Windsor Hills

Nothing in the Orlando villa market puts you closer to Walt Disney World. Animal Kingdom sits 1.9 miles from your gate, about five minutes with the windows down. Hollywood Studios is 5.4, EPCOT 5.6, Magic Kingdom 7.6 and call that ten minutes. Disney Springs, 7.9.

Read those numbers again, because they quietly change the shape of your fortnight. The afternoon swim between parks stops being a nice idea you never get round to and becomes simply what you do: back through the gate by two, children asleep or in the pool, you in the shade with a cold drink, and everyone showered and out again in time for the fireworks. Families who stay further out come home talking about the drive. Families who stay here come home talking about the holiday.

Getting anywhere else is just as easy. Turn left out of the gate onto CR-545, right onto US-192, and you are three miles from I-4 at exit 64, with the whole of central Florida open in front of you and none of the US-27 corridor traffic that Davenport has to sit in twice a day.

Security here is properly resourced. A gatehouse is manned by resort staff 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, owners register their guests with that gatehouse before arrival, visitors need a valid driving licence on first entry, and printed Resort Passes are issued for entry and exit. Anyone who has spent a week on an open street wondering about the car that keeps circling will understand why families come back to Windsor Hills specifically for this.

Property types are mixed here, which is unusual for a Kissimmee resort of this profile. Detached houses with screened pool decks sit alongside townhouses and condominium buildings, so the streets change character as you drive through and the entry price into the community is lower than at the big group resorts out on US-27. Water of your own is therefore not a given, and that is the single most important thing to check against a specific address rather than against the community brochure.

Amenities are complimentary and that keeps the sums simple. Free wristbands are issued at the Welcome Center for the whole group, covering the pools, the water park, the gym, the games room and the cinema for the length of the stay. There is no lazy river here and no wave pool, no golf course, no spa and no tiki bar, and it is better to set that out at the top than let anyone arrive expecting otherwise.

Three kinds of home sit inside this gate, and knowing which one you are looking at matters more here than at most Orlando resorts. Detached houses with their own screened pool deck are the classic villa product. Townhouses share walls with their neighbours and generally use the resort water rather than having a pool of their own. Condominiums are apartment-style units without a pool deck at all. All three carry the same free wristbands and the same access to the water park, the gym, the games room and the cinema, and they cost very different amounts.

Detached houses follow the Florida pattern. An open kitchen, dining and living space runs across the back and opens onto the pool deck through sliding doors, a bedroom suite usually sits on the ground floor for anyone who does not want stairs, and the remaining bedrooms are upstairs. Decks are screened against insects with a covered lanai at the house end. Bathroom counts rise with bedroom counts, which matters more on a park morning than anything else in the specification.

Townhouses and condominiums are the reason Windsor Hills stays reachable for smaller parties. A family of four, or a couple travelling with grandparents, gets a proper kitchen, a lounge and two or three bedrooms without paying for a nine-bedroom house and a deck the size of a tennis court. The trade is that the swimming happens at the resort lagoon rather than through your own patio doors, which is a smaller sacrifice here than elsewhere, because that lagoon is heated all year and open until ten at night.

Games rooms turn up in a good share of the detached homes, normally a converted garage with a pool table, air hockey or an arcade cabinet. They are far less common in the townhouses and condominiums, where there is no garage to convert in the first place. Ask what is actually in the room rather than trusting the label, since the word covers everything from a full arcade to a dartboard on a wall.

Kit is where a Florida home differs from a UK holiday let. Air conditioning runs throughout rather than in one room, kitchens are full size with an American fridge freezer and a dishwasher, and a washer and dryer inside the property is common across the resort. Screened lanais on the detached houses keep the insects out at dusk, which is the difference between sitting outside in the evening and retreating indoors at seven.

Your first stop on arrival is the Welcome Center, where free wristbands are issued for everyone in your group. Those wristbands cover the resort facilities for the whole stay at no extra charge, which removes one of the more irritating conversations that some Orlando resorts insist on having at a desk. Opening runs 8am to 10pm.

Inside the same building sits a 48-seat high-definition movie theatre, and it is a proper screening room rather than a television in a lounge. Family films on a wet afternoon or an evening when everyone is too tired for another park is exactly what it is for, and it costs nothing. A games room with classic arcade machines sits alongside it, and the fitness centre runs 6:30am to 10pm, which is early enough to be useful while your body clock is still on UK time.

Windsor Hills Marketplace and Grille handles food and sundries in one place, open 10am to 8pm. It works as a market and shop for milk, bread, sun cream and the things that always run out, and as a grill for lunch by the pool or an early dinner. Closing at 8pm is worth noting. A late meal after a park close will be happening at home or off site.

