Tag Archives: Tuscan Ridge

Tuscan Ridge Minecraft style

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Our villa hits the digital age

Minecraft was created over a decade ago back in 2009, so it’s about time we created a digital version of our villa, blocks and all. We’ve gone a bit Minecraft crazy in our house thanks to my resident seven year old, so the writing has been on the wall for some time. Check out the video at the bottom of the page!

Tuscan Ridge in Minecraft blocks
Dave’s Florida Villa, without Minecraft

The Minecraft video result

Bored on our return journey from Tampa to Heathrow, we decided to recreate our villa in Florida – pool, hot tub and all! Taking around 4 hours to complete, we think it’s worth it. Even a Minecraft pool guy randomly turns up to keep things clean.

Once created I downloaded a screen capture app on our Kindle Fire and somewhat butchered the end result. Let us know what you think of our Minecraft creation.

Tuscan Ridge recreated in Minecraft

Tuscan Ridge Barbera Drive – May update

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Fully booked until late August!

tuscan ridge florida villa

Tuscan Ridge – Looking very green and fresh for our renters

Fully booked – great news for our vacation rental but not so great for renters trying to make use of our luxury villa and pool in the 2013 summer months.  We have some good availability in September and late November too, so Thanksgiving could be a good time to book the villa and escape the cold weather in Canada or New York.

This has had a knock on effect in our enquiries.  Perhaps it is a quieter part of the year for holiday bookings, but we’ve almost stalled with enquiries recently, I expect due to the lack of availability in the popular months.  Hopefully we can fill September with a lower rate.

The villa is looking excellent.  We’ve added some luxury items – modern linen all around, a new TV, new pictures and better landscaping, plus we’ve had the lawn looked at more regularly and as you can see in the picture it is really setting the villa off in the sunny blue Florida weather.

It’s been a hectic couple of months for the villa.  Small items are being maintained to make sure that our guests have the best of stays, but a big item failed on us in April – namely the pool heater.  This was a big blow to our accounts but we got it fixed in less than a week and now have a brilliant new efficient 100,000 BTU heater thanks to Doc Deans Pools.  We contemplated a solar heater but they just aren’t guaranteed enough in the winter months and if our guests pay for pool heat then they need to have a good service.

We’ve almost conquered the USA tax system.  See some of our other blogs for more details.  Not too much stress, but a lot of forms to fill in.

Our website goes from strength to strength; there have been some minor updates but the blog has helped break through to Google’s first page for the search phrase “Florida Villa” and “Tuscan Ridge”.  This is in the UK – I would be interested to see how it fares in the Canadian and USA market.

 

Public transport from Tuscan Ridge, Davenport

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Our private Tuscan Ridge Villa is located on the US highway 27 about 5 miles north of the I-4 junction, but can you jump on public transport to enable you travel without a car?

In order to travel by public transport from Tuscan Ridge it would be necessary to find the nearest bus stop and most likely take a taxi there. The Davenport area is not particularly pedestrian friendly and often the sidewalks simply end abruptly and you’re forced into another route to walk.

However, there are a number of bus routes you can take advantage of if you do want to use public transport.

On the US-27 there is a 427 main bus route that runs north-south from Haines City all the way up past the 192. Unfortunately there aren’t many stops on the route so the nearest bus stop to Tuscan Ridge is near Posner Park.

Links here:

http://www.golynx.com/plan-trip/route-details.stml?portalProcess_dd_0_1_1=showPublicPosting&calendar_entry_id=1145
http://www.golynx.com/core/fileparse.php/97363/urlt/0055370-link-427.pdf
http://www.golynx.com/resources/pdf/lynx-system-map.pdf

To get to Disney, take the 427 up to the 192 and then another bus East on the 192 that travels up into the Disney Parks. We can’t comment on timings as we personally haven’t tried this route ourselves, preferring to drive to the attractions as opposed to lugging our bits and bobs around on public transport. However public transport is certainly a viable option.

How to rent our Tuscan Ridge villa – the process

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Tuscan Ridge – it’s the place to be!

Tuscan Ridge

Tuscan Ridge at Christmas

It can be daunting the first time you want to rent a private villa.  How do you know the villa is as described?  Is the private pool actually green? How do you pay?  How can you get a level of security that you want?  What if it goes wrong?  There are loads of questions that need answering, so I will do my best here to explain how to rent our Tuscan Ridge villa in Florida.

  1. Please contact us!  We will listen to any of your questions and answer as many as we can.  There’s no such thing as a stupid question. We will respond quickly and honestly. We can send extra pictures over, or simply put your mind at ease.
  2. Once you are sure on your dates, check our availability.  We keep our calendar up to date with all confirmed bookings.  Tentative books are only made for 48 hours until we hear a response back.
  3. Contact us again, and we can hold the dates for 48 hours so long as you say you want them.  Discuss if you want pool heating or not, or any extra services such as a welcome pack, BBQ, and so on.
  4. Once you are happy that our Florida pool and spa are the best in town (which they are!), send us a deposit.  Since this is your hard earned money there are a number of ways you can do this, each with different levels of security but there is always one that will suit your needs.
  5. Transfer by bank account or PayPal, if you are comfortable with this.  Any PayPal fees have to be covered by the renter, although if you transfer by bank account the fees are zero.
  6. Visit our Florida Villa on one of our other listing sites: Tuscan Ridge on Flipkey or Florida Villa on AirBnB.  These sites offer payment security but you will be charged between 3% and 10% for this.  They will take the full amount, plus security deposit.  The full amount gets transferred to us once you check in, and the security deposit is returned automatically once we confirm everything is OK at the end of your stay.
  7. If you transfer the deposit direct to us, then the full amount is due 8 weeks before you stay.  The security deposit is returned either by a PayPal refund or bank account once our management company have checked everything is OK after you have left.  Most people are comfortable with sending money this way, you can call us and have a chat about it to make sure real people own the villa!

 

As you can see, we have every option covered for our private villa, and we are positive that one of the options will suit your needs.  Please contact us if you are still unsure about anything at all.

We have various referrals who have stayed in Tuscan Ridge that you can contact too, for another layer of confidence.

And last of all – if in doubt – contact us!