Tag Archives: Vacation homes

US

This family owns a ‘princess cottage’ in Disney’s gated community—where homes sell for $12M: Look inside

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In 2020, when the pandemic put our travels to a halt, my family bought a four-bedroom, 3,600-square-foot home in Golden Oak at Walt Disney World Resort near Orlando, Florida.

My parents had been wanting to buy a vacation home for some time. I have a now five-year-old daughter, and my brother was about to become a father, so we were looking for a place to spend quality time together.

My husband and I live about three and a half hours away in Miami, but Golden Oak is our home away from home. Since we both work remotely, we’re able to visit at least twice a month with our daughter.

As a travel and parenting blogger, I get a lot of questions from my followers about what it’s like to have a home in Disney’s highly coveted residential community.

What is Disney’s Golden Oak?

Disney’s Golden Oak is a gated property of luxury, single-family homes, just four miles from Disney’s Magic Kingdom Park.

There are about 300 homes that range from 1,800 square feet to 12,000 square feet. One house sold for $12 million this year, and another is currently listed at $9.5 million.

Sectioned into eight neighborhoods, the homes were designed by Walt Disney Imagineering, the Walt Disney Company division that oversees the design and construction of its theme parks.

Residents have access to pools, a fitness center, restaurants and other Disney resorts. They also have membership to the exclusive Golden Oak Club, which offers “concierge-style services,” including private VIP park tours and special event tickets.

Buying a home in Disney’s Golden Oak

Golden Oak first started listing homes in 2010. But despite being a Disney regular, I’d never heard of it until my parents visited friends at their vacation home there in 2020.

Cristie lives in Miami with her husband and their daughter, but they travel to their Disney-themed vacation home near Orlando, Florida twice a month.

Photo: Cristie Anne Cabrera

During their visit, they got to tour one of the newer houses. They FaceTimed my brother and me to show us the home. We all fell in love with the place and put a contract in at full asking price.

Houses in Golden Oak sell quickly, but we got lucky with timing. The entire first floor came furnished, so we were all able to enjoy Thanksgiving weekend there together just days after closing that year.

A look inside our ‘princess cottage’

We live in The Cottages at Symphony Grove neighborhood. Each house has its own whimsical look. Ours was inspired by Belle’s cottage in “Beauty and the Beast.”

Each house in The Cottages at Symphony Grove has its own unique theme.

Photo: Cristie Anne Cabrera

One thing that all the Golden Oak homes have in common are the tiny Disney-themed details. Our property, for example, has over 50 hidden Mickey Mouses. The kids love trying to find them every time they come over.

Our house is styled as a French cottage, particularly on the first floor.

The entrance to the home is styled with a carved door and an elegant chandelier.

Photo: Cristie Anne Cabrera

The kitchen and dining room are complete with wooden beams and other countryside accents.

Distressed wooden details, intricate tiles and a towering kitchen hood give the space a French-countryside feel.

Photo: Cristie Anne Cabrera

Upstairs, the house becomes more clearly Disney-themed. On the second floor, my bedroom has a quote from “Beauty and the Beast” above the bed.

My brother’s room has “Winnie the Pooh” characters hand-painted on the walls.

The bunkbed room (a.k.a. the “Bambi” room) is tiny but full of beautiful details like wood-paneled walls and a small nightlight for each bed.

The cozy bunk beds in this “Bambi”-themed room makes it a family favorite.

Photo: Cristie Anne Cabrera

My favorite feature in entire house is a spiral staircase on the second floor that leads to “Belle’s Reading Room” on the third floor, which is now the girls’ playroom.

It has reclaimed wood beams on the ceilings, hand-painted drawings on the walls, a built-in bookshelf, and the same railing as the staircase on the windows.

Finally, there’s a guest suite that connects to the home through the outdoor patio. That whole area feels like you’ve entered a princess suite, thanks to a few Disney touches like the “Alice in Wonderland” doorknob.

We also have a small pool and jacuzzi. It’s completely surrounded by the home, making the space more private. In the patio area, there’s a dining table for six, a sitting area with a couch and chairs, a fireplace and an outdoor kitchen.