Outdoor space beyond the water covers a Sports Park with basketball courts, three separate playgrounds fitted with slides, tunnels and a giant chess set, and a picnic area. Three playgrounds across one resort is generous, and it means younger children are rarely queuing for a swing. Tennis and volleyball are not on the official amenities list here, so do not plan a week around either.

Charging is refreshingly simple by Orlando standards. All resort amenities are complimentary to guests and wristbands are issued free at the Welcome Center, so there is no separate amenity fee, no daily resort charge to argue about and no wristband to buy. What you pay for the villa, plus any pool heating on the properties that offer it, is what the holiday costs.

Sir Windsor's AquaVenture Water Park is the headline water here, and it is built around slides rather than a river. Two large duelling slides run side by side, which turns every descent into a race and occupies older children for hours, and two smaller slides handle the age group not yet ready for the big pair. A giant splash pad completes it for toddlers. Opening runs 10am to 8pm.

Be clear about what is not here, because neighbouring resorts do have it. There is no lazy river at Windsor Hills and no wave pool. Anyone whose picture of a Florida holiday involves floating a slow circuit with a drink in hand should be looking at a community that actually has one. What you get here is slides, a splash pad and a very good main pool, traded against being closer to Disney than almost anywhere else in the villa market.

Main pool is a zero-entry heated lagoon of 140,000 gallons with a large hot tub and a sandy beach area, open 8am to 10pm. Heated year round is the phrase that matters, because it means the communal water is swimmable in January regardless of what your individual villa offers. Zero entry lets small children walk in from a dry surface at their own pace, and a sandy beach area gives parents somewhere to sit within arm's reach.

Your own pool is not a given at this address, and that is the thing to check first. Detached houses here typically have one, screened with a covered lanai, and pool heating on them is a separately charged extra arranged before travel rather than an inclusion. Townhouses and condominiums generally have no pool deck at all and use the resort water instead. Given that the main lagoon pool is heated all year and open until 10pm, that is a far less painful compromise here than it would be in a community with a cold communal pool, but it needs saying out loud before you book.

Hot tubs turn up on a lot of the private decks, and on a January evening after a cool park day that is the water everyone actually gets into. Heating arrangements on a hot tub are not always the same as on the pool, so confirm both for the specific property rather than assuming they come as a pair.

Kissimmee, Osceola County, is the address rather than Orlando, and being outside the city is precisely why this community exists at all. Letting entire homes by the week is not permitted in Orlando's residential neighbourhoods, while Osceola County zoned for holiday housing, so the resorts were built along the Disney side of the line. Nothing gets you closer to Walt Disney World than being here, because the parks sit in Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista rather than in the city.

Old Lake Wilson Road, signed as CR-545, carries the entrance at number 2600 in Kissimmee. Turning left out of the gate onto CR-545 and then right onto US-192 east brings you to I-4 at exit 64 in roughly three miles, which is the route most guests use for anything east of Disney.

Animal Kingdom at 1.9 miles and about 5 minutes is the number that sells this community, and no other villa resort in the area comes near it. Hollywood Studios is 5.4 miles and 15 minutes, EPCOT 5.6 miles and 11 minutes, Magic Kingdom 7.6 miles and 10 minutes, and Disney Springs 7.9 miles and 15 minutes. Every Disney gate is inside a quarter of an hour in normal traffic.

Wider Orlando is straightforward too. Universal is 15.3 miles and about 22 minutes, SeaWorld 12.1 miles and 23 minutes, and Orlando International Airport 22.8 miles and roughly 29 minutes. Arrival day from the airport is comfortably under half an hour on clear roads, which after a nine-hour flight with children is worth a great deal more than it looks on paper.

All of those times come from a routing engine with free-flowing traffic, and Florida traffic is not always free-flowing. I-4 peaks run roughly 7am to 9:30am and again 4pm to 7pm on weekdays, and park closing loads every road out of Walt Disney World at once. Being this close means the damage is limited. A journey that should take 10 minutes might take 20, rather than a 40 minute run becoming an hour and a half.

Hire a car regardless. There is no theme park shuttle from Windsor Hills and no dependable public transport to any gate, so a vehicle collected at Orlando International is the practical answer for almost everyone. Toll roads including SR-417, SR-429 and the SR-528 Beachline all charge and some sections take no cash, so accept the hire company toll package at the desk for a few dollars a day rather than trying to work out each gantry as you reach it.

