Breezy Oak Villas

13/10/2019

03/05/2019

03/05/2019

So proud that Breezy Oak Villas just qualified for the 2019 TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence Award!

"TripAdvisor has given Orlando, Florida's Breezy Oak Villas its exclusive Certificate of Excellence accolade – presented to the best of TripAdvisor Rentals’ hundreds of thousands of homes.

The Certificate of Excellence is given annually to those properties that provide consistently outstanding experiences and whose owners offer first-class customer service to their guests.

Owner's of Breezy Oak Villa are thrilled with the recognition.

“We are very pleased to earn the Certificate of Excellence for our properties. We have listed with TripAdvisor Rentals for many years and we always strive to provide great customer service. It’s great to be rewarded by TripAdvisor Rentals after all of our hard work and it’s wonderful to know that our many guests over the last year have really valued their stay.”

Laurel Greatrix, Communications Director, TripAdvisor Rentals, said: “We’re excited to recognize and honor the top homes and homeowners on our site. This is a hard-earned accolade, and we’d like to thank these property owners for their dedication to providing travelers with consistently outstanding experiences.”

28/05/2018

Hello again Facebook! After a year's absence, BOV is back on Facebook. For some unknown reason, our account was inaccessible for most of the past year. But we've been just as busy (in fact more so) hosting guests in Central Florida from all over the world. If we missed a message from you, we apologize, but there was no way for us to respond (and of course, we weren't receiving alerts either). And then one day, just as suddenly as we couldn't login, we started receiving communications again and here we are. Happy summer!

19/08/2017

The proof is in the renting! Just got another 5-Star Review from Joseph who stayed in June!

Robert was very nice and prompt about any issues that I had, house was wonderful; very roomy! Will definitely stay at this property again. Nice clean and very comfortable for a party of five. Pool was nice as well as the game room and location.

03/08/2017

Butterflies!
When we choose plants for the Landscaping at Breezy Oak & Pleasant Oak Villas, if we can, we select those that will attract butterflies. It just provides a bit of special interest around the properties.
A special bonus is that they also attract hummingbirds, but they're small, and fly so fast you have to be quick to see them!

16/07/2017

Privacy Landscaping at Pleasant Oak Villa

When we purchased our 2nd property, Pleasant Oak Villa, we were fortunate that it has no rear neighbors close by, but there is a home behind our side neighbor, and another house beyond. We felt that guests attracted by the amazing privacy of the back yard at BREEZY Oak Villa, would likely want something similar at PLEASANT Oak Villa too, if possible.

Half of the rear yard at Pleasant Oak faces natural forest, so we didn't want to just put up a fence and block it out. We love the ambience created by our 'natural' Florida landscaping.

So years ago we started reshaping the grounds to provide our guests with the most privacy in the rear yard and pool area that we could. Last month I had a chance to see the growth so far this year. Note the large Bismark Palm, which is now over 6' high, and how the other plants and shrubs have developed. (There's something special about the plants we chose which I'll share in a later post.)

In the last photo, I have created a panorama taken from near the pool steps which shows how the yard appears now, and the privacy it affords when you are in the pool.

I can't wait to see it in another couple of years! 🙂

16/07/2017

Welcome to Harriett, James, Logan & Emily who have just arrived at Breezy Oak Villa for a fun-filled week in July!

13/07/2017

How to beat the summer heat in Florida! Get IN the POOL!! I was actually in Florida in June for the first time ever this year. It's humid! I learned that you can't keep a camera in an air conditioned home and then step outside with it. In the humid air, condensation builds up in the lens FAST! I shot this picture of the pool early on my last morning. (It's crazy how the palms around the pool enclosure continue to grow!)

11/07/2017

After much hard work, the renovation of the MasterBath at Breezy Oak Villa is complete! Take a look at the before and after pics!

30/03/2017

This winter marked the beginning of transforming/renewing the bathrooms at Breezy Oak Villa! Check out before and after on the first one done. More to come!

28/03/2017

A shout out to Sue, Peter, Julia & Lily who arrive at Breezy Oak Villa this week all the way from Nanaimo, BC Canada! Nanaimo bars! Hmmm...

27/03/2017

Welcome to Pleasant Oak Villa! Anne, Steve, Lucy, Benjamin, Joan & Bernard arrived from the UK today!

