Vacation Rentals Near Disney

Heatherhy01

In need of pixie dust
Joined
Dec 17, 2007
Hi All!

We are currently planning our trip for May 2019 and are considering staying off property to keep costs low. Has anyone ever rented a house close to Disney? Any suggestions on companies to use to rent and which town is better? Kissimmee vs. Lake Buena Vista?

Thank you in advance!
 
I am interested as well. I looked at vrbo and the other rental companies and was surprised by the fees. I did a google search and found others saying these companies are adding additional fees that were not charged in the past. The people who list with them were not happy about these fees since they already pay to advertise with them. The prices were not nearly as good as what I have seen in the past. If anyone has any insight I'd love to hear it.
 
I am interested as well. I looked at vrbo and the other rental companies and was surprised by the fees. I did a google search and found others saying these companies are adding additional fees that were not charged in the past. The people who list with them were not happy about these fees since they already pay to advertise with them. The prices were not nearly as good as what I have seen in the past. If anyone has any insight I'd love to hear it.

Even with the fees associated, I did find for the most part, renting a house seems to be a MUCH cheaper option than staying on property, even at a value resort. I just am interested to see where any one else has booked and what their experience was? It is a little scary handing over that kind of cash and not knowing whom you are dealing with....o_O
 
Even with the fees associated, I did find for the most part, renting a house seems to be a MUCH cheaper option than staying on property, even at a value resort. I just am interested to see where any one else has booked and what their experience was? It is a little scary handing over that kind of cash and not knowing whom you are dealing with....o_O
Yes I agree. It really is scary. I have used vrbo before but it has been several years.
 


I actually looked into something like this recently for a stay in September. I was listening to the DIS Podcast and one of the guys mentioned they offer an off site option. They do 3bed or 4bed villas around 99 per night. They look petty nice and I would have done it but we aren't staying a full week. I have stayed off site before in this same area near Celebration numerous times and its about a 15 min ride into WDW.

http://www.dreamsvillas.com/reservations/book-now.cfm
 
I actually looked into something like this recently for a stay in September. I was listening to the DIS Podcast and one of the guys mentioned they offer an off site option. They do 3bed or 4bed villas around 99 per night. They look petty nice and I would have done it but we aren't staying a full week. I have stayed off site before in this same area near Celebration numerous times and its about a 15 min ride into WDW.

http://www.dreamsvillas.com/reservations/book-now.cfm
Thanks so much! I will definitely check them out!

Check out Airbnb! There are a lot of affordable options

Thanks! I never even though of air bnb!
 


We are dedicated offsite people. As I've said in many threads, we would never stay on site, it would be a deal breaker for us. We've probably made at least 15-20 total offsite visits over the past 15 years. We love having the space, flexibility, etc...that offsite offers. Plus it's so much cheaper than a tiny hotel room at WDW. We pay between $650-$850/week, including fees, for a 3-4 bedroom, 2-3 bath, 900-1300sq ft condo or townhouse. All the places we stay have full amenities...community pool, clubhouse, play area for little ones, gated, etc... Having all the separate bedrooms is fantastic. We get privacy :rolleyes1, the kids get their own spaces. Having a full family room and dining room is also fantastic. We love having a full kitchen and in house laundry. It really is all the conveniences of home, right at WDW. Plus, there are SO many things to do right outside WDW...shops, restaurants, etc...

We exclusively use VRBO. There are endless choices on there. We tend to gravitate toward privately owned units instead of rental agencies, simply because they give more personal feel...though we haven't had a bad experience with an agency, so I wouldn't rule them out. If you look at Google maps, Rt. 192 runs east/west just under the south border of WDW property. There are huge pockets of rental communities on both the east side and the west side. I would pick one of those places...you'll have hundreds to choose from, if not thousands. We prefer the east side, but we've stayed on the west side plenty of times and enjoyed it too.
 
We are dedicated offsite people. As I've said in many threads, we would never stay on site, it would be a deal breaker for us. We've probably made at least 15-20 total offsite visits over the past 15 years. We love having the space, flexibility, etc...that offsite offers. Plus it's so much cheaper than a tiny hotel room at WDW. We pay between $650-$850/week, including fees, for a 3-4 bedroom, 2-3 bath, 900-1300sq ft condo or townhouse. All the places we stay have full amenities...community pool, clubhouse, play area for little ones, gated, etc... Having all the separate bedrooms is fantastic. We get privacy :rolleyes1, the kids get their own spaces. Having a full family room and dining room is also fantastic. We love having a full kitchen and in house laundry. It really is all the conveniences of home, right at WDW. Plus, there are SO many things to do right outside WDW...shops, restaurants, etc...

