Mickey Mouse is My Neighbor: Living Next Door to Disney World in Celebration, Florida

Mickey Mouse is My Neighbor: Living Next Door to Disney World in Celebration, Florida

by Barbara Nefer

Smashwords Edition

Introduction • Index

Copyright 2013 by LifeSkills Press

All Rights Reserved

Please submit corrections, additions or comments to lifeskills@gmail.com

Introduction, or How My Blog Helped Me Keep My Sanity

Once upon a time, the Walt Disney Company decided to use some of its land to create a town at the intersection of I-4, the 417 tollway, and 192. They named the town Celebration, and people were so excited by the prospect of living in a place conceived of and created by the Mouse that they entered a lottery just to get a chance to buy one of the houses.

I lived in Chicago at the time. I was born and bred on the city's South Side, but my husband and I were spending more and more time in Florida. Disney World was becoming as familiar to us as Six Flags Great America, our local amusement park. We had a hazy eventual plan to move to Orlando, but we figured that was at least 10 years in the future. Meanwhile, I happily shopped at da Jewels, hung out in my frunchroom, watched da Bears get their butts whipped every weekend during football season, and occasionally thought that it might be nice not to freeze and shovel mountains of snow every winter,

I heard about Celebration, like every other Disney fan in the world, but mentally wrote it off as too expensive. Then I read articles about its glitches, growing pains, and scandals, from the strange school concept, with its lack of assignments and grades, that wasn't working out so well to serious construction problems with some of the buildings.

We never drove when we visited Disney World, so I had no real concept of where Celebration was located. Then, in October of 2002, I went to the Swan and Dolphin Hotels near Epcot for work-related training. I stayed off-site at the Marriott World Center Resort, which meant I had to rent a car. My husband insisted on joining me so he could play in the parks while I slaved away over a hot computer. On our last day in Orlando, we went to visit the Disney Cruise Line office in Celebration, since we were Disney Cruise fanatics. We had a little time before our flight, so we drove through the town of Celebration on a lark.

I don't know whether Disney was pumping pixie dust into the air or what, but I turned to my husband and said, Let's move here. Now.

His response: Okay.

We discovered that the prices weren't nearly as bad as we imagined, as this was back in those blissful days before the real estate bubble burst. We signed the contract on a modest little triplex unit in January of 2003. At the time it was just a chunk of flat land, but by August we were closing on our brand spanking new Celebration home. Problem is, we couldn't actually move there yet. A little thing called work got in the way, since jobs were scarce in Florida, even back then.

It was nearly a year and a half before we could pack up the cats, bird, and fish into my trusty Aztek, nicknamed Canyonero, and head down south for good. In the meantime, I needed a way to stay sane while longing to be in Florida. I stared a blog in May, 2004, and continued it for several years, even after we made the move in January, 2005. In that time, Disney sold the downtown and the real estate bubble didn't just burst. It exploded in a nuclear blast. Many other things changed, too, but my love for Celebration remained the same.

In this book, I share some of my favorite blog entries about life in Celebration as written during my first two years in town. This book contains selected entries, but the original blog in its entirety can be found at celebrationfl.blogspot.com

As you read this book, you'll travel back in time with me. You'll learn that sometimes the most frustrating events in life have a purpose and see how one such event led me to my dream home next door to Walt Disney World. You'll vicariously pile into Canyonero for the long drive to Celebration with a veritable zoo of pets. You'll meet Skippy, the derelict car who became a town mascot, and members of the Mickey Mommas and its spin-off group, the Bunny Brigade. Accompany them on adventures like stalking the Davy Jones and visiting a nudist colony. You'll learn how tragedies like the New Orleans hurricane devastation sometimes lead to miracles like a dream wedding that was literally tossed together within 48 hours. Most of all, you'll get a genuine flavor of what it was like to live in Celebration in its earlier days by someone who moved there to make it her home town, not just to write about it and move on.

