Finding Your Florida Accommodation 🇺🇸

Part of my Real Florida Guide

Choosing the right accommodation is a big and important part of your holiday so it’s important to find what’s right for you.

You will need to find yourself a good place to stay that’s central, affordable and comfortable (and if the budget permits, a little luxurious). Because this guide is primarily aimed at those who are not restrained by Disney holiday packages and who have the wheels for which to explore, my advice is to go for villa accommodation, but I’ll look at other options later, too.

Villa Accommodation

This is my top choice for so many reasons. Here’s a look at why:

✔️ Villas make a great base from which to explore! The beauty of having a villa as your base and with a car at your disposal is that you can venture almost anywhere you want to – north, south, east coast, west coast.….without trying to get out of the busier tourist areas before you even begin!

✔️ You get a lot of your own space, which is bliss. If you don’t have kids (or at least young kids) and you don’t plan to spend your entire holiday at theme parks, why would you spend mega bucks on resort hotels, confine yourself to a single room and test your sanity? It makes no sense.

✔️ As well as lots of private space, villas provide free parking and – more often than not – your very own swimming pool. They will generally come with all the amenities you could ever wish for too, including television with Cable TV, a fully supplied kitchen, a BBQ and a washing machine/ dryer. I can’t tell you what a bonus it is to be able to pack less and go home with a clean case of clothes! Some of the villas also have a games room and ‘little extras’ like a BOSE system, PlayStation or a jet spa corner bath, if you fall lucky!

✔️ Villas save you important spending money! Crazy, but true! They often come in way cheaper than the super-expensive resort hotels, meaning that your holiday cash can go further. A typical three or four bedroom villa in the Orlando area can easily sleep 6 – 10 people, so real savings can be made if there’s a bunch of you sharing the costs. To give you an indication of price, our 2022 villa cost £650 per week in May. For this, we got a 4 bedroom house with a private, elevated pool overlooking a popular golf course. Prices do go up and down according to season, so factor that in (as well as car hire).

✔️ Renting a villa is easy and without hidden ‘extras’ such as resort tax. Such is the size of Florida, that you can easily rent a villa anywhere within the State. Orlando, however, is a natural choice for villa rentals due to its popularity with tourists. This, in turn, brings in plenty of choice and competitive prices. The main areas for rentals include Davenport, Kissimmee and Haines City, all of which are within a 30 – 40 minute drive of the theme parks – if that’s a priority.

You can book a villa through an agent or else go directly to the owner. We do the latter and typically use the ‘ownersdirect.com’ website to find a place we like and we then make contact with the owner that way.

❗️As with anything, I’d advise that you do your research thoroughly and get insurance – because it can go wrong!

Renting a villa has so many plus points, but you have to be savvy too. In 11 years, only once have I had a bad experience when booking direct with a particularly irresponsible owner. You can imagine the panic when said idiot – sorry, owner – contacted us just two weeks before we flew out to Florida to say that he had decided to sell the villa and it was no longer available! To cut a long and tedious story short, we did get our money back but we were still left scrabbling around trying to find new accommodation at the last minute. I’d like to hope this experience is rare but if you’re the slightest bit uneasy, do opt for booking with a travel company/ agent instead. The only downside – and reason why we do it ourselves – is that you can’t often handpick which villa and in which location you will get. So it’s pot luck.

😃 Top Tip for golfers (and those who simply like serenity!)

We always stay at Southern Dunes Golf and Country Club in Haines City. This is in the Polk County area and around a 30 minute drive from Universal Studios and a 20 minute drive from Disney. It’s also only a short 50 minutes to Tampa, where you’ll find NFL, Ice Hockey and Busch Gardens.

Ok, so Southern Dunes isn’t on the doorstep of the ‘star attractions’, but it is a little oasis away from the tourist trap. Many of the villas have golf views (a must in my opinion), so you can take in a bit of spectator game play from the comfort of your lounger.

We stumbled across Southern Dunes purely by chance back in 2010 and it’s the only place we will stay now! Space, privacy, peace and quiet makes this a winner for us.

Take a tour inside my recent villa rental – it’s a stunner!

‘On A Shoestring’ Hotels

If a villa doesn’t appeal – perhaps you want to be more central for the parks, or you’re not hiring a car – there is a second option that is cheaper even still and which will place you right in the thick of the action without the Disney price tag.

Central Florida has a multitude of inexpensive hotels in the main tourist areas, often found on International Drive (I-Drive) in Orlando and along the 192 ‘strip’ in Kissimmee – and anywhere else within the state of Florida.

These budget options can be a great choice if spends are a little tighter or you are taking a big family. For starters, you can easily get a family room for around $60 per night and parking is also invariably free (if you do opt for a car). You’ll also be surrounded by a whole host of great places to eat and drink, again without the expense of being captive audience to Disney and Universal hotel eateries. In honesty, the choice you get with an I-Drive hotel beats the theme parks and villas, hands down.

It’s because of this that we will often have a night or two away from the villa and stay on I-Drive so that we enjoy a few drinks without one of us being the ‘designated driver’!

Here’s my choices:

The Quality Inn Suites, at the top end of I-Drive is an excellent choice if you plan to spend a chunk of time at Universal (a mere 15 minute walk). It’s clean, has free parking and also offers a complimentary continental breakfast. And the price? £60 a night (May 2022 price).

At the opposite end of I-Drive is Seaworld, another popular park. If this is on your agenda, the Rosen Inn offers cheap rooms, free parking and not too great a journey. This is a huge hotel and access to rooms is from the outside – think more ‘motel’ set up.

The Avanti hotel is slap bang in the middle of I-Drive and again, is set up just like the Rosen. It offers real value for money at around £55 a night (May 2022 price), which includes complimentary parking.

All of the above hotels have a swimming pool for guests to use and many run shuttles to the parks too. Can’t say fairer than that!

‘Treat Yourself’ Hotels

If money is something you bathe in, then spending your entire holiday at Disney, Universal or some other fancy hotel may just suit you fine. Of course, do remember to factor in the excessive car parking charges if you have a car, which can really stack up over a long period.

For me, such hotels are something of a nice overnight treat that I might do once during the holiday.

Take the Universal Hard Rock Hotel for example. We have stayed here on a couple of occasions and – I can’t lie – it’s wonderful! The rooms are quirky, the check in is slick, the pool is amazing and you can embrace your inner rock god and rent an electric guitar from their huge collection. On top of this, you get fast pass tickets for Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure which means you can queue jump. You also get sailed to the parks by boat – blissful! But such luxury will come at a premium. May 2022 prices come in at £280+ per night at Universal Hard Rock!

My very favourite hotel, however, is the Bohemian Autograph Collection in Celebration (top right). Whereas the Hard Rock oozes cool, this one exudes class and elegance. We have been lucky enough to get a corner room in the past, overlooking the lake and with private balcony. It’s a stunning hotel, but the biggest plus point is the gorgeous location and I’m a massive fan of Celebration (check it out in the main guide under ‘Weird and Wonderful’). May 2022 prices at the Bohemian Hotel Celebration come in at around the £220 mark, per night.

Further afield, I can also recommend the Fortune House Hotel Suites in Miami (we had a brilliant two bedroom apartment with panoramic views), The Godfrey Hotel And Cabanas in Tampa (luxury balconies overlooking the water) and the Casa Monica Hotel in St Augustine – which is part of the same chain as the Celebration Bohemian.

One thing is for certain, whatever your budget, Florida has accommodation solutions for everyone!

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Why not drop your own accommodation tips below 👇🏻