We exclusively use VRBO. There are endless choices on there. We tend to gravitate toward privately owned units instead of rental agencies, simply because they give more personal feel...though we haven't had a bad experience with an agency, so I wouldn't rule them out. If you look at Google maps, Rt. 192 runs east/west just under the south border of WDW property. There are huge pockets of rental communities on both the east side and the west side. I would pick one of those places...you'll have hundreds to choose from, if not thousands. We prefer the east side, but we've stayed on the west side plenty of times and enjoyed it too.

Thank you so much! That is whom I have been recently investigating. I really like getting another person's perspective since we had never stayed off site before but really would not be able to do a Disney vacation without staying off property this time since the prices seem to have sky rocketed. The more I think about it, the better it sounds! We rent a house every year for our beach vacation and love the fact that we have all the comforts of home and do not have to spend a million going out to eat every night and can enjoy dinners at "home" as a family. Also, we would be able to pack light and have the amenity of laundry to keep costs lower for the baggage on flights AND have enough room for anything purchased at the parks.
 
We always stay off site and book through VRBO. Never had an issue. We get some amazing homes with pools, 15 mins to the MK, for less thab half what staying at a value would cost.

We have also rented Wyndham Bonnet Creek from vacation strategy, they got us an amazing price on a week rental. I think we paid around $600 for the week, and we were on disney property.

I would never stay on site. I love disney, but what they charge for tiny hotel rooms is insane.
 
We always stay off site and book through VRBO. Never had an issue. We get some amazing homes with pools, 15 mins to the MK, for less thab half what staying at a value would cost.

We have also rented Wyndham Bonnet Creek from vacation strategy, they got us an amazing price on a week rental. I think we paid around $600 for the week, and we were on disney property.

I would never stay on site. I love disney, but what they charge for tiny hotel rooms is insane.
Thanks! I am going to look into Wyndham Bonnet Creek also:)
 
We bought a resale Wyndham contract to be able to book Bonnet Creek from time to time.

It’s an amazing resort, right on property.

Story goes that a Taiwanese developer was visiting his ailing mom in Orlando, and bored one day, does what a developer does and checks out the local market:

He discovers that several companies (Disney shell companies) were buying up large chunks of the swamps south of Orlando. On a hunch, he buys 500 acres for dirt cheap. When most of the swamp players he saw on the deeds he searched end up making him an offer to sell, he knows something’s up. Refuses to sell.

He paid like $37,000 for 500 acres in the mid-1960’s; his heirs circa 1995 sold for over $100 million. And now there are three timeshares (with room for a 4th) in that corner cut out of WDW, literally on property (next door to CBR).

Wyndham Bonnet Creek is one of them.
 
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Thank you so much! That is whom I have been recently investigating. I really like getting another person's perspective since we had never stayed off site before but really would not be able to do a Disney vacation without staying off property this time since the prices seem to have sky rocketed. The more I think about it, the better it sounds! We rent a house every year for our beach vacation and love the fact that we have all the comforts of home and do not have to spend a million going out to eat every night and can enjoy dinners at "home" as a family. Also, we would be able to pack light and have the amenity of laundry to keep costs lower for the baggage on flights AND have enough room for anything purchased at the parks.

Yes. We drive, since we're in Atlanta, but we used to have to fly. We're super lucky in that our summer trips are 17 days long (I work from the rental house 3 or 4 days...we do parks at night those days). Even with a trip that long, we only pack enough clothes for 3 or 4 days. Laundry is so easy to do....just toss it in the washer while we're at the pool or just relaxing, toss it in the dryer before bed...done. We also pack all of our food and bring it in to WDW. We literally spend 1/4 or less of what a lot of people do on food. Sure, we'll buy the kids treats or something in the parks, but very rarely do we buy full meals.
 
