Solara Resort

By day nine of a fortnight, another swimming pool is not news. A FlowRider is. Solara's surf simulator sits in the amenity area running 30 minute group sessions, with day passes, week passes and private bookings for parties of up to eight, and nothing else in this stretch of Kissimmee and Davenport has one. Children who are bored of yet another pool will find it a genuinely different afternoon, and it is the thing they talk about on the flight home.

Big-house territory is what Solara has become, and the building stock is the reason. Mattamy laid the place out for parties travelling together rather than for couples, so the streets carry an unusually high proportion of very large detached holiday homes, with double-height entrance halls, more than one living area and bedroom counts running well into the upper end of the Orlando market. Communities where the biggest house has five bedrooms cannot host a family reunion under one roof. Solara can, and that is the single reason most groups end up looking at it.

Private pools are the norm here rather than the exception, screened, and heated on request for a separate charge confirmed at the time of booking. Spas, games rooms and an in-house washer and dryer are all common on these streets without being universal, which is what happens in a community of individually owned homes rather than a hotel corridor. Confirm each of those against a specific address rather than taking them from a description of the resort.

Say plainly what is not here, because the community next door probably has it. No lazy river exists at Solara. None. Anyone whose picture of an Orlando resort involves floating round a circuit on a rubber ring should read that twice, and then decide whether the FlowRider is a fair swap. No golf course, no cinema room and no spa either.

Layout and address are straightforward. Kissimmee is the town, 1575 Carey Palm Circle, ZIP 34747, on a site of roughly 89 acres lying south of US-192, the West Irlo Bronson Memorial Highway, and reached via Westside Boulevard. Mattamy Homes built it, and the layout shows that: wide streets, generous plots and a single large amenity core rather than facilities scattered about. A manned grand entrance runs 24-hour security, and access to the whole 89 acre site is controlled there rather than street by street.

Mattamy Homes built Solara, and the developer's hand shows everywhere once you know to look for it. Wide streets, generous plots and a single large amenity core rather than facilities dotted about is a builder's decision made at the master-plan stage, and it is why the resort feels roomier than the tighter estates further along US-192. Detached houses on their own ground are the pattern here rather than terraces, and the largest of them are among the biggest holiday homes built anywhere in central Florida.

Modern Florida build takes some getting used to if your reference point is a British holiday cottage. Rooms are large, ceilings are high, floors are tiled through the living space rather than carpeted, and the whole house is designed around air conditioning rather than around opening a window. That last point catches British visitors out. Air conditioning here is not an optional luxury to be switched off to save money, it is what keeps the house dry as well as cool, and leaving it off for a day in August gives you damp air and condensation to come home to.

Layout follows a pattern you will recognise after one visit. Open-plan kitchen, dining and family space fills the back of the ground floor and opens through sliding doors onto a screened pool deck. A bedroom suite often sits downstairs, useful for grandparents or anyone who would rather not take stairs after a day on their feet, with the rest of the bedrooms above and frequently a second lounge or loft space up there as well. Big houses here tend to carry several en suites plus a pool bathroom, which is what stops a large party turning into a queue on the landing at seven in the morning.

Kit inside a Florida holiday home is a step up from a UK holiday let and it is worth listing plainly. Full-size American fridge freezer with an ice and water dispenser, dishwasher, waste disposal, cooker, microwave and a coffee maker are standard. A washer and dryer indoors is normal rather than a perk, and with a large party in the house for a fortnight it is infrastructure rather than a luxury. Every bedroom will have its own television more often than not, and cots and highchairs are usually available on request rather than supplied automatically, so ask.

Games rooms are close to a convention in this part of the market. Where one exists it is almost always the garage converted, air conditioned and fitted out with a pool table, air hockey or an arcade cabinet and a sofa, sitting off the front of the house and away from the main living space so that children can make a noise without ruining the evening for everyone else. Themed bedrooms are the other Florida speciality, usually a children's room done out around a film or a castle, and they are a genuine hit with under-tens and entirely absent from plenty of other houses on the same street.

Pool decks vary more than the houses do, and they are worth studying before booking. Larger homes generally carry a bigger deck to match, screened against insects, with a covered lanai at the house end for shade and open deck beyond it for sun. Which way the deck faces matters for a winter stay, because a south or west aspect keeps sun on the water for hours longer in December, and a north-facing deck under screen can sit in shadow most of the afternoon.

Standards vary house to house because these are individually owned properties rather than a hotel corridor, and that is the single most useful thing to hold in mind. Two homes with identical bedroom counts can differ in kitchen size, mattress quality and how many people the lounge actually seats at once. Look at the photographs of the specific property, count the seating as well as the beds, and ask whether the dining table takes the whole group in one sitting, because a house that sleeps twenty and seats ten for dinner is a house that eats in shifts.