If you're a Disney fan, if you've ever dreamed of living in the town that Disney built, or if you just happened on this book by accident, I hope it will give you a chuckle or two as I share what it's like to live in Duloc, the perfect place.

May 31, 2004: Welcome to Celebration, Florida

Welcome to Celebration, Florida, where residents get free passes to Disney World but have to surrender their homes in 30 years. But it always looks homey, thanks to the Disney employees who are paid to walk dogs and the gestapo committee that enforces thousands of rules and regulations. It's such a lovely place that The Truman Show was filmed here, although the biggest movie comparison is usually The Stepford Wives.

Not really!!

Sadly, those silly ideas often pass as the truth about Celebration. All myths spring from a kernel of truth, and those legends are no exception. Celebration was indeed started by Disney, in the form of The Celebration Company (TCC), on former alligator-ridden swampland. Once upon a time, this land was owned by the Mouse, and gators were located here when they grew too large to live in the more populous sections of the Disney World resort.

Other than that, the rest is distortions and misconceptions. They continue to be believed, despite the fact that control of the town is in the final stages of being turned over to the residents. Disney recently sold the downtown area, which consists of stores and apartments that are being converted to condominiums, although it still owns many land parcels that TCC is marketing for commercial development. Awhile back, it sold the local golf course to a private consortium.

I hope to dispel many of the myths with my blog. Some books have been written about our fair little town, but they tend to be slanted to serve the authors' preconceived ideas. It's hard to give a lot of credibility to someone who moved to the town solely for the purpose of writing about it, and promptly flees. In these books, the authors claim to be impartial, but methinks they doth protests too much.

If you ever visit Celebration, rest assured that the people you see walking their dogs are real, genuine, living, breathing, non-robotic Celebration residents. If you accidentally step in a dog poop pile, you'll believe me.

The 30 year myth comes from confusion with the Disney Vacation Club (DVC), which is a vacation ownership plan (i.e. timeshare) with a fixed ownership period. Those of us who live in Celebration own our homes and the land they sit on. There isn't even a DVC resort located in Celebration.

I wish that the free Disney passes myth was true, but alas, we Celebration residents must pony up the cash just like everyone else. Thankfully, we at least get Florida resident rates, but those are the same for everyone who lives in our sunny southern state. Even though we pay for the privilege, it's wonderful to live so close to Disney World. You can decide on the spur of the moment to have dinner somewhere around the world in Epcot, run over to Typhoon Lagoon to enjoy the last couple of uncrowded hours, or catch Illuminations or Fantasmic. Even when you're not in the parks, you still hear the distance echo of the fireworks each evening.

Celebration does have covenants that fill an intimidating binder, but they're no more restrictive than those in similar planned community. They cover common sense items, like not parking an excessive number of cars or huge vehicles like campers on the street for inordinate lengths of time or keeping your house in decent shape, with no junk littering your yard. They're also aimed at preventing the transient atmosphere so common in other subdivisions by restricting leases to certain terms and preventing short term rentals.

The covenants are meant primarily to protect property values. You can review them in full before you make a decision to move into Celebration. If you're not comfortable with the restrictions, you can always buy a home in a community that is more compatible with your tastes.

The Truman Show was filmed in Florida, but in a town called Seaside that is quite a distance away from Celebration, and quite different in character. It is an expensive resort town, and most of its residents are seasonal. While Celebration has snowbirds, the majority of people are around for most of the year.

As for the frequent Stepford Wife comparison, one look at my house and you'll know that's not true! Celebration is made up of an eclectic mix of people. It's probably one of the friendliest towns you could ever move into. In Chicago, we lived in the same condo building for almost a decade, but we got to know our Celebration neighbors more quickly in a few weeks than we ever got to know people we literally lived on top of for years. It still amazes me that we lucked into choosing the perfect spot in Celebration. I'll share that story later in this blog.

June 1, 2004: A Spontaneous Decision

Celebration is a town like any other, not the magical, mythical place of popular lore, but there must be a bit of magic somewhere. How else can you explain the number of people who make a spontaneous decision to move here? Some literally give up their jobs, pack up their families, and move in with nothing more than what they can cram into a moving van. I would have happily been among them, but for financial reasons, my husband and I had to take it a bit more slowly.

