A long hospital stay changes the shape of a family's life. Someone is at the bedside most hours. Someone else is minding children, working, or driving in from out of town. Everyone is tired. A hotel room near the hospital solves the first night and starts to fail by the first week. This is a practical guide to the alternative, a whole house a few minutes from the campus, written for the person who has to organize it.
Which hospitals, which homes
Orlando's two big downtown campuses are close to our homes:
- Orlando Health's downtown campus includes Orlando Regional Medical Center, Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children and Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Babies. The 25th Street House is about five minutes away by road; the Dollins House, the Sunset Lake House and the Amelia House are seven to nine.
- AdventHealth Orlando on Rollins Street is about nine to twelve minutes from Amelia’s Arena Retreat, the Katherine House and the Londonderry House.
- Nemours Children's Hospital and the Orlando VA at Lake Nona are 32 to 42 minutes from our homes. We say that plainly because a family that needs to be five minutes from Nemours should look near Lake Nona; a family that wants a house and a lower monthly rate and can manage the drive is welcome with us.
Each home page lists its drive time to every campus, and the near-ORMC and near-AdventHealth pages sort all thirteen homes by minutes.
What a house does for a family in this situation
Sleep in shifts. Separate bedrooms mean the person coming off a night at the bedside can sleep at 9 am while the household carries on.
Eat real food. Hospital cafeterias and takeout wear a family down over weeks. A kitchen, a freezer and a dining table are a small thing that becomes a big one.
Keep children in a routine. A yard, a living room, a TV, a bedroom of their own. The Entertainment House and the Meet & Play House have games; WinterPark Home has a park a short walk away.
Wash clothes. Every home has a washer and dryer.
Park without paying. Every home has a private driveway. Hospital visitor garages are a daily cost and a daily hunt; at the house the car is at the door.
Have room for the people who come. Grandparents, siblings, a caregiver. Two to six bedrooms depending on the home.
Booking with an uncertain end date
Discharge dates move. Book by the month and extend as you go; we understand the timeline and we keep the terms simple. If a stay ends earlier than planned, tell us as soon as you know. We provide a written agreement and receipts to whoever is paying, whether that is the family, an insurer or a charity.
Where to ask for help
Ask the hospital's social worker or case manager early. They know which patient-assistance programs cover lodging, which charities help families in this situation, and what your insurance may reimburse. Families with a child in care may qualify for a Ronald McDonald House, which operates in Orlando near the children's hospitals; ask the care team. If those options are full or you need more space than a room, that is where a house comes in. The patient and family page has the homes and the drive times.
Matching the home to the hospital campus
Orlando Health's downtown campus and AdventHealth Orlando sit only a few minutes apart on the map, but when you are driving to a bedside two or three times in a single day, a few minutes stop being a rounding error. The hospital that actually admitted your family member matters more than the general side of town you pick. Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children and Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Babies share Orlando Health's downtown site with ORMC, so a home close to one of the three is close to all three. AdventHealth Orlando, a short drive north on Rollins Street, is a separate campus with its own set of numbers, and the difference between the two campuses is worth sorting out before you book anything.
Two of our thirteen homes are the ones we point families toward first for this kind of stay.
Northwest OrlandoWinterPark Home
13 min downtown · 10 min AdventHealth · 26 min Universal
South of DowntownFruit Tree Home
6 min downtown · 5 min ORMC · 13 min Universal
West OrlandoGame Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando
7 min downtown · 7 min ORMC · 16 min Universal
WinterPark Home, in the Lockhart section of northwest Orlando, has a screened porch and a private concrete driveway, and a community park with a playground and courts sits a short walk from the front door, which matters if other children have come along and need somewhere to burn off energy between hospital visits. Fruit Tree Home, in Holden Heights just south of downtown, has keyless entry, so nobody has to hunt for a lockbox code after a long day at the hospital, plus full-size laundry on site and fruit trees in a fenced yard for a few minutes outside.
