Vacation Homes and Location

[RGirl]

Hello! I am just starting to plan an October trip to Disney with my daughter (will be 3.5 by then) and my mom and possibly a friend - this will be the first trip for ALL of us!!!

We have decided that we will be spending more time at "home base" than most people on these boards seem to like to do - we prefer not to eat out for every meal or even every day, we will need a good deal of down time, and we all enjoy our space. So we would like to rent a 3- to 4-bedroom vacation home with a pool. I have seen some places that look wonderful, but having never been to Orlando, I am having a hard time figuring out how far the different communities are from WDW. The advertisements will always say things like "minutes from Disney" or "just 5 minutes from Disney World," but I doubt they are always completely accurate.

Can anyone give me any ideas about which communities are actually closest to WDW? For example, it sounds like Windsor Hills is pretty popular (any others????) - how long does it really take to drive to the parks?

Thanks so much for any help!!! I am blown away by how helpful the folks on these boards are.

 

[sympatico]

The homes in this area known as the Formosa Gardens area are the closest: Windsor Hills, Windsor Palms and Emerald Island all have resort type facilities and manned gates. Formosa Gardens Estates, Acadia Estates and Sunset Lakes (has a community pool) have coded gates and just pool homes. Indian Creek, Rolling Hills and Oak Island have no gates and only Indian Creek has a playground, sports field.
WH, FGE, RH, OakI, AE, IC,WP,EI, SL are the order of closeness but there's only about a minute or 2 difference from first to last.
These are all close to the Animal Kingdom section of Disney. Disney is huge so being 5 or 6 minutes from AK doesn't mean that you're that close to the rest of the park. From WH it took us 7 minutes to get to AK and park ( hit a red traffic light). It will take you 20 min to Magic Kingdom parking lot, 10 min to DHS and 15 min to Epcot.

If you plan to be at MK for opening in the morning allow 45 min. or more to get right into the turnstiles. Once you get to the MK parking lot then you have to take a shuttle to the Ticket and Transportation Center, then a ferry or monorail to the park itself. For the other parks it's just park and walk or ride the shuttle to the entrance.
A lot of the times given for getting to Disney are for getting on Disney property and not actually getting in the park itself.

There are no pool house rentals that are close to the other areas of Disney except maybe those on Poincianna. They would be about 10-12 minutes from the Epcot/Downtown Disney area.
Take a look at this map and you get the idea of where everything is. The pink markers are Disney locations. Windsor Hills is #1, zoom in and you can click on the markers around it to see the other subdivisions. Those in the Poinciana area are Terra Verde which is #62 and those around there.
The red, blue and geen lines lead you into Disney via Sherberth Rd which comes out next to AK.
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=U...8.272032,-81.608849&spn=0.068335,0.11055&z=13
Hope this answers a few of your questions.

 

[RGirl]

Thank you Wanda! That was really helpful. I was leaning towards WH, so it sounds like that will, in fact, most likely be best for us.