We didn't take the plunge until 2003, but Celebration has actually been around since 1994, albeit as a barren patch of ground with a sales trailer and the Ghost of Towns Yet to Come looming over it. I won't go into all the hoopla surrounding the initial sales kick-off and the lottery for the very first homes. There's been enough written about that already. Although it has reached mythic proportions, it has since been overshadowed by the kick-off of other, similar developments.

I'd heard about Celebration for years, and somehow the idea of living there always appealed to me, even sight unseen. Of course, both my husband and I are major Disney fans. We progressed from visiting Disney World once or twice a year early in our marriage to buying annual passes and flying out to Florida as often as possible.

When Disney Cruise Line was launched in 1998, we altered our passion slightly and became frequent cruisers, sailing half a dozen times a year or more. Our park visits dropped off as the cost-cutting measures began to noticeably rise at Disney World. Fortunately, the cruise line kept up the quality.

Even though we'd visited Kissimmee dozens of times, we'd never made it over to Celebration. I don't like to drive when I'm on vacation, so we always took a towncar or shuttle to our hotel. We stayed on Disney property and relied on their internal transportation system to hop around to the various parks. For our cruises, we took a bus or towncar to and from Port Canaveral, and we took the Mears shuttle for visits to Universal Studio and Islands of Adventure.

Since we were spending so much time in Florida, we often discussed the possibility of moving there for good. I'm a wimp when it comes to heat, but my husband likes it hot and muggy. For him, the steamier the better. Each time we flew out for another visit, I'd watch as the shuttle headed down I-4 or 417 and the neighborhoods zoomed by. I saw stucco-sided condos and rows of cookie cutter houses with pools and Florida rooms. I wondered if one of those neighborhoods would be our future home, and I dared to dream of a quaint little screened-in room with a swimming pool and a lush garden. But I always thought that the dream would be many years distant.

On one of our Disney cruises in late 2000 or early 2001, I chatted with a woman who lived in Celebration while we were both relaxing in the Tropical Rainforest sauna room. I told her I'd often dreamed of living there, but I was sure that it was far too expensive. She said, Oh, no, the prices are quite reasonable!

I guess we all have different ideas of reasonable, but since she didn't define the word, I thought that maybe my impression was wrong. Who knows, maybe Celebration was at least somewhat affordable. She regaled me with stories of relaxing downtown by the lake in a rocking chair or enjoying the community pools on a hot summer day. I filed all this information somewhere in the back of my mind. It wasn't a priority, but I knew that someday my husband and I would scope out the Disney Town.

As luck would have it, in October of 2002 my employer sent me to a conference held Disney World, in the Swan and Dolphin hotels. My husband still had some spare vacation days, so he flew down to join me, and we extended our trip for the weekend. I bid on Priceline for a hotel, and we ended up at the Marriott World Center. This meant that, for once, I was forced to drive.

We knew that the home office for Disney Cruise Line was located in Celebration, and with all cruises we were taking, we were quite curious about it. We decided to drive over to the office and, since we were there, we drove into town to finally see the quaint slice of Americana that people in the media seemed to either love or hate.

We spent some time driving around, just soaking up the character of the town. I'd heard the usual rumors about Celebration and how the home styles and colors were stringently controlled. This didn't jibe with the lovely mix of architecture that we saw, nor the beautiful gardens and the eclectic mix of yard decor. We saw everything from quaint gingerbread Victorians with homey porches to Spanish style mansions to a house that could have doubled for the Bates motel.

Many people claim that Celebration is a throwback to the towns that used to exist in the 1950s and 1960s, but I don't really think so. I grew up in that sort of neighborhood, and it was quite different. For one thing, Celebration's business and residential districts are quite separate. In the old neighborhoods, there was a corner store, and often a tavern, every few blocks. You never had to run too far for a newspaper, bread, or milk when your mom sent you, clutching a sweaty handful of quarters, and dads could stop for a quick beer on the way home from work.