Solara Grand Clubhouse is the centre of everything, at around 13,000 square feet and open roughly 8am to 8pm. Inside are a restaurant and cafe, a bar, a games room and arcade with a pool table, ping-pong and video games, a fitness centre, indoor and outdoor lounges, a sundries shop, a business centre and an activity room. There is also a dedicated teen hangout, which is a smarter piece of design than it sounds, because teenagers who have their own space stop occupying yours.

FlowRider is the standout facility and worth planning around. Sessions run 30 minutes in a group, with day passes and week passes sold, and private bookings available for up to eight people. First attempts end in the water for nearly everybody, which is most of the entertainment. Buy the week pass if anyone in the party takes to it, because they will want to go back every day and the single sessions add up.

Outdoor sport is unusually generous for a villa community. A full-size football pitch is the surprise, and it gets used properly by groups who bring a ball out. Alongside it are a basketball court, a sand volleyball court, tennis courts and an outdoor fitness lawn. Between them they cover the mornings when nobody can face driving to a park and the evenings when everyone needs to run something off before dinner.

Access to all of it is arranged through the management company and the homeowners association, so confirm at booking what your party receives on arrival, how many wristbands or passes are covered and whether the FlowRider carries its own charge. Hours on the clubhouse are roughly 8am to 8pm, which is worth remembering if you are used to resorts that stay open until ten.

Absent facilities need saying clearly, and one of them is the big one. No lazy river exists at Solara Resort, and no amount of listing-site copy changes that. No golf course belongs to the community, no cinema room is provided, and there is no spa. Central air conditioning, by contrast, is standard across Florida holiday homes and is not something to spend any time worrying about.

Private pools are the norm at Solara rather than the exception, and that is the first thing to settle in your head. Screened decks keep the insects out in the evening, most homes pair the pool with a covered lanai, and a spa or hot tub on the same deck is common without being guaranteed. Nobody here is queueing for a lounger at their own house.

Heating is optional and charged separately, with the amount confirmed at the time of booking rather than switched on as a matter of course. Book it for anything between roughly November and March, because an unheated Florida pool in January will be abandoned inside two minutes by anyone under sixteen, and allow the best part of a day for the water to come up to temperature after you arrive.

Communal water is built around a heated zero-entry lagoon pool that the resort calls the grand pool, with beach cabanas along the edge. Zero entry means it shelves in gradually like a beach rather than dropping off a step, which is the single most useful feature a resort pool can have if you have a toddler in the party. Cabanas are worth asking about in high summer, when shade at midday is a genuine commodity.

Children get their own splash park with water slides, mini slides, fountains and jets, kept separate from the main pool so the small ones are not competing with teenagers doing bombs. Bigger children and adults get the FlowRider instead of a lazy river, and it is worth repeating that Solara does not have one. That is the trade. A surf simulator you can actually learn on, in place of a circuit you float round.

Sun management is the part British visitors underestimate. Florida UV runs high from mid-morning through mid-afternoon, and the pool deck between eleven and three is somewhere to pass through rather than settle. Swim early, swim again after four, use the covered lanai in between, and treat the summer afternoon thunderstorms as a scheduled event rather than a surprise. They usually clear within the hour and they empty every pool on the resort while they last.

Kissimmee is the postal town, Osceola County the jurisdiction, and Orlando is neither. Whole-home holiday letting is a use the City of Orlando does not allow in its residential streets, while Osceola zoned land for it, which is why Mattamy built a resort of this size out here rather than closer to the city. That geography is why Animal Kingdom is 8.3 miles away rather than a great deal further.

Animal Kingdom is the standout number here at 8.3 miles and around 16 minutes free-flowing, which is close enough that going back to the house for the middle of the day is a realistic plan rather than a theory. Hollywood Studios is 12.1 miles and about 27 minutes, EPCOT 12.3 miles and around 23 minutes, and Magic Kingdom 14.3 miles and roughly 22 minutes to the car park. Distance and time do not always move together in Walt Disney World, because the internal roads and the car park trams take their share.

Shopping and dinner without a park ticket means Disney Springs, 14.6 miles and around 26 minutes. Universal Orlando is the longer haul at 22.0 miles and about 34 minutes, and SeaWorld sits at 18.8 miles and roughly 35 minutes. Plan Universal as a full day with an early start. Orlando International Airport is 29.5 miles and about 41 minutes, so give yourself proper margin on departure day rather than trusting the satnav estimate you get at eight in the morning.

Every one of those figures assumes a clear road, and I-4 at peak is emphatically not clear. Weekday congestion runs roughly 7am to 9:30am and again 4pm to 7pm, and inside those windows the drive to Universal can take half as long again. Leaving a park at closing time puts you in traffic with everybody else, so either go early and come home mid-afternoon or stay late and let the first wave clear.

Roads around Solara are worth learning on day one. US-192, the West Irlo Bronson Memorial Highway, runs along the north of the site and is the road for restaurants, shops and the eastern route towards I-4. Westside Boulevard is your access road down to the entrance. No official source publishes a single nearest I-4 exit for Solara, so treat both exit 64 for US-192 west and exit 58 at ChampionsGate Boulevard as practical approaches depending on which direction you are coming from.

