Family Villa Holiday in Orlando

It's been over 25 years since I was last over in Florida so was really excited to see how much had changed over this time... In reality not much, they still have plenty of my favorutie restaurants and shopping malls that I remember visiting as a kid! As a family of 6 with 4 of them being children ageing from 4 to 16, getting hotel accommodation for us all can be tricky. More often than not we have a boys and a girls room, fair to say one tidier than the other! This time around we decided to opt for a private villa and I guess there is no better place than Orlando for choice. However, I have never fancied driving abroad so when the opportunity came up to stay at a brand new complex located just off International Drive in Orlando it was a no brainer. No car needed, bonus! The Villatel Orlando Resort offers 2 bed condos all the way up to a 10 bed villa. Before we travelled I was aware that the complex was not fully ready yet with its resort facilities such as waterpark and restaurants. These will all be ready for 2025 and will be a great addition to the resort. We opted to book a 6 bed villa that came with a large private pool, games room, cinema room and a kids themed room which was a wow moment for our youngest. One of the key selling points to these new villas are the themed bedrooms for the kids, some complete with slides! Location was absolutely perfect. A short 5 minute walk and we were on International Drive, which if you don't know Orlando is where all the action is. I would recommend purchasing an I Drive bus pass which allows you unlimited travel up and down International Drive. This is valuable as you can visit the shopping malls and restaurants with ease. With us having no car it meant no trips to the supermarkets. We used the numerous apps available to order in the shopping and did this every couple of days with ease. We decided it would be best for us a family to focus on the Universal Parks so we purchased the 3 Park Universal Pass which gave us 14 days unlimited use of Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure and the amazing Volcano Bay Waterpark. The resort complex offered complimentary shuttle transportation should we want it throughout the day which was a bonus. However, with the ease and simplicity of Uber we just used them to travel to and from the parks. With the dedicated drop and pick off points at the Universal Parks it was all too easy. With the 2 girls liking Disney we decided that Mum and the girls would visit Mickey's not so scary Halloween Party at Magic Kingdom. Yes in August! They arrived at the park around teatime and stayed until just before midnight taking in the great fireworks show that is associated with Magic Kingdom. Staying in a villa gives you great flexibility as visiting the parks, especially with kids, can be tiring. So to have that downtime where they could relax and enjoy the benefits that came with the villa meant it was a great choice for us. Problem is they now want a cinema room at home!