Also, those old towns certainly didn't have common areas and parks like Celebration's. Sure, there was usually a community park, but not countless little spreads of well manicured public land every few blocks. The downtown district of those old towns had businesses like pharmacies, hardware stores, and mom and pop groceries that catered to the residents. Sure, Celebration has a tiny Gooding's Grocery downtown, but it bears no resemblance to a traditional supermarket. The other businesses are mostly upscale gift shops geared to tourists.

No, Celebration isn't an old town teleported forward in time. It is its own place, with its very own character and personality. The one parallel with the old towns is a strong sense of community, but that has nothing to do with the physical make-up. I think that friendliness and community spirit are something people bring with them because it's one of the reasons that many of them move here.

After circling Celebration Boulevard and Celebration Avenue a couple of times, and being stopped by an endless parade of golf carts crossing the road, we found our way to the Preview Center. This was the place where you could get information on the various home types. It also featured an impressive model of Celebration and an enthusiastic promotional video.

Originally, the Preview Center was located in the tower building downtown, but by the time we came around, it had been moved to a house just off Celebration Avenue. The original building now houses a Bank of America branch.

Today, the center we visited that day is pretty much defunct, as sales have moved over to Artisan Park, the last area to be developed, way down at the end of Celebration Avenue. But in 2002 the center was still in full swing, and most of the model homes were located nearby.

We poked around the models, but when we saw the prices, I realized that the woman I met on the cruise definitely had a different definition of affordability than I did. Still, it was fun to check things out. We were hoping to see the bungalows, which are the cheapest single family homes, but they were located in Roseville Corner, adjacent to East Village. Since we had no idea where that was, we never found them. We just checked out the models close to the center.

We were told that a new development (which eventually became Artisan Park) was going to be added soon, and that although it would be aimed at people aged 55 and over, there would be no specific age restriction. It was going to have condominiums and townhomes, which might be closer to our price range, so we decided to return in a year or two to check it out.

We were glad that the new development was a few years down the road, since we weren't quite ready to make the plunge yet. Heck, before we'd come to town, moving to Florida was still a vague dream, hopefully to be realized within ten years, but perhaps as far off as retirement. Now, somehow Celebration had shifted that dream to a more immediate context. We had no interest in looking at other neighborhoods. Somehow we instinctively knew that Celebration was the place for us.

We did some bumming around downtown, enjoying the lakefront rockers and marveling at the old-fashioned movie theater (only two screens), ice cream shop, and Art Deco-style diner. It was touristy rather than authentic small-towny, right down to the Muzak piped into the streets. But however corny some people might find it, we immediately fell in love. We spent some time on the walking trails, which lead out of the crowded, tourist-heavy downtown area and into the residential streets. We soaked up the atmosphere, and somehow the spell that had snared many others before us was taking over our rational brains.

By the time we had to leave to catch our flight home, we were trying to figure out how we might buy a home in Celebration as soon as possible. To this day, I still don't know how retirement, which had moved to a few years down the road, suddenly became right now. But somehow it did, and we've never regretted that spontaneous decision. I think a large part of it was that we realized that soon we'd be priced right out of the market. Even with new condos going up within a few years, I strongly suspected that their prices would be much, much more than the going rate in 2002.

So somehow, without even really discussing it, my husband and I made the decision that we were going to buy a place in Celebration, and soon. To heck with the fact that our jobs tied us to Chicago, not to mention that we had no idea how we might handle it financially. We're not poor, but neither are we independently wealthy, and we work very hard to finance our frequent vacations. And of course house hunting would be a challenge, since I had run out of vacation days for the year.

But we were determined not to let these minor hurdles stop us. Just when we least expected it, our quest to become Celebration residents had somehow begun.

June 2, 2004: Finding Home Sweet Home

Now that we had made the decision to purchase a home in Celebration, and to do it sooner rather than later due to rising prices, we faced a new challenge. We had to find the perfect place while being stuck 1500 miles away. As a further complication, we wouldn't have any more vacation days for the next three months.