We are dedicated offsite people. As I've said in many threads, we would never stay on site, it would be a deal breaker for us. We've probably made at least 15-20 total offsite visits over the past 15 years. We love having the space, flexibility, etc...that offsite offers. Plus it's so much cheaper than a tiny hotel room at WDW. We pay between $650-$850/week, including fees, for a 3-4 bedroom, 2-3 bath, 900-1300sq ft condo or townhouse. All the places we stay have full amenities...community pool, clubhouse, play area for little ones, gated, etc... Having all the separate bedrooms is fantastic. We get privacy :rolleyes1, the kids get their own spaces. Having a full family room and dining room is also fantastic. We love having a full kitchen and in house laundry. It really is all the conveniences of home, right at WDW. Plus, there are SO many things to do right outside WDW...shops, restaurants, etc...

We exclusively use VRBO. There are endless choices on there. We tend to gravitate toward privately owned units instead of rental agencies, simply because they give more personal feel...though we haven't had a bad experience with an agency, so I wouldn't rule them out. If you look at Google maps, Rt. 192 runs east/west just under the south border of WDW property. There are huge pockets of rental communities on both the east side and the west side. I would pick one of those places...you'll have hundreds to choose from, if not thousands. We prefer the east side, but we've stayed on the west side plenty of times and enjoyed it too.

Are you able to get all the FP that you want? I am so for staying offsite to save money, but what about all the popular rides that my son wants to ride. 60FP for staying onsite and then you get 30 FP off site.
 
Are you able to get all the FP that you want? I am so for staying offsite to save money, but what about all the popular rides that my son wants to ride. 60FP for staying onsite and then you get 30 FP off site.

Great question! I thought is was 60 for off site and 180 for on site? I could COMPLETELY be wrong though!:rainbow:
 
Great question! I thought is was 60 for off site and 180 for on site? I could COMPLETELY be wrong though!:rainbow:
Fast passes are 60 days for on site, 30 for offsite, 60 for some exceptions (ex some hotels near Disney Springs).
Denise
 
Are you able to get all the FP that you want? I am so for staying offsite to save money, but what about all the popular rides that my son wants to ride. 60FP for staying onsite and then you get 30 FP off site.

Yes, FP+ is 30 days if you're offsite. Our situation gets even more complicated because we're AP holders. AP holders are only allowed to have 7 days worth of FP+ in any 30 day window. Our summer trips are 17 days long. Therefore, we can only make FP+ for days 1-7 at 30 days out. We can't make FP+ for day 8 until we've used day 1, day 9 after we used day 2, etc...in other words, days 8-17 of our trips we make FP+ only 6 days in advance.

Yes, we are able to get all the FP+ we want. The only exception is FoP, as that one is really hard to get...though we did get one. All the others aren't hard at all...FEA, 7DMT, Space Mountain, Splash, RnR, TSMM, etc... For most of them, even the time selection at 30 days out is pretty decent (not complete pick of the litter, but not bad). We also are heavy users of MDE "day of", and grab all kinds of FP+. We'll go through 8-10 FP+ on a summer day, easily.
 
We went through VBRO and stayed at the Vista Cay condominiums on our last trip (about 8 years ago...). It was really close, and we were able to have a 3-bedroom condo, very reasonably. Close to the Convention Center, but it was a good location as well.
 
We are dedicated offsite people. As I've said in many threads, we would never stay on site, it would be a deal breaker for us. We've probably made at least 15-20 total offsite visits over the past 15 years. We love having the space, flexibility, etc...that offsite offers. Plus it's so much cheaper than a tiny hotel room at WDW. We pay between $650-$850/week, including fees, for a 3-4 bedroom, 2-3 bath, 900-1300sq ft condo or townhouse. All the places we stay have full amenities...community pool, clubhouse, play area for little ones, gated, etc... Having all the separate bedrooms is fantastic. We get privacy :rolleyes1, the kids get their own spaces. Having a full family room and dining room is also fantastic. We love having a full kitchen and in house laundry. It really is all the conveniences of home, right at WDW. Plus, there are SO many things to do right outside WDW...shops, restaurants, etc...

We exclusively use VRBO. There are endless choices on there. We tend to gravitate toward privately owned units instead of rental agencies, simply because they give more personal feel...though we haven't had a bad experience with an agency, so I wouldn't rule them out. If you look at Google maps, Rt. 192 runs east/west just under the south border of WDW property. There are huge pockets of rental communities on both the east side and the west side. I would pick one of those places...you'll have hundreds to choose from, if not thousands. We prefer the east side, but we've stayed on the west side plenty of times and enjoyed it too.
what is VRBO? I like your prices and want to investigate as my summer trip will be offsite.
 

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