Tell me a little about WDW jobs and houseing

[bigoldkid]

Hello all. I live in Pennsylvania and retired in 2008 at 62. Fill great yet. I try and go down to Disney World at least once a year. To all and those who are already down there from other states. Is it easy to get a part time job at WDW, and most of all, can a person get a low cost house to rent or buy in maybe Clermont or near by Disney?? For me renting is probably the way to go at first, but still would like to know about the housing price market. Thanks

[Ed]

We moved down from Maryland in 2002. I was already retired from two careers and started a new one with the federal government. DW was retired from one previous career. She was able to land a fulltime job at WDW relatively easily, and has been there ever since.

We got very lucky as far as housing is concerned. We lived in our 35' RV for a few months so we could home shop at our leisure. And we located a perfect-for-us home that was an estate sale at a hard-to-beat price.

But bear in mind that this was in 2002/2003 - - things have changed quite a bit since then. :( The housing market has undergone drastic changes, unemployment is very high, the job market is not nearly as good as it was then.

Fortunately (or UNfortunately depending on which side of the situation you are on), there are lots of tremendous home deals available now, thanks to a very high foreclosure rate and "short sales". Homes that sold for $300K in 2005 can now be had for about half of that. Someone else's misfortune can be to your benefit, as terrible as that sounds.

I'm not sure what WDW's hiring status is at the moment, but there was a recent news article that said that Universal and SeaWorld were both gearing up seasonal hiring for the upcoming Spring Break/Summer season; it stands to reason that WDW will be doing so as well.

[murphy1]

The apartment rental rate there goes anywhere from $600/month up. A lot of families live up towards Longwood and Lake Mary, off of I-4. You might want to look at The Villages over Lake County, a very active retirement community. They even have a group that works at Disney and I think they drive over to work together. There are some great deals like Ed said, if you want a nice place with less hassle, you might want to check out condos. My aunt is in Clermont and got a short sale on a second house for a steal.

[badkitty]

The traffic through downtown though is awful and to me, it is a long commute from Lake Mary to Disney.

[Nate's Grandpa]

Information on available jobs at Disney: http://www.disney.go.com/DisneyCareers/wdwcareers/hourly/index.html

I would love to do the same thing myself in about 3 years.

Good luck!

[dnickels]

If you're going to be working at WDW you might take a look at Winter Garden. It's a bit closer than Clermont and immediately north of Disney. There's even a rear entrance to property at the back of the Magic Kingdom. I've lived in the 'Independence' subdivision, there are some apartments there, Falcon Square I think they're called.

I would definitely stay on the SW side of Orlando (Winter Garden, Ocoee, Oakland, Clermont), Lake Mary is way too far to be commuting to work, especially if you're just working part time. You'd end up spending too much of your money on gas going back and forth in addition to the time wasted sitting in a car to make it worth it for Disney wages.

The Villages is also a bit of a drive but I have some retired friends who absolutely love it there. Might be worth checking it out, especially if as someone mentioned earlier they have a group that works/commutes to Disney regularly.