Post #205469 by GatorRob on Tue, Jan 3, 2006 11:30 AM

I've lived in Florida since 1978. Started in the panhandle (Ft. Walton Beach), went to school at UF (Gainesville) and finally settled in Orlando in 1994. Although Orlando is loaded with service jobs to feed the tourism monster, there are a great number of high tech and professional jobs as well, as there are in most cities. Honestly, most who live in the real city of Orlando and surrounding cities and its 1,000,000+ residents have nothing to do with Disney, even though Disney is what most people think of when they think of Orlando. Disney itself employs something like 27,000 people and then of course there are the multitudes of hotels, restaurants, bars, etc that feed off the tourism generated by Disney, Universal and Sea World (among others).

The biggest problem facing people moving to Orlando (or the whole state for that matter) is the rising cost of housing. My house has nearly doubled in value since I purchased it 6 years ago. If I was just moving to Orlando, I doubt that I could afford to move into my own neighborhood! It's just crazy. But that's going on to some degree all across the country.

The comments about the panhandle being more southern-oriented are correct. However, there are loads of resorts in the panhandle (meaning lots of service jobs) and the beaches are the most beautiful in Florida.

If you move to Florida, just prepare to deal with the hurricanes! At least we have warning when they're coming! Btw, this is off-topic, but I'm sure hoping the MaiKai repairs are coming along okay. We're planning on driving down for my first time next month!