If the admission is specifically at Arnold Palmer or Winnie Palmer, Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando and Amelia’s Arena Retreat are also worth a look. Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando sits on a shaded lot of mature oaks with four bedrooms that have blackout curtains, useful for whoever is trying to sleep during the day after an overnight stretch at the bedside. Amelia’s Arena Retreat, on the Parramore edge of downtown, has a bedroom with its own attached bathroom, a small amount of privacy that counts for a great deal when the house is full of tired people taking turns at the hospital. Both sit within nine minutes of the downtown campus by road.
The back-and-forth day of visiting hours
A hospital stay is not one commute a day, it is several short ones. Coffee and a change of clothes in the morning, back for afternoon rounds, home for dinner, back again before visiting hours end. Across a week that adds up to a lot of driving, which is why the exact number of minutes on a home's drive-time table matters more here than it would for a single daily commute to an office. By road and without traffic, the closest of our homes to Arnold Palmer and Winnie Palmer is four minutes away and the farthest is nineteen; to AdventHealth Orlando the range across all thirteen homes runs from eight minutes up to sixteen.
Orlando's rush hours stretch the longer routes on that list more than the shorter ones, so a drive that reads as fifteen minutes on the page can run longer at eight in the morning or five in the evening, right when a lot of families are making the same trip for a shift change. If two family members are trading time at the bedside, it is worth timing the handoff around traffic rather than the clock alone. A home a few minutes closer to the campus buys back some of that margin every day of what can turn into a multi-week stay.
The home closest to AdventHealth Orlando specifically is Fruit Tree Home, at eight minutes. Amelia’s Arena Retreat follows at nine minutes, and Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando, WinterPark Home and City and Stadium Sanctuary Vibes are all at ten. Those five sit on different sides of the city, so which one makes sense still depends on which side of downtown you would rather be driving from during those repeat trips. Ask us which campus you are dealing with and we will point straight at the shorter list instead of the long one.
When a child is admitted to Arnold Palmer or Winnie Palmer
Arnold Palmer Hospital in Orlando 01 · Miosotis Jade · CC BY-SA 4.0 · resized from 2427x1826
Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children and Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Babies sit on the same downtown block as ORMC, so the drive-time numbers for that whole Orlando Health campus apply here too. A NICU stay or a long pediatric admission runs on its own clock: feedings, rounds and visits that do not line up with a normal day, plus the pull of needing to get back quickly if something changes overnight. Fruit Tree Home is the closest of our thirteen homes to this specific campus, about four minutes away by road without traffic, which is as close as any of our current homes get to Arnold Palmer and Winnie Palmer.
If you have other children at home who need some normal routine to keep going while one parent is mostly at the hospital, a whole house gives them something a hotel room cannot: a yard, a living room and their own beds to retreat to, which keeps the household from collapsing into a single shared hotel room. Amelia’s Arena Retreat has a fenced backyard with mature shade trees for exactly that kind of downtime between hospital trips, and Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando, a similar distance from the campus, has four bedrooms so siblings are not sharing a pull-out couch on top of everything else.
The same applies on the maternity side at Winnie Palmer. A high-risk pregnancy can keep you close to Orlando for weeks before delivery, and a baby who needs extra time after birth keeps you close for weeks after. The math stays the same: a closer home saves real minutes on every trip, and a kitchen and a bed you do not have to share with a stranger down the hall matter over a stretch that runs longer than anyone plans for at the start.
Cooking through a long hospital stay
Cafeteria food and the vending machines on a hospital floor are fine for a day or two. Across two or three weeks they wear a family down, and a kitchen you can actually cook in becomes one of the more valuable things in the house. From Amelia’s Arena Retreat and Fruit Tree Home on the downtown edge, the closest grocery is the Publix at The Paramount on Lake Eola, at 400 East Central Boulevard, a compact store built for exactly this kind of quick stop between hospital trips. From WinterPark Home in Lockhart, the Walmart Supercenter on West Princeton Street and Presidente Supermarket on Pine Hills Road cover a fuller pantry restock when you have a few minutes to spare.