Inside the Golden Oak neighborhood

We don’t visit the theme parks too often when we’re in Golden Oak. Most of the time, we mostly just enjoy the neighborhood and spend time at home together.

We have golf carts that we can use to visit Golden Oak’s playground, parks and resident-only clubhouse.

The kids love watching the Magic Kingdom fireworks from the dock at Disney’s Fort Wilderness. We also take my daughter there to ride ponies. In the summer, we use their splash pad and pool that has an amazing slide.

For us, this truly is the happiest place on earth.

Cristie Anne Cabrera, a.k.a. The Traveling Red, is a Miami-based mom, social media influencer and travel blogger. Follow her on Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and her blog for a look into her travels to Disney’s Golden Oak and road trips in her school bus conversion.

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Business

How to find a hidden spy camera in hotel rooms and rental homes

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Nearly 60% of Americans said they were worried about hidden cameras in Airbnb homes in 2019.

And 11% of vacation home renters said they had discovered a hidden camera during a stay, according to a survey by the real estate investment company IPX1031.

Spy cameras are not a new problem. In South Korea, more than 30,000 cases of filming with hidden cameras were reported to the police between 2013 and 2018, according to the New York-based non-profit organization Human Rights Watch.

The number of hidden spy camera reports has proliferated because of the increasing accessibility and inexpensiveness of such cameras, combined with the public’s growing ability to detect them, said Kenneth Bombace, CEO of intelligence firm Global Threat Solutions.

Experts share simple methods to locate hidden spy cameras in hotel rooms and rental properties.

1. Conduct a physical search

A light switch with a hidden camera (middle) on display at a spy camera shop in South Korea on March 22, 2019.

Jung Yeon-je | Afp | Getty Images

Almost all covert cameras are concealed in household devices, such as lights, thermostats, and plugged clock radios, Bombace said.

“Look and see if anything looks like it’s out of the ordinary, and then inspect it closer,” he said.

Most spy cameras are connected to an electrical source or an electronic device, Bombace added.

He said the first thing he does in a bedroom is unplug the clock radios and put them in a drawer.

Michael O’Rourke, CEO of security consulting firm Advanced Operational Concepts, also said he does exactly that.

Even well-hidden cameras will have a small amount of reflective glass from the lens, Bombace said.

“If you use flashlights and shine them on something you think could possibly hide the camera, you will see a reflection in there, which is a pretty good way of detecting if there’s a camera,” he said.

A painting installed with a hidden camera on display at a spy camera shop on March 22, 2019. Even when a camera is hidden in another device like a thermostat or an outlet, there will be some glass in there that is reflective because there will be a lens, Bombace said.

Jung Yeon-je | Afp | Getty Images

But O’Rourke said care is needed to accurately locate hidden lenses.

“A lot of people will try to do amateur lens detection, which can work,” O’Rourke said. “However, if you don’t have a good search methodology — if you go too fast, if you’re impatient — you can miss quite a bit.”

2. Look at the Wi-Fi network

A hidden camera must be connected to a local Wi-Fi network in order to be viewed remotely, Bombace said.

Hidden cameras must be connected to a local Wi-Fi network to be viewed remotely, said Global Threat Solutions CEO Kenneth Bombace.

Hispanolistic | E+ | Getty Images

Wi-Fi scanning apps like Fing can identify devices on the network that are cameras, he said.

Those who hide cameras might use a separate Wi-Fi network to stream live video footage, but Wi-Fi scanning apps can also detect how many networks are in a residence, Bombace said.

But Kody Kinzie, a security researcher at data security and analytics firm Varonis, warned that a network scanner may not catch everything.

“The next thing you can do is look for devices that are broadcasting their own network name,” he said.

He recommended using apps like WiGLE to find devices that are “broadcasting some sort of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi network name,” Kinzie added.

3. Buy a spy camera detector

If all else fails, spy camera detectors can scan for radio frequencies connected to hidden cameras. These can be easily bought online from websites like Amazon or AliExpress.

But O’Rourke noted this method works only if the hidden camera is transmitting data.

“So many of them now have SD cards that just store data to be retrieved after someone leaves,” O’Rourke said. “And so these are much more difficult to detect.”

Bombace added that while it is possible to buy a radio frequency scanner, the cheaper ones are probably not that good.

