Our home away from home

The GKTW villas are each unique. We really enjoyed our time in this cute cottage home and talked about retiring to a place like this. The villa is built like a duplex, two "homes" connected into one building. What is deceiving about our villa is that both the front windows you see in the above picture belong to the left side (we are the right side). When you walk into our living room, there is no front window to the left. However, there is a couch that folds out into a bed. The girls enjoyed movies on the pull out sofa complete with popcorn! The picture below is taken from the breakfast room, looking toward the front door.

We think that the villa is actually split almost on a diagonal, because our bedrooms are on the backside, and they run across the full length of the back of the villa. When we were first driven to our villa, they put our name on the bunny sign so that each day we were welcomed "home" (and to help us remember where we live!). You can see our wonderful front porch that was great for reading in the evenings (when the mosquitos weren't biting). All of the areas on campus were non-smoking except for the villa porches.

There is a main living room, kitchenette (fully stocked) and breakfast area. When we arrived, they had some drinks, milk and donuts in the refrigerator to "get us started". In this picture you can see our backdoor. This leads directly to the pool! Unfortunately, the girls only got to swim once. We were too busy!

There are 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Remember, this place was built for the kids. The LARGE bedroom is decorated for the kids with 2 twin beds, and the HUGE bathroom is wheelchair accessible with a large shower, jacuzzi bathtub and double sinks.

Mom and Dad's bedroom is a nice size complete with a king size bed (yea!), and we have a great tv cabinet with tv (and cable, yea HGTV!). Our bathroom however, was tiny! Single sink, and you have to get in and close the door to use the shower. We usually went to the girls bathroom and it wasn't a problem for the 4 of us to share that one bathroom (see below this wonderful room). What I loved most, and have always wanted in my own home, is a square master bath. I don't like the narrow feel of a rectangle shaped bathroom.

We also had a stackable washer and dryer stocked with detergent and dryer sheets. They do not provide maid service, so we washed our towels each day before heading to the parks so they would be nice and dry when we got home. That is all the work we had to do. When we check out, Disney will allow housekeeping to take all the linens to their facility and wash them (if I am remembering correctly).

Each night when we would return to the campus, we had to come in through the entry gates. We would show our parking card, and they would always say "Welcome Home" as we were allowed through. They really make this a warm experience and they do all they can to help you "forget" that your child is sick while you are here.

We took some pictures of other villas (see photos on the right). While they are each unique in design, there are 2 or 3 of each design throughout the campus. I believe right now there are about 95 villas, but they are in the process of clearing land to add more. About 6 months before we arrived, they were at 80% capacity. When we were checking in, we found out that they were at 110% capacity, and some families had to stay at a nearby hotel. We were very happy to be able to stay on the campus.