Every home comes with a stocked kitchen: cookware and dishes are there from day one, so a family that has been living on hospital food for a week can go back to the house and put together a real meal instead of another drive-through order eaten in the car. Seven of the thirteen homes, among them Amelia’s Arena Retreat, Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando and Fruit Tree Home, list a stove and a full-size refrigerator among their own kitchen features; tell us if that specific setup matters for your stay and we will point you to one of those seven. It is a small thing on paper and a large one by the third week of an admission that started as a few days. Freezer space matters too, for the casseroles a neighbor drops off or the groceries you bought in bulk on the one day you had time for a real shop.
Downtown proper and Church Street, six to seven minutes from the Holden Heights and Parramore homes, cover the wider range of restaurants for the nights nobody has the energy to cook at all, and Nikki's Place on South Orange Blossom Trail, a soul food spot near Washington Shores, is the closest sit-down option for families staying at Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando or City and Stadium Sanctuary Vibes.
The laundry a hospital stay produces
A hospital stay produces more laundry than a normal week away from home. Bedding from a pull-out chair, the same two outfits worn for days because nobody wants to leave the floor long enough to pack more, kids' clothes if they came along, and whatever gets spilled or stained along the way. Doing all of that at a laundromat between hospital visits is its own kind of exhausting, on top of everything else a family in this situation is already carrying. Every one of our thirteen homes has its own washer and dryer, so you can run a load whenever there is a gap in the day, at the house, without a laundromat's hours to work around.
Exact inclusions vary a little by home and are confirmed in writing when you book.
Four of the homes, The Clue House, Fruit Tree Home, Cozy Home and Wekiwa Home, have full-size laundry units rather than a stacked or combo unit, which matters if the stay runs long enough that you are doing a load every day or two rather than once a week. Tell us if that is a priority when you inquire, and we will point you toward one of those four, since the difference is real once you are three weeks into an admission nobody expected to run that long.
The laundry is part of the house itself, not a coin-operated room down a hallway you have to walk to with a bag over your shoulder after a full day at the hospital.
Room for the people who come to help
A long admission usually pulls in more than one person: a spouse, a parent, a sibling who flew in to take a shift at the bedside so someone else can finally sleep or go back to work for a few days. A hotel room does not stretch to fit that kind of arrangement. Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando has four bedrooms and sleeps up to thirteen on a shaded lot of mature oaks, about seven minutes from Orlando Health and ORMC. The Clue House, a little further out in Pine Hills, has six bedrooms and sleeps up to fifteen, about twelve minutes from AdventHealth Orlando and twelve from ORMC, with an in-home desk if someone in the group still has to work remotely between shifts.
| Home | Orlando Health / ORMC | AdventHealth Orlando | Arnold Palmer & Winnie Palmer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fruit Tree HomeHolden Heights · 3 bd · 2 ba · sleeps 10 | 5 min | 8 min | 4 min |
| Game Day Getaway-Downtown OrlandoWashington Shores · 4 bd · 2 ba · sleeps 13 | 7 min | 10 min | 9 min |
| City and Stadium Sanctuary VibesWashington Shores / Lake Sunset · 3 bd · 1 ba · sleeps 8 | 8 min | 10 min | 9 min |
| Amelia’s Arena RetreatParramore / Downtown Edge · 4 bd · 2 ba · sleeps 8 | 9 min | 9 min | 9 min |
| Meet. Play. Stay.Malibu Groves · 3 bd · 2 ba · sleeps 9 | 10 min | 12 min | 11 min |
| PiedmontWashington Shores · 4 bd · 3 ba · sleeps 14 | 11 min | 14 min | 12 min |
| Entertainment HomePine Hills · 3 bd · 2 ba · sleeps 11 | 12 min | 13 min | 13 min |
| The Clue HousePine Hills / Rosemont · 6 bd · 3 ba · sleeps 15 | 12 min | 12 min | 13 min |
| Cozy HomePine Hills · 3 bd · 1 ba · sleeps 8 | 12 min | 13 min | 13 min |
| BlueEarthHiawassee Villas / Pine Hills · 4 bd · 2 ba · sleeps 7 | 15 min | 16 min | 16 min |
| Downtown & Stadium Cozy RetreatPine Hills · 3 bd · 1.5 ba · sleeps 8 | 15 min | 12 min | 16 min |
| WinterPark HomeLockhart / Rosemont · 3 bd · 1 ba · sleeps 8 | 16 min | 10 min | 17 min |
| Wekiwa HomeHiawassee · 2 bd · 2 ba · sleeps 6 | 18 min | 16 min | 19 min |
Typical road-routing times without traffic; Orlando rush hours add to the longer routes.