27/03/2017

Just got another 5-Star Review! You can read it here: http://breezyoakvillas.com/wonderful-property-in-an-excellent-location/

Our family of 4 includes a 4 yr old and 2 yr old and we had an excellent 5 days at The Breezy Oak Villa. The location is excellent (Disney, Universal, Legoland, The Crayola Experience are all withi…

09/10/2016

Well… Hurricane Matthew came and went. Luckily it was far enough off shore that our area escaped with pretty minor damage. In our area, a few trees and power lines down, some pool cage screens torn out and shingles blown off, but we got away without any damage. Honestly, we were very lucky. Others… not so much so. As an expression of appreciation for our good fortune this week, Breezy Oak Villas has made a donation to the Red Cross to support relief efforts for those tragically affected by this storm. We encourage all of our friends, guests and neighbors to do the same! Join us in making a difference for others who need our help, by supporting those who put themselves on the front line! Thanks for helping out!

06/10/2016

Hurricane Matthew reaching Florida now. Rain has been coming down at the villas consistently now. We've put everything lose away. With the path uncertain and the huge size of the storm, we know we will get hit in the Orlando area, just not how hard. Folks on the coast and closer to the Atlantic are definitely in for a rough ride! Here's hoping and praying the storm veers out into the Atlantic. Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone affected over the next few days! Hang in there!

03/10/2016

Canadian Residents Save 25% on 4-Day or Longer Tickets at Disney World! What a great way to beat the $CDN/$US Exchange rate! From now until February 28, 2017. The best part? THESE TICKETS DO NOT EXPIRE! Buy NOW and SAVE, even for a trip years from now!
https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/special-offers/multi-day-tickets/

11/02/2016

Kid&Coe is a boutique vacation rental website featuring 500+ handpicked family & kid friendly vacation rentals from around the world. They've managed to get some great press for themselves and been featured by CondeNast Traveller, The NewYork, Sunday and Los Angeles Times, & Travel+Leisure.

They feature only FOUR vacation rentals in the Orlando/Disney area, including as of this week - Breezy Oak Villa! We're honored to be included on the site (it only took 5 months!!!) and love the photos and write-up they put together for us. If you're looking for kid-friendly places to stay around the world, check them out at http://www.kidandcoe.com

08/01/2016

Check out the second WestJet plane to be decorated with custom Disney graphics! It is always a treat to see the WestJet Disney planes in Orlando!

The newest custom-painted aircraft to join the WestJet fleet features Anna, Elsa and Olaf from the beloved Disney movie, Frozen. WestJetters worked with Disn...

31/12/2015

One of the great things about the villa and its landscaping is how it shows at night. It is so delightful to drive down the street and see the villa shining at the end of our drive, welcoming you home! Our neighbor told us last month that her best friend wants to buy the property because it reminds her of a "mini-resort"! Of course, that is exactly how we want it to feel. These photos were taken just a few weeks ago, and show how warm, welcoming and fun the villa feels at night. Can't you just imagine relaxing outside on a warm evening, listening to the crickets and frogs in the pond out back! And the best thing (especially for a prairie boy like me) no mosquitoes! Go figure!

30/12/2015

Merry Christmas! If you are staying with us over the holidays, one of the options available is to have the villa decorated for Christmas! Our folks who supply our welcome grocery hampers can also provide a Christmas Tree for those guests who would like it! Didn't they do a beautiful job?

(I still can't get over the picture of a Christmas Tree with the pool glowing its blue color (one of many) just outside! I mean… really! Where's the snow? Oh yes! You can always go to Disney! In the evening at Christmas time, they have artificial snow falling in Main Street at the Magic Kingdom, and on New York Street at Hollywood Studios! It's really cool! Or rather… not! As in not cool, meaning not cold!)

01/09/2015

I can't believe it! About a year ago, we booked our 200th guests. That was quite a feat since we started seriously renting in early 2010. It took four years to reach that milestone. But I was just looking at our reservation ID's the other day and guess what? We just took our 300th booking! That's quite a leap ahead in only one year! No wonder I've been so busy with all the bookings! Thank you everyone for being part of our Florida adventure!

21/07/2015

New lead photo for Pleasant Oak Villa on the Vacation Rental listing sites. Can't you just feel the warm sun on your body as you relax in that lounger, with a cool lemonade in a tall glass leaving a wet ring on the deck beside you?

21/07/2015

Ahhh... Summer! Just like at home, Florida is prettiest in the summertime! Everything is so green and lush! Some day I have to visit it myself during the summer months! Photos of Breezy Oak Villa in July 2015.

