Furnished housing near Arnold Palmer & Winnie Palmer Hospitals.

The campus

Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children and Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Babies are two separate buildings that work as one campus. Arnold Palmer treats pediatric patients, from routine procedures to complex surgery, and Winnie Palmer next door handles labor and delivery along with one of the region's busiest NICUs. Orlando Regional Medical Center sits on the same downtown blocks, so a family moving between a NICU bassinet and an adult ICU bed during the same crisis is not driving across the city to do it.

Two different kinds of guest end up asking us about the same three homes. Pediatric and NICU travel nurses, respiratory therapists and other allied-health clinicians come on contracts that run thirteen weeks or longer and need a furnished house ready before the first shift starts. Parents of a child in surgery or a newborn in the NICU need something else: a kitchen instead of a cafeteria, a bedroom for a sibling who came along, and an agreement flexible enough to survive a discharge date that keeps moving. Both groups end up close to the campus for the same practical reason: a short drive, and a full house for less than the cost of a month of downtown hotel rooms.

Arnold Palmer Hospital in Orlando 01 · Miosotis Jade · CC BY-SA 4.0 · resized from 2427x1826

The homes closest to Arnold Palmer and Winnie Palmer

Fruit Tree Home in Holden Heights is the closest of our homes to this campus, at about 4 minutes by road. Amelia’s Arena Retreat in Parramore and Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando in Washington Shores are both about 9 minutes away, in different directions from downtown, and close enough that a family or a rotating clinician can be back at the hospital in under ten minutes.

South of Downtown

Holden Heights

Fruit Tree Home

3 bd 2 ba Sleeps 10

6 min downtown · 5 min ORMC · 13 min Universal

Travel Nurse & MedicalInsurance & Displacement

Downtown Orlando

Parramore / Downtown Edge

Amelia’s Arena Retreat

4 bd 2 ba Sleeps 8

7 min downtown · 9 min ORMC · 16 min Universal

Travel Nurse & MedicalInsurance & Displacement

West Orlando

Washington Shores

Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando

4 bd 2 ba Sleeps 13

7 min downtown · 7 min ORMC · 16 min Universal

Travel Nurse & MedicalInsurance & Displacement

Fruit Tree Home is a three-bedroom, two-bathroom bungalow with full-size laundry on site, keyless entry and a fenced backyard with mature shade trees, and it carries 142 Airbnb reviews at a 4.83 rating. Its bedrooms are small, which suits one clinician or a couple well, and the house still sleeps up to 10 for a bigger group. Amelia’s Arena Retreat has four bedrooms and two bathrooms, one of them with its own attached bathroom, a fenced backyard, and a dining area with seating for four, sleeping up to 8 and giving clinicians on different shifts, or a family sharing the house, some separation. Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando has four bedrooms and two bathrooms, sleeps up to 13, and sits on a shaded lot under mature oaks, with blackout curtains in its bedrooms, a detail worth knowing if you are trying to sleep during the day between overnight hospital visits or after a night shift.

Each of the three also sits close to more than the hospital campus. Amelia’s Arena Retreat is about 7 minutes from downtown Orlando and 6 to 8 minutes from the Kia Center and Inter.co Stadium, useful if a shift happens to line up with a game or a downtown errand. Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando is about 7 minutes from downtown and about 3 minutes from Camping World Stadium, on a shaded lot that keeps the afternoon sun off the house. Fruit Tree Home is about 6 minutes from downtown, close enough that a coffee run or a trip to the courthouse does not eat into an afternoon off.

Where the homes sit around the campus

The map places each home on its true compass bearing from the campus, with its distance from the center standing in for drive time by road rather than straight-line miles. Fruit Tree Home sits south of downtown in Holden Heights, close enough that surface streets get you there without an expressway. Amelia’s Arena Retreat sits west of downtown in Parramore, close to the edge of the Orlando Health campus itself. Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando sits southwest of downtown in Washington Shores, near Camping World Stadium.

Homes in different directions can land on the same drive time, so use the map and the exact minutes together. The Holden Heights page covers the close-in south side, Parramore covers the downtown edge, and Washington Shores covers the southwest side by the stadium. Farther out, the Pine Hills homes run 13 to 16 minutes from the campus, the Lockhart home is 17, and the same pattern holds across the rest of the portfolio: the longest drive among all thirteen homes to this campus is from Wekiwa Home on the far west side of the metro, about 19 minutes.

The shift commute

Every drive time on this page is a typical road-routing time without traffic, and downtown Orlando is where traffic adds the most. From the Amelia and Dollins houses, the route in runs on SR-408 or I-4, and both slow down during the morning and evening peaks. A day shift starting at 7 a.m. or a night shift starting at 7 p.m. mostly drives against the heaviest flow, since you are headed toward downtown as the rush leaves it; a 3 p.m. start meets the afternoon build-up head-on instead. From Fruit Tree Home, downtown is close enough that surface streets do the job without an expressway. Weekend shifts are the easiest drive of the week, since downtown traffic thins out considerably on Saturdays and Sundays.

SR-408 is a toll road, billed by transponder or by license plate. Anyone driving in for three or four shifts a week over a thirteen-week rotation comes out ahead setting up a SunPass or E-PASS transponder in the first week rather than paying the higher plate-billed rate every trip. I-4 through downtown carries no toll but the heaviest traffic volume in the metro, and its express lanes are tolled separately from the regular lanes.

Parking is never the problem at these three homes: each one has its own driveway, so nobody is squeezed onto the street, and a clinician coming home from a night shift pulls straight in. On the transit side, the LYNX Central and Church Street SunRail stations sit downtown on the regional line toward Winter Park, Sanford and Kissimmee, and the free LYMMO bus circulates the downtown core. Neither Amelia’s Arena Retreat nor Fruit Tree Home is a walk from a station, but both are a short drive from LYNX Central for anyone who wants to leave the car home some days.

