Yup! We sure did! Before I start, just a disclaimer, I was not an English major so I have no doubt there will be errors in all of my writing I get excited and just word vomit so bare with me. OK LET’S TALK ABOUT THIS!
What Made Us Want To Move To Florida?
So we packed up in June, right after my last recital as studio owner and headed south. But how did we get to this point? Good question. Well, after owning the studio for 14 years and going through a lot of tough things the last half of that I was left a little broken. I was having some health issues that were very frustrating and overall our family was just not happy and thriving the way we wanted to be. We needed a change, we needed to create a life that was what we wanted life to be. Easier said than done for sure!
We started dreaming about what kind of life we wanted and what was truly important to all 4 of us. At the center of that was our happy place, Disney World. That may sound very cheesy but if you’re here you know the magic I speak of! Is that the only reason we moved here, absolutely not! But it’s where it started.
Finding The Right Place
“It would be so cool to live right next to Disney, wouldn’t it?!” This was a question brought up by all 4 of us at some point in this process of creating our dream life. We started looking into it more seriously and logically, what would that look like? Where is there to live around there? Does it all look like Kissimmee?! We knew we wanted good schools for our kids, a great community with lots going on, to feel safe where we would be living, and to not feel like we lived in the middle of a tourist trap! Totally thought that was impossible! It wasn’t!! We started watching some youtube channels, listening to podcasts and reading blogs about moving to Disney, living in Disney and so on. I’ll list some of our favorites at the end of this post so you can go check those our too, they are all amazing and helped us so much!
Then we found it! Winter Garden, Florida, a charming little city with a juicy past!! Their other slogan is a cute little drinking town with a biking problem! Hahahaha! It truly is the most charming town, most welcoming community and is incredibly magical all on it’s own! I always tell people, if you’ve ever watched Gilmore Girls, the downtown has a major Stars Hollow vibe!
Was It Really The Perfect Place?
So we fell in love with Winter Garden and decided that was the place! We came on some weekend trips that we either only did one Disney park for one day or we didn’t do one at all so we could do more “local” things and experience life outside the bubble. Our first trip I was completely prepared for disappointment, there was no way this place could live up to what I had built it up to be in my head! Boy was I wrong! It surpassed what I was expecting and stole my heart, along with the boys and my husbands!
We all had our favorite places we couldn’t wait to get back to, everyone was excited so now we had to get down to business! There were a lot of moving parts to moving from NC to FL.
So What Came Next?
We had to find a buyer for the studio, a place to rent to live, I had to find a studio to teach with. We didn’t think my husband would need to find a job because he worked remotely already BUT a wrench got thrown into that plan right before we moved! The contract he was working was no more, so add to that list him finding work to support our family! Thankfully the job market down here is great and he was able to secure a great job but man that was stressful!
We purged a TON of our stuff before moving, I can’t stress this enough, GET RID OF STUFF! It was super helpful in moving and I wish we had purged more! We left our house in NC in January of 2022 and put 75% of our belongings in storage so we could move into a 2 bedroom apartment for 6 months before the move. My husband and I came down in April to secure a rental. SUCCESS! And we got to be in Hollywood Studios for our friends marriage proposal too, it was incredibly magical!
Finding a rental was it’s own adventure but that’s enough for it’s own post. Then Memorial Day weekend we came with the boys and tow behind trailer to bring down a load of stuff from storage, set all of that stuff up and spent the first night in our Florda home! That night is when we realized we could hear the fireworks!!!! Was it bass from someones music? Was it thunder? NOPE! It’s Magic Kingdom fireworks!!!!!
Conclusion
Well that’s enough for now, I told you I word vomit once I get going! I’ll pick up next week on how the big move went and all the things we learned along the way! Here are a list of what got us through years and months of wishing we lived in Disney, have a magical day!!
Podcasts & Blogs
WDW Radio (search moving to Disney, I could recite both episodes I listened to them so much!)
The Castle Run (her story is amazing and so inspirational)
WDW Travels (They have all the best guides and tips)
YouTube Channels
Worth Melting For (they have a whole series on their move to Florida and it helped us so much! They also have a podcast!)
Paging Mr Morrow (the best Disney YouTube channel out there!)
WDW Couple (they have a podcast as well I think, their channel is full of great content)
Resort TV1 (their Friday night lives on YouTube helped us through a lot of down times)
Victor Nawroki, Disney at your Doorstep (he is a local realtor and Disney fan and is such a great guy in person!!)
Super Enthused (fun Disney and Universal content)
Winter Garden Heritage Foundation (live stream of Plant Street which is downtown Winter Garden, we used to turn it on and pretend it was our window)