“Like anything else, you get what you pay for — if it’s $30, it’s probably not that good,” Bombace said. “Better ones are going to cost hundreds or even over $1,000.”

What to do if you find a camera

After locating a camera, immediately disconnect it without damaging it because the camera’s firmware may contain identifying information, such as login credentials and the Wi-Fi network it was connected to, Kinzie said.

Disconnect hidden cameras but don’t damage them, said Varonis security researcher Kody Kinzie.

Krisanapong Detraphiphat | Moment | Getty Images

O’Rourke said hidden cameras found in hotel rooms should be reported to the front desk. He advised then moving to another hotel instead of requesting another room.

“Once you find a camera in a room, I wouldn’t trust any other room in that entire hotel,” he said.

Bombace also recommended reporting hidden cameras to the police, even if it is just for documentation purposes, in case litigation or criminal charges should follow.

“You could also provide [the report] to Airbnb so they can prevent this person from ever doing this again,” he said.

But ultimately, Bombace said, he would not avoid renting a home over fears of spy cameras.

“I would just take common sense steps to protect yourself. And realize you’re not in your own home,” he said.

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World

Where Americans want to travel abroad and where they’ve lost interest

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Gaviota Azul beach in Cancun, Mexico.

Getty Images

Just as countries have started to lift pandemic travel bans and Americans begin to at least think about booking vacations abroad, the spread of the delta and omicron variants of Covid-19 has thrown the tourism industry’s fortunes to the wind again.

That said, hope springs eternal and U.S. travelers have been busy researching the long-delayed foreign trips they’d like to take once they can. Travel site ParkSleepFly has tracked where they want to go.

Researchers at ParkSleepFly analyzed data on Google searches from April to September by Americans on 168 foreign or overseas destinations in terms of flights, vacations and hotels, totaling them to determine rankings in categories such as the most in-demand countries, most in-demand cities and regions, countries increasing in travel popularity and countries seeing a decrease in interest from Americans.

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The No. 1 overseas destination that Americans are searching is Puerto Rico — technically a U.S. territory but still a flight or cruise away for those on the mainland. ParkSleepFly tracked nearly 1.69 million searches for the island. Rounding out the top five spots were the Maldives, with 491,200 searches; Costa Rica, at 384,600; Aruba, at 379,600; and Mexico, at 361,300.

The website also ranked the cities and regions attracting the most interest; the top 10 are listed in the box below.

Top In-Demand Cities & Regions by Google Search

Travel site ParkSleepFly analyzed Google search data for flights, vacations and hotels by Americans for destinations worldwide to determine the most sought-after holiday spots as we head into 2022. Here’s a look at the top 10 urban and regional spots and the total number of searches in the past six months.

  1. Cancun, Mexico — 638,230
  2. Bali, Indonesia — 448,100
  3. Dubai, United Arab Emirates — 446,100
  4. Bora Bora, French Polynesia — 408,200
  5. Panama City, Panama — 299,210
  6. Paris — 265,400
  7. Cabo San Lucas, Mexico — 252,780
  8. San Jose, Dominican Republic — 225,690
  9. Toronto — 224,130
  10. Rio de Janeiro — 202,550

Source: ParkSleepFly

ParkSleepFly also looked at which countries are falling or rising and in popularity among U.S. travelers. Searches for China travel have plummeted 75% — perhaps not surprisingly, given media coverage of coronavirus, along with current geopolitical tensions. “Following the emergence of Covid-19, China imposed strict border policy and suspended all visas on arrival, so it’s not surprising to see a decline in popularity,” the site wrote in its blog.

In second place for less interest from Americans is Italy, with a 59% drop-off, which ParkSleepFly attributed to the country’s numerous Covid lockdowns this year. At No. 3, Hong Kong — with some of the world’s strictest pandemic border restrictions — saw a 54% fall.

On the bright side, searches increased significantly for overseas or foreign destinations such as the U.S. Virgin Islands, up 98%; the Maldives, up 72%; and Indonesia, with 61% growth. Overseas or foreign cities and regions seeing the highest growth in interest include Saint Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, up 77%; Toronto, up 45%; and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, up 41%.

For more on the study, and its methodology, go to ParkSleepFly’s website.

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