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Space travel meets lavish vacation living at Morlando in Reunion, which your family or group can rent for as low as $2,400 per night. PHOTO/KEN JACKSON -
Space travel meets lavish vacation living at Morlando in Reunion, which your family or group can rent for as low as $2,400 per night. PHOTO/KEN JACKSON
Experience Kissimmee, Osceola County’s tourism marketing arm, touts Kissimmee as the “Vacation Home Capital of the World.”
The county boasts 35,000 vacation homes, with properties available for rent for as low as $75 per night for smaller, basic accommodations, up to lavish mega-mansions for upwards of $4,000 per night. Homes and plans for every budget and style exist across the county.
Experience Kissimmee officials report that 60% of the county’s $44.1 million in Tourist Development Tax (bed tax) revenue in 2023 came from vacation homes.
Some of more upscale homes are themed to provide children—and adults who act like kids—with experiences from their favorite movies, theme parks games or hobbies.
For example—want to see how the other half lives on vacation, just minutes from the attractions area? There sits a home in Reunion that just went on the vacation rental market.
It has 12 bedrooms— meaning whole families or multi-family groups can rent it out—a lavish room, huge kitchen, dining areas and entertaining space, a theatre room, selection of arcade games and a bowling alley.
And a spaceship—yes, a spaceship, that “blasts off” once occupants complete a series of space-themed missions.
It’s all part of “Morlando,” now the largest vacation property in the Jeeves Vacation Rentals portfolio. The 16,000-square-foot home can sleep 46 people, and pricing starts at $2,400 per night during low-demand periods.
But, as those like Experience Kissimmee CEO D.T. Minich say, it becomes rather affordable if multiple families or members divvy it up and stay together.
“We have one of the largest concentrations of vacation homes in the world, that’s why we pride ourselves on the ‘Vacation Capital of the World,” Minich said. “There’s a huge demand for this type of product.
“This is five-star, all the way. We have families from Dubai and the Arab countries who used to rent a bunch of rooms at a Four Seasons-type location and now rent a property like this where you have a bit more privacy and flexibility … and they can take the back way into Disney and never have to get on I-4.”
The Morlando has 12 bedrooms and 14 bathrooms— most of the sleeping areas are separate for privacy. The pool features two water slides and a grotto with two separate hot tubs. The pool deck also has a putting green and bocce court. A wing off of the kitchen and dining room has a two-story “play area” with two bars, arcade games, the bowling alley and an elevator so everyone can access all of it.
But the appeal of this house is the three-story space ship. On a recent visit crews were giving it the finishing touches, but once complete it will have additional bedrooms for the kids with bunk beds, a fully interactive “flight deck” with controls, and a laser tag game that’s active throughout the whole house (we’re warning you now, parents).
The west side of the county has a number of themed vacation rentals, catering to the upper-class visitors who want to stay near the theme parks—but not “at” them—but still have a unique stay experience. And, as the movie line goes, and has been proved, “If you build it, they will come”—EK said Osceola County saw an increase in tourist tax collections in January 2023 over the same month in 2022, when the rebound from COVID-19 closures was in full swing.
And, if they come because they want to sleep in a space ship, they can at Morlando.
