Walt Disney 2020
Our rental home for the next 10 days
Now I'm a big fan of Airbnb and would rather stay in an entire house than a hotel or resort if it suits us better. I searched all over for the perfect place, but ended up finding a place that struck my fancy on Vrbo. We have rented on Vrbo (basically the same as Airbnb) once in the past but they always seem to be more expensive on there. I have literally found the exact same place on both of them and Vrbo would always have a more expensive price. I'm not sure why.
We found a really nice house, with a pool in the back yard, and I knew this was the place we wanted. However, there were several not so great reviews of the place. Several people were complaining that the house had a lot of greenery in it and it was VERY dusty. Now people with allergies (which I do have but it doesn't bother me unless you are dusting in my face) would probably not do well with this place. But, I figured we would be fine. The other issue is that several people had made comments about seeing roaches. Well, I contacted the owner (who turned out to actually be the rental company who over looked the place for the owner who lives out of state) and she explained the "Florida roaches" and that people like to leave the sliding door open to the pool area and they come in. As, long as we didn't do that, we would be ok and also they have an exterminating company that comes in as well. So, measures had been put in place to rid the bugs as long as the renters did their part. Now I'm more than aware of the Florida cockroaches and I figured she was right and I would take my chances.
So, here is the beautiful home we rented, complete with 2 master bedrooms and baths, and 2 other bedrooms, a loft and an enclosed swimming pool in the back yard.
First floor master bedroom. Nice size and all open to the bathroom with a shower and tub and tons of windows for natural light (notice the greenery?). This room was directly off the dining room and living room.
The second master bedroom was located upstairs and mimicked the bedroom above with different furniture.
As you walk in the door, you entered the dining room.
There was a smaller dinning room on the opposite side of the door and off the kitchen area. It also had a cabinet full of books to read and games to play.
The kitchen area next to the small dining room and off the living room area. It was fairly small but it worked for our purposes. It had a dishwasher, toaster, all the cooking pots and pans and utensils you needed and spices and a lot of food and other things that people have left behind. It also came with a coffee maker and a Keurig.
The living room was 2 stories tall and had plenty of nooks in it for the decor. It also had a lot of windows, but for some reason they chose to cover them up with curtains, which I hated. I love natural light and especially windows up high. I just feel this kills the look of the place and defeats the purpose of having those windows up there if you're not going to use them as they were intended. The room is an odd shape, due to the stairs located in the middle of the house, and the designer of this home (and the rest of the homes in this area) was big on "shapes". But, it did come with 3 sofa's an ottoman and a coffee table (which I thought was just a little much for this area and made it hard to walk around...we ended up moving the coffee table out of the way).
Here's the elaborate stair case in the middle of the house. The stairs started wide and got smaller as you go up and then turned at a landing with 2 bedrooms and a bathroom and then up more stairs and you get to the upstairs. There was also a huge shelf off the loft by the stairs with decor on it.
On the first landing of the stairs, there was a regular bathroom with tub.
On that same floor/landing area, you will find 2 other bedrooms. One had a regular bed and the other room had 2 bunkbeds in them.
Head on up the stairs again and you will walk into the loft area, which has been converted into yet another bedroom with 2 twin beds and also a couch and tv area. I think this totally ruins the look of the house and makes it look trashy but I guess they wanna pile in as many people as they can to make the house more appealable to larger families. There's also glass in the 1/2 wall overlooking the living room, which doesn't make it an appealing "bedroom" to those that would stay in there. i believe this home is supposed to hold 11 people.
Up next is the most appealing part of the home...the screen enclosed swimming pool area. Walking out the sliding glass doors (which are SUPER HEAVY) you come to a little nook area with a table, umbrella and chairs. It's a nice little sitting area a small distance from the pool.
There is a door in that area that will take you out into the yard and there is also a grill out there.
There are extra chairs by the pool area and a box with pool toys and floaties in it. There was a solar cover, but it couldn't be used because it is completely decaying and torn up and needs replaced.
The screen over the entire pool area makes it nice because the leaves and debris doesn't fall into the pool area.
The pool was heated but with the cooler weather we had off and on, I wished that it was on a higher setting for my taste. The pool did have a pool light so that you could swim during the evening hours.
Lastly, here's the outside of the home from the front.
Now you might ask what a huge pool home like this would cost? It was actually a pretty good price. I believe it was around $110/night, which is cheaper than a lot of hotel rooms. Of course with VRBO you have to pay their fee as well, plus a cleaning fee, plus this particular home they made you purchase a renters insurance policy in case anything happened (which was only $59). I've never rented a place that we had to do this with and didn't even realize it was an option. It still was pretty cheap for the amount of time we were there.
On to our first night there....