The table above lines up every home against the three downtown hospital campuses, so you can weigh a shorter drive against more bedrooms for your specific group. A solo parent keeping vigil at the bedside usually wants the closest possible home and does not need the extra rooms. A family bringing in three generations to help with other kids, or splitting overnight shifts across four adults, usually does better trading a few extra minutes on the drive for a house that can hold everyone under one roof.
Piedmont, also in west Orlando, adds a fourth option with four bedrooms, three bathrooms and a parking pad that fits several vehicles, useful if the family arriving to help is driving in rather than flying.
Getting into the house without a front desk
None of our homes have a front desk, which is the point of a whole house over a hotel. You get arrival notes by email a few days before check-in with either a door code or a lockbox location, and after that anyone in the family who has the code can come and go without waking someone else up or checking in with a stranger at three in the morning. Fruit Tree Home uses keyless entry specifically; most of the others use a lockbox with a code we send ahead of time. Either way, once you have the code the house runs on your family's schedule, not one set by hospital visiting hours or anyone else's shift change.
- Tell us if more than one family member needs the door code, since people will likely be coming and going at different hours.
- Let us know right away if the admission moves to a different hospital campus, so we can check whether a closer home is open.
- Ask about pets before you commit. Several of our homes accept them, and the policy and any deposit are confirmed in writing.
- Keep one phone number for whoever is coordinating the house, separate from whoever is coordinating with the care team, so the two conversations do not get tangled.
None of this adds paperwork beyond a normal booking. The agreement covers the dates, the rate and the deposit and is sent before you arrive, so the house is the one part of a hard week that does not ask for another form to fill out at a desk.
What families staying near the hospital said
The reviews below are real, pulled verbatim from the homes' own Airbnb listings, with the reviewer's name and the month they stayed. The full set for every home is on our reviews page.
"Súper recomendable para familias grande yo lugar muy acogedor Tranquilo limpio y seguro"
"Michelle war immer erreichbar und hat unser Problem gelöst, wenn wir eins hatten. Das Haus liegt in einer ruhigen Nachbarschaft und ist komfortabel ausgestattet. Die Unterkunft hat alle Erwartungen erfüllt! Das Preis-Leistungverhältnis ist hervorragend."
"Ido like this home is nice and clean Eveithing it whas good thank you for let me stay there"
Theresa Marie, who stayed at Fruit Tree Home in November 2025, wrote: 'Beautiful home! Host was extremely detailed & accommodating! The house was clean and spotless and had complimentary beverages that were GREATLY appreciated!' That is the same house that sits about four minutes from Arnold Palmer and Winnie Palmer, and the clean, ready feeling that quote describes counts for more than usual when you are walking in straight from a hospital corridor rather than off a flight.
Ana, who stayed at Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando in June 2026, wrote that the place was 'clean, comfortable, and exactly as described.' It is plain feedback, but it is the kind that matters most when you are choosing a house sight unseen during a week you did not plan for.
More reading for families near the hospital
Two of our guides go further into the practical side of a stay like this one.
Monthly Furnished Rentals: What's Usually Included
A plain rundown of the furniture, kitchen, linens, utilities, and internet you can usually expect in a furnished monthly home, and the questions worth asking before you book.
Read →
Your First Week in a Furnished Home in a New City
A practical, day-by-day checklist for getting comfortable in a furnished monthly home when you move to a new city for work.
Read →One lays out exactly what comes furnished in a monthly home, so you know what to expect before you arrive with nothing but a bag from the car and a change of clothes. The other is a day-by-day checklist for the first week in an unfamiliar house in an unfamiliar city, useful if this is the first time your family has had to set up somewhere on almost no notice.
If you would rather just talk it through, call or email us with the hospital and the rough dates. We will answer the same day with two or three homes that fit, the exact drive time to that campus, and what is included in each one.
