Which vacation home resorts are closest to Disney World?

Nearly every Orlando rental listing says it is “minutes from Disney.” To see which resorts actually are, we timed the same drive from 17 vacation home resorts, with one method, on one day. If you are still picking an area, start with where to stay in Orlando. This article is the next step: a resort by resort ranking.

Which vacation home resort is closest to Disney World?

Windsor Hills, in Kissimmee, came out on top. From its gate to the Magic Kingdom parking toll plaza is 6.6 miles (10.7 km), about 12 minutes without traffic. To Animal Kingdom it is 3.4 miles (5.4 km), about 8 minutes.

Formosa Gardens, roughly a mile away, is right behind: 13 minutes to Magic Kingdom and 9 to Animal Kingdom. Both sit on the west end of US-192, the road that runs from Kissimmee to Disney, and they reach the parks through World Drive and Osceola Parkway without touching I-4.

Third place is a surprise. Lucaya Village, on the east side of US-192, is 14 minutes from Magic Kingdom and EPCOT and 12 from Animal Kingdom.

How did we measure the drive to the parks?

We used driving routes, not straight-line distance. A resort can look close on a map and still be a long drive, depending on which gate you leave from and which road gets you onto Disney property.

The method was the same for every resort:

• Start: the resort gate, with coordinates from OpenStreetMap (through Nominatim and the mapped gates). Where a resort has more than one exit, we used the one on the fastest route.
• Finish: the parking toll plaza of each park. For Magic Kingdom, that is the World Drive plaza leading to the Transportation and Ticket Center (TTC) lots. We also timed the EPCOT and Animal Kingdom plazas.
• Route: calculated with OSRM on OpenStreetMap data on October 6, 2026, with no traffic.
• Rounding: always up. 11.4 minutes counts as 12.

What the numbers leave out: traffic, time stopped at lights, the line at the toll plaza and the drive from the plaza to a parking space. They also skip the drive inside large communities such as Reunion, ChampionsGate and Storey Lake, where a home can be several minutes from the gate. We did not time Hollywood Studios.

How long is the drive from each resort to Disney?

Between 12 and 23 minutes to Magic Kingdom, without traffic. The gap between first and last place is 11 minutes each way.

Resort	Area	Magic Kingdom	EPCOT	Animal Kingdom	Orlando Best Place homes
Windsor Hills	Kissimmee, west (Old Lake Wilson Rd)	12 min	12 min	8 min	no
Formosa Gardens	Kissimmee, west (US-192)	13 min	14 min	9 min	no
Lucaya Village	Kissimmee, east (US-192)	14 min	14 min	12 min	yes
Storey Lake (The Cove)	Kissimmee, east (Osceola Pkwy)	15 min	15 min	14 min	yes
Encore Resort at Reunion	Reunion (Sinclair Rd)	15 min	16 min	12 min	no
Emerald Island	Kissimmee, west (US-192)	16 min	16 min	12 min	no
Paradiso Grande	Orlando, near SeaWorld	17 min	16 min	16 min	yes
ChampionsGate	ChampionsGate (I-4)	18 min	18 min	18 min	yes
Reunion	Reunion (Sinclair Rd)	18 min	18 min	15 min	no
Terra Esmeralda	Kissimmee, east (Poinciana Blvd)	20 min	19 min	18 min	yes
Vista Cay	Orlando, International Drive	20 min	20 min	20 min	yes
Bella Vida	Kissimmee, east (Yowell Rd)	20 min	20 min	21 min	yes
Festival	ChampionsGate (I-4)	20 min	21 min	20 min	no
Windsor at Westside	Kissimmee, west (Westside Blvd)	21 min	21 min	17 min	no
Lake Berkley	Kissimmee, east (US-192)	21 min	21 min	20 min	no
Solterra	Davenport (Ronald Reagan Pkwy)	21 min	21 min	21 min	yes
Solara	Kissimmee, west (Westside Blvd)	23 min	23 min	18 min	yes

Source: driving routes calculated with OSRM on OpenStreetMap data on October 6, 2026, from the resort gate to each park’s parking toll plaza, without traffic, rounded up. The last column shows whether we manage homes in that resort today.

Two of the fastest routes to Magic Kingdom and EPCOT use a toll road: Reunion takes SR 429, and Vista Cay takes SR 528 (the Beachline Expressway).

Is the resort closest to Magic Kingdom also closest to every park?

Not always. The west end of US-192 has a big edge for Animal Kingdom, which sits in the southwest corner of Disney property. Windsor Hills, Formosa Gardens and Emerald Island get there in 8 to 12 minutes, well under their time to Magic Kingdom.

Resorts on the east side, such as Storey Lake and Lucaya Village, have similar times to all three parks. So do the I-4 resorts, ChampionsGate, Festival and Solterra, at about 18 to 21 minutes to any of them.

Near SeaWorld and International Drive, Paradiso Grande and Vista Cay are also evenly spread across the three parks. If your plan has more Universal and Epic Universe days than Disney days, the math changes, and the area comparison is in where to stay in Orlando.

How long does it really take to get from Kissimmee to Disney?

From the Kissimmee resorts in the table, 12 to 23 minutes to the Magic Kingdom parking toll plaza without traffic. In real life, add stoplights, the line of cars at park opening and, above all, the trip after the plaza.

At Magic Kingdom you park in the TTC lots. A tram takes you to the TTC, and from there you ride the monorail or a ferryboat to the gate. Disney says the monorail starts running 30 minutes before the park opens. At the other three parks, the tram goes straight from the lot to the main entrance. Parking prices and rules are in Disney World and Universal parking.

So the minutes in the table are where the math starts, not the total. To work out when to leave the house, follow the steps in what time to arrive at the Orlando parks.

Does staying 10 minutes closer make a difference?

It does, but less than you might think. On a trip with 5 Disney days, the 11 minute gap between the first and last resort in the table adds up to 110 minutes behind the wheel, counting both ways. If you head back for a pool break midday and return for fireworks, double it.

On the other hand, the size of the home, the pool, the resort amenities and the price usually matter more to the trip than those minutes. A simple rule: decide which park you will visit most, then read that column.

In practice: compare the home, not just the resort. In large communities the house can be a few minutes from the gate. Before you book, ask for the address and run the route in your GPS at the time you plan to leave for the park.

Which of these resorts have Orlando Best Place homes?

We manage homes in 9 of the 17 resorts we timed. The top two, Windsor Hills and Formosa Gardens, are not among them, and we would rather say so up front.

The closest ones where we have homes are Lucaya Village (14 minutes to Magic Kingdom) and The Cove at Storey Lake (15 minutes). Then come Paradiso Grande, Champions Gate, Terra Esmeralda, Vista Cay, Bella Vida, Solterra and Solara.

We also have condos at Hawthorn Suites in Lake Buena Vista, which is not a vacation home resort. With the same method, it is 14 minutes from the Magic Kingdom, EPCOT and Animal Kingdom parking plazas.

To see available homes in this range, with photos and the distance for each one, open our vacation rentals near Disney World. The full list of communities is on the resorts page. Since a car is part of every number above, also read do you need a car in Orlando.