For travel clinicians

A monthly agreement matched to your contract is the core of what we offer. You get a written agreement naming the home, the dates, the rate and the deposit, plus itemized monthly receipts your agency can process for a housing stipend or a reimbursement. If your agency needs to be the party on the agreement instead of you, we write it that way, with a W-9 and a certificate of insurance available on request. Extensions run month by month at the same terms, so if a thirteen-week NICU or pediatric contract turns into twenty-six weeks, tell us as soon as you know and we will hold the following month where we can.

The three homes closest to the campus are set up for the odd hours a rotation brings. Fruit Tree Home has full-size laundry on site, so scrubs go straight into the wash after a shift instead of waiting on a laundromat trip. Amelia’s Arena Retreat has one bedroom with its own attached bathroom, useful when travelers on the same lease keep different shift schedules. Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando has blackout curtains in its bedrooms, which matters here more than almost anywhere on a night-shift schedule. If a pet is coming with you for the rotation, tell us when you book; several of our homes accept pets, and the policy and any deposit are confirmed in writing before you commit. Our travel nurse and medical housing page covers the stipend paperwork and the homes near the other hospital campuses in the metro.

Guests let themselves in with keyless entry or a lockbox, and arrival notes with the code or the key location arrive a few days before check-in, so a shift that starts the same day you land is not held up waiting on us to meet you at the door.

For families of a patient

A hospital stay for your own child, whether it is a scheduled surgery at Arnold Palmer or an open-ended NICU stay at Winnie Palmer, is not something you can plan a hotel budget around. A house minutes away changes what those weeks look like: grandparents can rotate through without paying for a second room, a sibling gets an actual bedroom instead of a fold-out cot, meals get cooked instead of bought every day, and whichever parent is doing the overnight vigil has somewhere quiet to sleep during the day.

Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando sleeps up to 13 across four bedrooms, room enough for extended family to stay together under one roof during a long NICU stay, and its yard shaded by mature oaks gives restless kids somewhere to be outside without leaving the property. Amelia’s Arena Retreat and Fruit Tree Home both work well for a smaller family, and Fruit Tree Home's fenced backyard is a plus for young children who need somewhere to burn off energy between hospital visits. Fruit Tree Home also has keyless entry, so you can check in at any hour without waiting to meet someone at the door, useful if you are arriving straight from an emergency room visit.

We are careful about how we describe this, because the situation itself is hard enough. We are a housing provider, not part of the hospital, and we are not affiliated with Orlando Health, Arnold Palmer or Winnie Palmer. What we can do is answer the same day, put the rate and deposit in writing, and keep the agreement flexible for a discharge date nobody can predict. All three homes are also available by the night or the week through their Airbnb and Vrbo listings, for a shorter admission or a scheduled procedure with a known date.

What's in the house

All three of these homes come furnished and ready from the first night: beds and linens, a kitchen stocked with cookware and dishes, Wi-Fi from day one, and private parking. Exact inclusions are confirmed in writing when you book, since a few details vary from house to house.

Exact inclusions vary a little by home and are confirmed in writing when you book.

None of the three has a pool; they are ordinary residential houses. Amelia’s Arena Retreat, Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando and Fruit Tree Home all publish a street address on the site, so you can look up the block before you commit. Bed and bath counts are the counts published in each home's own listing, and a sofa is never counted as a bed.

Living near the campus

Fruit Tree Home and Amelia’s Arena Retreat sit on the close-in, walkable side of the portfolio, covered in our downtown and close-in area guide; Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando is a few minutes west in our Washington Shores and west Orlando guide. For groceries, the Publix at The Paramount on Lake Eola is the downtown option, and there is a Publix on South Orange Avenue near Holden Heights; from Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando, the Walmart Supercenter on West Princeton Street or the international grocers of Pine Hills cover a bigger weekly shop.

Holden-Parramore Historic District-1 · Visitor7 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · resized from 5472x3648

For food, Nikki's Place on South Orange Blossom Trail has served soul food since 1999, a few minutes from Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando. Closer to downtown, College Park's Edgewater Drive has the neighborhood's cafes, Foxtail Coffee and Cups & Pups Coffee among them. For time outdoors, Lake Eola Park downtown has a roughly one-mile sidewalk loop and swan boats to rent, and Lake Lorna Doone Park by Camping World Stadium, close to Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando, has a walking loop, outdoor fitness stations and a splash pad. The Downtown Orlando YMCA on North Mills Avenue is a full-service gym with two pools. Pharmacies sit along Orange Blossom Trail and West Colonial, plus the Publix pharmacy at Lake Eola and the CVS and Walgreens downtown.

East of downtown, the Mills 50 district has the largest Vietnamese-American community in Florida, and the pho and banh mi along Mills Avenue are the real thing. North of downtown, Loch Haven Park brings together the Orlando Museum of Art, the Orlando Science Center and the Mennello Museum of American Art, and Harry P. Leu Gardens, a fifty-acre botanical garden on the lake, sits nearby, both a short drive from the Amelia and 25th Street houses on a day off between hospital visits.

A car covers these errands easily. The one exception is downtown itself, where LYNX Central is the main bus hub, the free LYMMO bus circulates the core, and the SunRail line runs north and south for anyone who wants to leave the car parked some days. Between the two clusters, groceries, food, parks and pharmacies are all a short drive from whichever of the three homes you book, so daily life does not add much time on top of the hospital drive itself.

What guests said

These are real reviews from Fruit Tree Home's own Airbnb listing, quoted verbatim with the reviewer's name and month. Every home page carries its own set, and the complete wall of reviews across all thirteen houses is on our reviews page.