I'm a yard person who loves to plant and tend flowers and create a nice little outdoor environment. I also love a porch or backyard swing, and maybe even a fountain and bird bath to round out my relaxation space.

Unfortunately, because we couldn't make an immediate, permanent move, we needed a place where the building exterior and landscaping would be taken care of for us. On the surface, it seemed like a townhouse would be the perfect answer. I'd have my little patch of land, but a landscaping service would take care of the major chores and our association dues would pay for painting, roofing, and the like.

But although the townhomes in Celebration are lovely and huge (some with three full stories of living space, as well as a separate apartment over the garage), they have an enormous price tag, too. Since we had done no pre-planning, financial or otherwise, we had limited funds to work with, and the townhomes were out of our price range. Construction had just started on some condos, but there was no model yet. All that existed was bare land and and a few newly laid foundations.

Still, from the information we could glean via the internet, the condos seemed to be within our price range. I wouldn't have my garden or swing, but at least I'd have a little balcony where I could still put some type of fountain, some plants, and perhaps a couple of rockers. It might not be my dream home, but at least we'd have a place in Celebration.

The next step was to locate a Realtor. Being an internet person who does nearly everything online, I rapidly began looking up real estate agencies in Celebration and shooting out a barrage of emails. I was hoping to make a knowledgeable contact who could either confirm my choice of a condo or let me know if there was something else available that would be more appropriate.

At that point, my only knowledge of the different types of homes came from our brief visit to the Preview Center, and I was hazy on the concept of the different villages. I had no idea that there was so much information to absorb, and there was precious little available online. There are websites with lots of generalities, but nothing specifically aimed at newbies, and often the information was glaringly out of date.

Oddly enough, none of the real estate agencies answered my messages. I did eventually get one response, but unfortunately it was after we had already gone forward with a condo purchase on our own, directly through the builder...but that's getting ahead of the story. I was really surprised to get only one answer, since we were a Realtor's dream: A couple who was already committed to moving to Celebration. The only thing remaining was to the select a home and sign on the dotted line. I doubt commissions come much easier than that!

I was sorry that the Realtor who responded did so after we had already initiated the condo purchase on our own. We had really hoped to deal with someone local to represent our interests. It made me a little nervous to be so far away and handling everything via computer and the phone.

I did as much research as I could before proceeding with the condo purchase. Although I would have preferred to look at a model in person, it wasn't an absolute necessity. We knew we were moving to Celebration and we'd pretty much figured that we would have to go with a condo due to financial restraints. My husband and I prefer new construction, so we were pleased that we'd be able to buy something brand new. All that remained was to choose a floor plan and location.

We contacted the builder directly, reviewed several floor plans via the internet and snail mail, and selected the type of building we preferred. We liked the four-unit buildings and knew that we wanted to be upstairs. Now it was only a matter of choosing the particular building location.

We weren't locked into a particular time frame for moving in, and we knew that we didn't want to live right on Celebration Avenue, the main street because I hate high-traffic locations. Over the phone, we selected a building across from Spring Park, a few blocks off the main thoroughfare, with a swimming pool, playground, and lots of green space. Only one of the two upstairs units was available, so the choice was already made for us. We executed the contract, sent off the down payment, and our Celebration was one step closer to reality.

There remained only one slight glitch. I was really itching to see the famous Rules and Covenants that had achieved so much notoriety in almost everything written about Celebration. I was told they would be sent to me along with our contract, and soon two thick binders showed up in the mail. One was full of condo restrictions, and the other...well, it contained the same thing! Instead of the covenants, we had received two identical copies of the condo documents.

How could I be denied?! Would I never see the list of rules and restrictions by which we were committing ourselves to abide? Perhaps the conspiracy theory people were right, and the town really was patrolled by a gestapo. They didn't want me to know until it was too late and we'd already moved in. Then I'd wake up one morning to find my porch rockers gone because there weren't the right shade of white.

