Visiting the best Orlando timeshare resorts: a report on my family's trip to Central Florida, Walt Disney World, and the perfect place to spend our holiday every year.

When we left Heathrow airport, we were certain that we should be wearing several layers of clothing. The frost on our windshield as we left home was almost too thick to scrape away in the short time that we had between leaving the house and arriving in the proper time for our security screening Our children, Emily and Peter, were jumping up and down when we told them that we would be taking a holiday to Walt Disney World. The morning of our flight, they were not so brave about being on a long plane trip to Florida. Emily was getting worried about being near the airplane window, so she rode all the way on the middle seat, clutching her favorite Disney Princess jacket. Peter was rather amusing to the flight attendant, asking her several times if she lived in the castle at the Magic Kingdom. But getting back to the perfect timeshare rental: the Orlando area has so many timeshare resorts, we were almost at a loss when we pulled up the information on the web. So many timeshare condos had web sites that offered the lowest price, or timeshare condos near Walt Disney World, or even the most luxury accommodations and lowest price around. The literature and pamphlets that we received in the post every day seemed to confuse us even more. There seemed to be no end to the flurry of timeshare Orlando information that we could be exposed to. I decided to have an evening organization session with my wonderful husband, Angus. Angus is in accounting, and he can usually spot a dubious deal or the hole in a discount timeshare rental's pitch.

We sat down to tea and began to sift through the dizzying array of brochures for Orlando area timeshare rentals. Could we toss out the brochures without photos? Certainly we did. How about excluding the timeshare resorts that were situated no where near the Walt Disney World property. We placed several brochures into a a maybe-pile, and then discarded the rest that we deemed to be the sort of timeshare rental that we could live without. The photos would seem to be aged, or the rooms very sparse, dark and crowded. Tiny rooms and a lack of suitable amenities would be the last thing that our family would need to endure on a week long holiday to Orlando. Nor would we entertain the notion of staying in Tampa, or Sarasota, since my sister had made the mistake of thinking that these locations were anywhere remotely near Walt Disney World. Staying in a timeshare condo would save us money, we reasoned. The best price for a family meal is free- or simply paying a fair price for a small batch of groceries that are easily transported to the timeshare rental. The kids would rather eat their Mum's eggs and bake in the morning rather than try new foods, and we had found out some information on a grocery store near Orlando that had a very good selection of British foods and drinks. Certainly we needed to take Peter's intense dislike of new foods into account, since a stubborn five year old wants only what he wants and doesnt=t understand that the choices in another country are different.

Angus and I decided to ask our family, friends and co-workers for advice on choosing the perfect timeshare resort. The best place to stay seemed to be the easiest way to bring about a very biased opinion on their last holiday timeshare condos, or the worst timeshare resorts that they ever endured while taking the kids on holiday to Disney World. We received a deluge of information on where to shop, where to dine, and where to find a perfect lodging in the form of a timeshare rental. The legacy of our sister's suffering in the far hinterlands of Sarasota made us acutely aware of the importance of landing a reservation for a timeshare rental near the Walt Disney World area, and yet far enough away from the constant buzz of Orlando traffic. No one had seemed to agree with anyone else on choosing this ideal timeshare in Orlando, and no one could precisely recall the name of the scary sea food restaurant where they received a great, cheap discount on an early bird special and a severe case of Montezuma's revenge. Auntie Lilly could tell us the best place for finding an emergency room (since she had been the worst case of sunburn seen in Orlando, having made her own sun block in a fit of being stupid and cheap). My colleague at work decided to take me into the loo and stress the importance of having my tetanus shot updated, and she wouldnt elaborate ion this subject. She is a bit of a curious thing, but she did slip me the number of a rather tawdry looking timeshare resort that had a scary looking brochure. Angus had a colleague to lunch on Saturday, and after a few pints, he revealed the secret to his family's glowing reviews of all of their holidays: he took separate holidays from his wife and their kids. No wonder the kids seemed to really want to go to Disney at each holiday.

Angus and I decided to take the map we had bought of the Central Florida area and draw a wide circle around each of the attractions, museums, theme parks and shopping outlet malls we had decided upon visiting. The area near each one of these was becoming more familiar to us as we narrowed our search to find the vacation timeshare rental of our dreams. Aside from landing a reservation within the gates of Disney at a price within our reach (not bloody likely to ever happen, if you ask me), we decided to take our search to the area near Davenport, Florida for our timeshare condo. It seemed to ring a bell with most of the family and friends that we talked about it with, and all of them agreed that the Davenport area was near Orlando=s many theme parks, and yet close to the clean country air. The kids would like to be somewhere with a pool, and we found a nice place to get a good view of the theme park's fireworks in the night sky after the kids had their nightly bath, and it was rather near the highway that takes you into Orlando. We even found a nice place to rent a timeshare condo that would be close to all of the shops and dining, yet far away enough from the hectic pace of downtown Orlando and the area near the theme parks. We decided to go for the timeshare rental that gave us a discount for traveling all the way from Heathrow, and also featured an address in Davenport. The timeshare condo was pleasant, clean, quiet and staffed with rather friendly Floridians. We had heard of rude service in the states, but we had no such experience in our timeshare condo. We wrapped up our search at the last minute, secure in knowing that our timeshare condos were the type of place we could take the kids to for years to come, basking in the central Florida sun and the love we felt from our kids.