21/07/2015

Had a talented photographer friend capture Pleasant Oak Villa as the sun was setting earlier this month. What neat colours!

31/05/2015

The NEW LegoLand Hotel has just opened! Of course, the best place to stay in Florida to visit LegoLand is at Breezy Oak or Pleasant Oak Villa, but if you're a fan of Lego (And who isn't?) you have to admit it looks pretty neat to see a full size building that looks like actually WAS built from full size Lego! Complete with fire-breathing dragon, it is interesting that the style of this is child-like, ie it looks like something a kid would have built, and not what an adult professional Lego modeller would do. In other words, it's playful!

LegoLand is just another great reason to visit central Florida and stay with us!

29/05/2015

The WestJet Magic Plane brought us from Orlando this month!

When we flew back home from our last Florida trip, I was surprised and excited to see the WestJet Magic Plane waiting at our gate as the sun came up and revealed it to us. To a big Disney fan like me who loves to fly, this was a treat! I think the plane is beautiful. I took a photo but facebook removed it when I added the video below. That's okay, WestJet's pics are better than mine!

There was a family there with a young girl that I spoke to about it, as they were very excited by it, and we were standing at the window together admiring it. I shared a little of the background info I knew about it, and they seemed interested in it and appreciative of my ability to recall such trivia. Later, we found out on board that WestJet had sent the plane to bring a Children's Wish child and her family home from Orlando, and it turned out to be the family I had earlier been speaking to about the plane.

When we got off in Toronto, WestJet staff allowed us to sneak past the gate leading to customs so we could take a couple of photos of it. (They of course got us back and directed to customs right away!) Later that day we returned to the airport to catch our connecting flight home, and guess which plane had 'magically' appeared back at the gate right next to us?

For those who haven't heard about this plane before, here are a few bits of trivia. And watch the video of it being painted. It was an amazing job!
- The two sides of the aircraft are mirror images of each other in all aspects but one. Guess what it is!
- There are a total of 36 different paint colours on the aircraft.
- It took a team of 26 people 24 days working around the clock to paint the Magic Plane.
- The painting crew consumed more than 150 doughnuts over the 24 days.
- The painting crew consisted of people from four countries, five states, two provinces and 12 cities.
- Over the next five years, the Magic Plane will fly more than 400,000 guests a total of nearly eight million kilometres.

Today, we unveiled a new special livery on one of our aircraft. We call it the , and it took a total of 36 different paint colours to complete the...

28/05/2015

Very interesting development as the Universal Orlando resort continues to evolve. Here's a bit of insider trivia… One of the guys working for Universal's creative department that is developing this project used to work for Disney, and previously was working on a volcano themed water park for Disneyland Paris called Lava Lagoon which never came to be. I guess some ideas don't always die, they just crop up somewhere else!

We're bringing an entirely new water theme park experience to life for our guests in 2017 - Universal's Volcano Bay! Get the announcement details here.

13/05/2015

Spring Cleaning (again!). In addition to pressure-washing the pool cage, furniture and pool deck, the driveway often needs to be pressure-washed as well. We put a special cleaner on it to minimize the growth of algae, but its effectiveness deteriorates over time. Pressure-washing the 120' long driveway at Breezy Oak Villa is a day long task, and by about half way through, one's back is really hurting! How do you get through such a long, painful task? Like eating an elephant, you take it one bite at a time. I do this by 'drawing' sections on the concrete with the washer and then cleaning a section at a time. The algae makes the concrete look dingy when dry, but when wet, it actually turns black! This being the case, cleaning it always brightens up the property dramatically. I don't know how many people understand what a difference it makes, and it is the kind of thing that no one will ever notice once done, but over time some folks would probably notice if it wasn't done! In the middle of the task, I stopped to take a picture of the driveway, just so the difference between before and after could be seen later. Most people would never believe just how dark the algae turns everything in Florida if left to do its thing!

13/05/2015

New Games Room! Just returned from another two weeks of hard work in Florida, making Breezy Oak Villa the best it can be. One of the things we have had on our to-do list was to update the games area at the villa, and especially so after doing the games room at Pleasant Oak Villa. We just felt the quality of the games could be greatly improved and I always wanted to make the floor nicer than the old painted concrete. Check out our new 3/4" slate pool table, full size air hockey with electronic scoring, and Brazillian-cherry flooring. A nice chrome bar table and chairs add to the new atmosphere. Something else was added after this photo was taken, but you'll have to visit to see what it is!