I made a few calls to the condo office but was put off each time. It's hard to make too much of a nuisance of yourself when you are over one thousand miles away, so no covenants were forthcoming. I had to content myself with pouring over the property diagrams and trying to picture where our future home would be, based on my sketchy memory of the Spring Park area. I also wiled away the hours making photocopies of the floor plan and sketching in various furniture arrangements.

Meanwhile, the New Year 2003 dawned bright (and cold, at least where we were), bringing with it a new round of vacation days. My husband and I planned a dual purpose trip to Celebration: visit our new condo, or at least the foundation and the sand lot where it would one day stand, and to finally get those precious and ultra-secret rules and covenants. It was hard to believe that on our last trip, less than three months earlier, we hadn't even been thinking about buying a home as the plane touched down in Florida. Now here we were with a new place under contract!

When we arrived in town, we were amazed at how much progress had been made on the condo buildings. Ours was still in its initial stages, but we were able to see some identical buildings that already had second floors in place. We poked through the construction site, ignoring the warning signs, and snapped photo after photo like proud parents documenting the birth of their child. Then we picked up the missing binder...finally! The condo office was closed, but they left it at a real estate office next door, so I still didn't get to meet the sales representative in person.

Alas, I was rather disappointed at the covenants, which turned out to be mundane. I was expecting strictness to the point of insanity, but they were pretty much what I would expect to find in any planned community. I know of trailer parks in Illinois that have stricter regulations; one turned down a friend of ours because he owns a Harley and they didn't want his kind moving in.

We spent most of our time getting to know the greater Orlando/Kissimmee area, since it would soon be our home. At the end of our trip, we returned to Celebration a couple of hours before our flight to take one last look around. We never found the bungalow models on our first visit, so this time we were determined to locate them. Since bungalows are the least expensive single family homes, I was curious to see what we could have bought for a little more money.

We had the vague knowledge that the bungalow models were on a street called Nash, but that could have been the moon as far as our directional sense was concerned. At that point, we were only vaguely aware of the fact that Celebration is made up of villages and that our condo would be in South Village. We wandered in the general direction of East Village, and although we didn't find the models, we did stumble across an open house for a secondhand bungalow.

Since we didn't have much time to spare before leaving for the airport, we decided that the open house would have to suffice. I went poking around the property while my husband, who is not nearly as enthralled with models as I am, starting chatting with the real estate agents. By the time I finished touring the cute little home, he'd told them what we were looking for. They were a husband and wife team, and the husband said, I have just the right thing! Do you have time to take a ride?

We're adventurous, and we still had a bit of time, so we figured, What the heck! We hopped into his vehicle and headed over to Nash, where he showed us an attached bungalow model. It was something I would have called a townhome, but that's not the proper term in Celebration-speak. Although we hadn't seen any information in the Preview Center on those particular models, we learned that there are triplexes and duplexes in addition to the free-standing bungalows. The model was an end unit in a cute little Craftsman-style triplex building.

As it turned out, this was just what we'd been looking for. It was a nice little place with a back yard, as well as a tiny bit of land out front, and the monthly dues included outside maintenance. The Craftsman model had a porch that was large enough for a swing, and I could squeeze in a couple of rockers, too. Best of all, unlike the regular townhomes, the attached bungalow actually fit into our budget. It was a little more money than the condo, but if we struggled a bit, we could swing it.

Next, we were shuttled into East Village and shown a large vacant patch of land where one of the last new-construction triplexes was scheduled to be built that summer. It was an absolutely super location, on a cul de sac across the street from a little park-like area. It was much quieter and less trafficked than the spot where our condo would soon be standing. The lot wasn't large enough for a pool, but we were within walking distance of the newly constructed East Village pool, and the Spring Park and Lakeside Park pools were only a short bike ride away.

We knew that the triplex would fit our needs almost to the letter. As I had suspected when I initially looked for a Realtor, the experience of a professional really came in handy. Unfortunately, it had come a bit too late. We were locked into the condo contract, which we'd signed over a month earlier. The cancellation period was over, and we couldn't afford to lose the hefty down payment.

