Yesterday morning I took our dog, Riley, on a long walk around the Margaritaville Orlando resort that has been our home for the last three winters. It was our ceremonial last walk before moving to our own vacation place in Celebration, Florida.

I really enjoyed the time that we spent here at the Margaritaville resort. The colorful, pastel-hued cottages were cute & comfortable and the pools/restaurants were gorgeous. While a resort named Margaritaville may sound like a tacky, noisy, party zone – that wasn’t the case at all. The resort has a very relaxed island vibe that is actually akin to one of Jimmy’s slow, acoustic numbers.

While we enjoyed this colorful place, we never made close friends here in 3 years at the resort. While a fair number of the cottages have year-round residents – a few who we met – most are only used on the weekends by renters. We would chat with these folks a time or two, and then they would be gone.

In contrast, as we have been spending time in Celebration over the last couple weeks, we’ve met many neighbors. They go out of their way to say hello and you know they are going to be there in a week. I would dare say we have met more people in 1 week in Celebration than we met in three winters at Margaritaville.

In the end, the neighborliness was another draw for us to buy into a ‘real town’ instead of a vacation resort. Do you want to live near people that you can build an ongoing, relationship with?

How close are you with your neighbors?

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