Tolls are best dealt with at the hire desk. SR-429 and SR-417 both charge, several sections take no cash whatsoever, and the hire companies all sell a daily toll package that handles it automatically. Take it. Dodging gantries to save a few dollars is a poor use of a holiday, and unpaid toll administration fees turning up on your card six weeks later cost several times the tolls.

Solstice Bar and Grille is the poolside option and the one you will use most, sitting close enough to the water that lunch does not require getting dressed properly. A Tiki Bar covers drinks in the afternoon, and the clubhouse holds a restaurant and cafe for anything more substantial. An ice cream and gelato parlour completes the set, and it is the reason a lot of Solara evenings end with a walk to the clubhouse rather than a drive anywhere.

Having four separate places to eat and drink inside the gates puts Solara well ahead of most villa communities, where a single seasonal bar and grill is the norm. It does not replace a fortnight of dinners, but it does cover the arrival evening when nobody wants to find a supermarket, the day it rains, and the afternoon everyone is too tired to move the car.

Your weekly shop happens at Publix for most British families. Prices run above Walmart, the stores are calmer, the deli counter builds subs to order and produces the cheapest decent lunch in the area, and the buy-one-get-one offers are worth reading rather than ignoring. Walmart and Target handle bulk water, beach towels, a cool box and anything you would rather not pack from home.

Self-catering is the quiet economic case for taking one of the very large houses. Breakfast at home for 20 people costs a fraction of any restaurant, sandwiches made in your own kitchen and carried into a park in a cool bag save a startling amount across a fortnight, and cooking three nights a week stops the eating-out budget running away. Large groups here almost always settle into a rhythm of cooking in and going out on alternate days.

Tax and tipping are the two things that make American bills bigger than they look. Florida sales tax is added at the checkout rather than shown on the shelf, so the label price is never the price you pay. Table service expects 18 to 20 per cent, and many restaurants add a service charge automatically for parties above six or eight, which is exactly the size most groups here are. Read the bottom of the bill before you leave anything extra.

Large groups are the obvious answer. Very big detached houses are a genuine speciality of this resort, so a party that most communities would have to split across two villas on different streets can stay under one roof. Three families travelling together, a wedding party, a milestone birthday or an extended family reunion all work here in a way they simply do not at addresses where five bedrooms is the ceiling.

Teenagers do better at Solara than at almost any community in the area. FlowRider gives them something to master rather than something to sit beside, the teen hangout in the clubhouse gives them somewhere to be that is not the family lounge, and a full-size football pitch, a basketball court and sand volleyball fill the rest. Fourteen year olds who are bored of swimming pools by the middle of the second week are the exact audience.

Families with young children are well served too, with a separate splash park of slides, fountains and jets and a zero-entry lagoon pool that shelves in like a beach. Animal Kingdom at 8.3 miles and around 16 minutes makes a genuine afternoon nap at home realistic, which in July is worth more than any facility on the site.

Anyone whose heart is set on a lazy river should book elsewhere, and it is better said now than discovered on the first morning. Solara has no lazy river at all. Golfers also need a different base, because there is no course inside the gates and no golf package attached to the community.

Couples and pairs will find the economics wrong. Small houses are scarce at Solara, so a party of two or three ends up paying to heat and clean bedrooms nobody will enter, and there are communities built around three and four bedroom homes that will cost far less. Anyone planning to travel without a hire car should reconsider as well, since there is no theme park shuttle and nothing is walkable from the entrance.

Arrival admin starts at the manned grand entrance, where 24-hour security controls access to the whole site. Give your management company the names and vehicle details in advance so the gate has you listed, and keep the property address and booking reference on your phone rather than in an email you cannot open on landing day. Ask how many vehicles the house permits and where any additional car should stand, because with a party of 20 you may well have two.

Pool heating is an optional extra rather than an inclusion, charged separately, with the amount confirmed at the time of booking. Nobody switches it on for you automatically. Order it for travel between roughly November and March, and give the water most of a day to come up to temperature rather than expecting it to be warm within an hour of collecting the keys.

Occupancy is the rule to respect in a community with this many very large houses. Sleeps figures are stated maximums, not suggestions, and management companies and the association take them seriously. Declare your real numbers including infants when you book, because turning up with more people than the house is registered for is the fastest way to sour a holiday.

Hurricane season runs 1 June to 30 November, with the peak activity in August, September and October. Most trips in those months pass with nothing worse than daily afternoon thunderstorms, which usually clear inside an hour, but hold travel insurance that covers weather disruption and watch the forecast in the week before you fly. Summer heat and humidity in this part of Florida are serious rather than pleasant, so plan the parks for early morning and late evening.

Paperwork is simple if you handle it early. British passport holders need an approved ESTA before departure, a full UK photocard licence is accepted for car hire without an international permit, and travel insurance valid in the United States is genuinely essential given American medical costs. Use a credit card rather than a debit card for the hire deposit, because the hold is substantial and it can sit on your account for several days after you get home.