Windsor Hills Marketplace and Grille covers both jobs on site, running 10am to 8pm as a market and sundry shop with a grill attached. Lunch by the pool without getting into the car is what most guests use it for, along with the emergency pint of milk and the sun cream that ran out on day four. Prices reflect convenience rather than a supermarket, and nobody should plan the weekly shop around it.

Your proper food shop belongs on arrival day, before you reach the villa if you can manage it. Publix is where most UK families settle, and the deli counter making subs to order is about the cheapest decent lunch available anywhere near the parks. Larger supermarkets and big-box stores in the Kissimmee area handle bulk buying, beach towels, a cool box and pool floats without tourist-strip pricing.

US-192 runs a short distance from the gate via CR-545 and carries the full range of American chain restaurants, from steakhouses to pancake houses to buffets built for families. Weekends fill up. A phone call before you set off saves an hour of standing in a lobby with tired children, and most places take a booking happily.

Disney Springs sits at 7.9 miles and around 15 minutes, needs no park ticket and covers restaurants, shops, a cinema and live music in one place. Being this close means you can go for a couple of hours rather than committing an entire evening, which is a genuine advantage over communities twice the distance out.

Cooking at home is where a villa pays for itself against hotel rooms, and a washer and dryer to go with the kitchen is common across the resort. Remember two things about eating out in Florida. Sales tax is added to the menu price rather than included, and table service expects a tip of 18 to 20 per cent, so the bill lands noticeably above the printed total. Build that into the budget and nobody has an awkward moment on the last night.

Families with very young children get more from this location than from almost anywhere else in the villa market. Being 1.9 miles from Animal Kingdom and 7.6 from Magic Kingdom means a toddler who has run out of patience at noon is asleep in a proper bed by half past twelve, and the whole party can be back at a park gate by four. Afternoon naps are the difference between a good fortnight and an exhausting one in July.

Smaller groups are the natural fit here. A mix of condominiums, townhouses and modest detached houses suits one family, or two families with a couple of children each, or grandparents travelling with a son or daughter's family. Anyone booking for sixteen or twenty people should look at one of the big-group resorts out on the US-27 corridor instead.

Security-minded travellers will value the gatehouse specifically. Manned 24 hours a day and 365 days a year, with guests registered in advance, a driving licence needed on first entry and printed Resort Passes for coming and going, it is one of the more thorough set-ups in the Kissimmee villa market. Every home in the resort sits inside it.

Anyone whose holiday is built around a lazy river should book elsewhere. Sir Windsor's AquaVenture Water Park delivers duelling slides, smaller slides and a giant splash pad, which is a strong offer, but there is no lazy river and no wave pool at Windsor Hills. There is also no golf, no spa and no tiki bar.

Winter visitors who insist on a heated private pool should check the specific property early. A private pool is not universal at this address and heating is a paid option rather than an inclusion, so the choice narrows fast for a January or February booking. Say it at the enquiry stage rather than discovering it on the first cold morning. The heated 140,000 gallon lagoon pool stays swimmable all year and closes at 10pm, which softens the compromise considerably for anyone flexible on the point.

Check the individual property before anything else, because the community brochure describes facilities that not every home inside the gate shares. A private pool, pool heating, a games room and a hot tub are all things some homes here have and others do not, and the townhouses and condominiums use the resort water rather than having a deck of their own. None of that makes them poor properties, and all of it needs confirming in writing before you pay a balance.

Quiet hours are designated 11pm to 7am and they are taken seriously. Excessive noise is reportable to the Osceola County Sheriff's Office, which is a stronger enforcement route than an email to a management company on a Monday morning. Read it as reassurance if you are travelling with small children who need to sleep, and as a warning if your group intends to be on the pool deck at midnight.

Gate procedure catches first-timers out. Owners register their guests with the gatehouse before arrival, visitors need a valid driving licence on first entry, and printed Resort Passes are issued for entry and exit, so keep them in the car rather than in a suitcase. Get the flight and vehicle details to the management company early so the registration is done before you land.

Pool heating is a separate charge on the properties that offer it, and it needs arranging in advance rather than on arrival, since water takes time to reach temperature. Winter travellers should treat it as part of the cost of the holiday rather than an upgrade to consider later.

Paperwork and cover deserve an evening of attention months before you fly. British passport holders need an approved ESTA, a full UK photocard licence is accepted for car hire without an international permit, and a credit card rather than a debit card makes the hire deposit hold far less painful. Travel insurance valid in the United States is essential given what American healthcare charges for a single night. Hurricane season runs 1 June to 30 November with the sharpest risk in August, September and October, so buy proper cover rather than writing those months off, and watch the forecast in the fortnight before you travel.