat index is 104 today?