Were we doomed to live in the condo and to bike wistfully to East Village to gaze at the home that should have been ours for the rest of our days? Would I have to continually mourn just how close I had come to getting my back yard, flowers, and porch swing? Or would a bit of the pixie dust from nearby Disney World somehow float over and save the day?

June 7, 2004: A Disney-Style Ending

Since Disney is so closely associated with Celebration, I suppose it's only fitting that our story had a Disney-style happy ending. When we returned to Chicago, I started researching Florida real estate contracts. In Florida, there is a very strict waiting period until a condominium purchase becomes final. Technically we were already past that period.

But the law also requires that the purchaser be able to review all the documents and restrictions during that period to help them make their decision. Bingo! In our case, we hadn't been able to review all of the required material because of the missing binder.

They say there is a reason for everything, and now I finally saw the cosmic purpose as to why the covenants were never sent. By law, our waiting period had not started ticking until we picked up the binder, so we were still within the cancellation period. Somebody Upstairs was watching out for us!

Needless to say, we pointed this fact out to the condo builders. They really didn't have much choice; under the law, they had to allow us to cancel the contract and to refund our down payment.

We immediately signed a contract for the triplex unit in East Village. We knew that we wanted an end unit, and we had our choice of either side, since none of the units in the building were sold yet. It was a hard choice, but we ended up taking the right hand unit because it had a single garage. The unit on the other end shared its garage building with the middle unit, although each had its own driveway and the individual garages were divided by a wall.

The only sad thing was that the units had already been designated as inventory homes, meaning that the options, colors, etc. had already been chosen. Thankfully, our unit was going to be done in all neutral colors, with beige tile and carpet and white walls and cabinets. The unit we chose would also be the only one to have French doors in the front room, a feature that appealed to me. I liked being able to close it off. If we had a lot of out of town visitors, it could double as an extra bedroom.

This was quite a change! In the space of three months we'd gone from not even being in the market for a new home to putting a contract on a condo long distance, and then to switching mid-stream and suddenly buying a house in the two-hour lapse of waiting for our flight. Whew!

Of course, at that point, our home was only a sand lot with a wooden marker and lots of deer tracks., but it was fun to imagine what it would be someday. The slated completion time was August, which was fine with us since we still had our home back north and no firm plans on what we were going to do with it.

Since the triplex model was identical to our future home, we were able to take plenty of photos and measurements to help us with our decorating plans. Now we would begin seven months of dreaming and planning for our Celebration home-to-be. With all the odd circumstances leading up to its purchase, we just knew it was meant to be ours.

June 9, 2004: The Long Wait

Now that we'd finally purchased the perfect home in the perfect town, we were in for a long, long wait. Actually, it wasn't so bad because we weren't under any time constraints. We knew we wouldn't be able to move to Florida immediately and permanently anyway, so we had more patience than most new home buyers.

It was a bit difficult to know that construction was going on 1500 miles away, and we couldn't be there in person to watch our baby grow. This was eased somewhat by our real estate agents, who mailed us occasional progress photos, and to a kind neighbor-to-be who took pictures nearly every week, which he posted on a web page for us.

Every time he posted new shots, I eagerly logged on to see the vacant lot turn into a foundation, and then to watch the steadily rising walls. Once the structure was in place, it morphed from a skeleton to a roofed and fleshed-out building that was starting to look like a real home. Inside, tile, carpet, and appliances were added it as it edged closer to completion. Exterior paint, and then landscaping, finally completed the picture.

We were also very fortunate to be able fly down for a visit every few weeks. I'm a big fan of Priceline, as I don't mind letting William Shatner choose which hotel I stay at or which rental car company I use. I booked resort-level hotels in the Lake Buena Vista/Downtown Disney area for around $65 a night. I also snagged cheap rental cars so we could drive around Celebration, poke around the construction site, and get to know our soon-to-be neighborhood a little better.

There was so much