Give Kids the World Village

While in Florida on Parker's wish trip we stayed at a truly magical place called "Give Kids the World Village". As you might imagine, a lot of kids wish to go to Orlando to visit the theme parks. This used to require the Make-A-Wish chapters to spend a long time trying to make all the arrangements from a considerable distance. In some cases, a child would lose the battle with their illness before all the arrangements could be made to fulfill their wish to visit Orlando. GKTW was founded to address this need. They are a charity based in Kissimmee, Florida that handles all the local details for a child and their family to visit Orlando. They have arrangements with all the local theme parks and attractions to provide free tickets and other accommodations at the parks. They have their own 70-acre resort with almost 200 small villas for families to stay in. They can also provide families with all their meals while there. So when a child makes a wish that involves visiting Orlando theme parks, the wish organization just has to arrange the transportation to Orlando and GKTW takes it from there.

When we arrived at the village we were checked in to our villa. This would be our home away from home for the week. We were in villa 199 which had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and living room. There was even a Christmas tree there for Santa which the kids were very excited about. It was perfect.

Once we got settled in the villa we ordered lunch from Katie's Kitchen, one of the food places at the Village. Katie's Kitchen is run by Boston Market who donates all the food. They brought us some sandwiches, mac & cheese, and drinks. It was really good. Then we headed out to explore the village. Our first stop was the Amberville Station. They have a train there that Parker and Connor enjoyed riding around the station all week. Also at Amberville Station was some video games, a huge model train set, remote control boats, and a 7-hole minature golf course "Dino Putt" that we enjoyed playing on our last day at the village. All day and into the evening there are volunteers at Amberville Station to give us unlimited tokens for the games, set us up with golfing supplies for the mini golf and would give the boys as many rides on the train as they wanted and never lost patience when Parker asked if he could ride again (he was never content with just one ride around the station).

We then moved on to the lake and swimming pool. You can fish there, swim, play on the pirate ship and other stuff. We didn't spend much time there because swimming is pretty much off-limits for Parker and we didn't think it would be very nice to make him watch us. So we went to check out the playground. Their playground is set up as a life-size Candy Land game. It's really fun and the kids enjoyed playing for a little while.

Next stop was the Castle of Miracles. This building is where Parker was able to submit his star. Inside the castle there is a little golden star on the ceiling for each wish child that has visited the village. They've had so many children come that they're in the process of building a new building to make room for more stars! Parker wrote his name and some other scribbles on his star and put it in the box for the Star Fairy. The next day we received a star passport that contained the information on where Parker's star was mounted in the room. It will be there forever. It's breathtaking to see all those stars (over 120,000) that each represent a special child fighting a life threatening illness. These special spirits each leave a little part of themselves in that castle and we were honored for Parker to be represented in such company. Outside the castle is the Enchanted Carousel. This fully handicapped accessible carousel housed inside a giant red mushroom was a favorite for our family. Parker made a habit of asking for a ride every morning before breakfast and every night before dinner. Sometimes we would stay on for a couple rides.

Right next to the Castle of Miracles is the Gingerbread House. This is where we ate breakfast and dinner most nights. Perkins Family Restaurant donates most of the food here and each morning and evening a small army of volunteers serves the meals to each family at the village. They had a special train-shaped kids cart with all the favorites. Parker enjoyed having all the grilled cheese sandwiches he could eat for dinner each night and Connor stuck with his favorite spaghetti.

But perhaps the coolest place to eat was the Ice Cream Palace! This is an ice cream parlor with ice cream provide by Friendly's that is open early in the morning until late at night. Families can go there any time and have as much ice cream as they want. We even had ice cream for breakfast a couple times! Again, the ice cream palace has a couple volunteers, usually a married couple or a parent/child team taking shifts all day and making ice cream sundaes, banana splits, milkshakes, cones, and pretty much any other concoction the kids came up with.

Other fun things at the village included a gift fairy who snuck into our villa each day to leave presents for the kids, horseback riding at Keaton's Corral, Christmas every Thursday where the kids got to see Santa Claus and pick out a present, and almost daily visits from various characters from the different theme parks. Mickey Mouse, Minne Mouse, Goofy, Pluto, Belle, Woody Woodpecker, and Dora the Explorer were among the characters who made special trips to the village for some one on one time with the kids.

What a truly magical place! It was particularly heartwarming to see so many people volunteering at the village, giving so freely of themselves to help our family have an incredible experience. We said several times how fun it would be to come back when our kids are older and spend a few days volunteering at the village to help give other families the same experience we had. It was such a relief to be among people who truly understood, where it didn't matter that Parker was sick. At the village he was just a normal kid and we were just a normal family because we were surrounded by people who were just like us. It was an amazing place to call "home" for a week and we were all sad to leave when the time came to return to our home in Winston-Salem.

The next post will be about our awesome experience at Disney's Magic Kingdom!