The Disney-Obsessed Shell Out Millions for Homes Inside This Exclusive Florida Community

Golden Oak’s homes were designed with input from the Imagineers, Disney’s design and research team, with solid wood doors, operational shutters and rounded gutters. Disney also tightly controls communications about Golden Oak: Some homeowners said they were reluctant to speak to The Wall Street Journal for fear of upsetting Disney. Disney declined to make a company representative available for an interview.

When it comes to decorating their homes, many Golden Oak residents embrace the Disney aesthetic. “My home is very, very, very Disney,” Ms. Scaramucci said, “because I’ve collected Disney art and objects for over 30 years.”

One popular design trope within Golden Oak involves subtly adding Mickey Mouse images into larger designs so they are barely noticeable—among plates in the kitchen or rocks in the yard, for instance. These are known as “Hidden Mickeys.”

When Delena and Kevin Tupy bought their Golden Oak home for $5.5 million in 2019, there was already a statue of Lumière from “Beauty and the Beast” by the pool. In another nod to the film, the house has a stained-glass window showing an enchanted rose. Ms. Tupy added her own touches, too: She turned a sitting room into a “Beauty and the Beast”-themed library filled with Disney figurines, movies and books. A large Belle doll, which had been discarded in a closet by the home’s previous owner and which Ms. Tupy rehabilitated and disinfected, reclines on a chaise longue.  

Mr. Tupy, 54, who heads the South Dakota-based investment firm Cresten Capital, said their French chateau-style home in Golden Oak mainly serves as a vacation escape from their primary home in Sioux Falls. The family’s love of Disney World led them to buy at Golden Oak, he said, but it’s also helpful for business, since his company owns a string of gyms in the area. 

Of the couple, Ms. Tupy, 49, is the bigger Disney fan, with a tattoo of Tinker Bell on the back of her leg, her husband said. Mr. Tupy loved Hanna-Barbera and Warner Bros. cartoons as a child, and he has tattoos of characters from shows such as “Looney Tunes,” “The Flintstones” and “The Smurfs.” The tattoos, he said, help provide motivation to exercise. “Nobody wants to see a sagging Smurf,” he said.

Hilda Bacardi, 54, has also embraced the Disney theme throughout her seven-bedroom home at Golden Oak. A blue-and-white “Frozen” room features life-size figures of Anna and Elsa, as well as a bedframe dripping with giant icicles. In a “Finding Nemo” room, a giant shark head protrudes from the wall, an octopus wraps its tentacles around the base of bunk beds, and visitors are greeted by the squawking of seagulls. The showstopper is the “Star Wars”-themed home theater, which is designed with control panels to look like the inside of a star ship, and has large figurines of R2-D2 and Darth Vader.

Ms. Bacardi, whose family founded the Bacardi liquor company, said she grew up on Disney—it was her family’s go-to getaway from their home in Miami. Once she had her own children, she started bringing them to the parks every two or three months. Buying in Golden Oak allowed the family to be closer to their happy place. 

“If you’re a Disney lover, you have it in your blood,” Ms. Bacardi said. “It’s about holding on to innocence and having fun and not taking life too seriously.”

Ms. Bacardi paid $6.989 million for her home in 2018, records show, and it is currently listed for $19 million. If it sold for that amount, the property would set a record for the neighborhood, besting the current record of $12 million, according to Ms. Bacardi’s agent, Shane Croft of Coldwell Banker Realty in Winter Park, Fla. Ms. Bacardi said she isn’t leaving Golden Oak; she owns another smaller home there and is downsizing.

At Ms. Morgan’s house, an office is decorated as an homage to the movie “Mulan,” with Asian-inspired, hand-painted silk wall coverings and Samurai swords collected by her husband, telecom entrepreneur Martin Rubin. The couple paid $7.6 million for their home in 2020, records show.

But Ms. Morgan, 67, said she is more of a “Star Wars” person. (Disney bought Lucasfilm and the Star Wars franchise in 2012.) She is in the midst of turning one of her guest bedrooms into an immersive, interactive experience that makes the occupants feel like they are in a spaceship. “You can look out a porthole and see the galaxy and other spaceships going by,” she said. Control panels will provide information such as when Ms. Morgan is planning to serve breakfast downstairs. Lightsaber props from the 1980s will be mounted on the walls along with other Star Wars memorabilia.

Many Golden Oak homeowners said they have found a sense of community in the neighborhood. Ms. Morgan said she is part of a Golden Oak WhatsApp group that arranges weekly walks through the Disney parks and resorts. They have gone on scavenger hunts in search of kangaroos at Animal Kingdom and topiaries at Epcot’s International Flower & Garden Festival. Ms. Morgan, who has an annual pass to the parks, said she also goes once a week with her friends from Winter Park, the area roughly 30 miles away where she and her husband lived before their move to Golden Oak in 2020. A friend drives down a car full of her girlfriends and they spend the afternoon at one of the parks.

“We just walk around, get our steps in, have lunch and if we want to ride a ride, we’ll ride a ride,” she said. “If not, we just enjoy ourselves for four or five hours and head home.”

Prices for homes in Golden Oak have increased substantially since 2011, when early sales were recorded. Of the 13 home sales that closed in Golden Oak in 2022, the average price was $6.04 million, a 22% increase from the prior year, according to a report by Keith Renner of local brokerage Nectar Real Estate. In 2011, transactions closed for an average of $2.45 million, according to the report. So far in 2023, Mr. Renner said sales volume has slowed thanks to chronically low inventory—there are just two homes currently on the market—but prices are similar to 2022. 

Local agents said some of the recent deals in Golden Oak have been existing residents upsizing or downsizing. Dental entrepreneur Ryan Molis and his wife, Jill Molis, are among the homeowners who have chosen to size up within Golden Oak. They declined to comment on the economics of their trade up, but records show they sold a roughly 3,500-square-foot home for $2.575 million at the end of 2019, and paid $4.875 million for a roughly 6,500-square-foot, six-bedroom estate in early 2020.

Dr. Molis said they use Golden Oak as a getaway from their primary home in the Chicago suburbs. “We knew how magical it was and that, at some point, other people would realize and there would be [no homes] left,” he said. 

Dr. Molis said he doesn’t pay much attention to how much values have risen in Golden Oak.

“This was not a monetary investment,” he said. “This was a mental investment, to help us get away from work and enjoy time with family. You can’t put a price on that.”

Disney staff have accommodated unusual requests from Golden Oak residents. After paying about $1 million for an undeveloped lot in 2012, media entrepreneur Kenneth Kahn wanted to surprise his wife, Jana Kahn, a major Disney fan, with the purchase. He waited for about six months for her birthday, then took her to Golden Oak for what he told her was just a tour. The staff led them to their lot, which had been adorned with a sign that said “Happy Birthday, Jana!” Mr. Kahn said. Mickey Mouse even turned up with balloons to say congratulations. 

Mr. Kahn said buying at Golden Oak was largely an exercise in making his wife and children happy. He likes visiting the parks, he said, but sometimes hangs back to watch football instead. 

Ms. Bacardi said Disney staff helped her son-in-law organize a surprise marriage proposal to her daughter a few years ago. The proposal, which took place inside the Haunted Mansion at Magic Kingdom, featured characters such as a ghostly murderous bride looking for a new husband. Her son-in-law presented a ring to her daughter on a severed hand.

As for the current political climate at Disney, Ms. Morgan said she regrets that the battle over Reedy Creek has become “a political war” and worries for the local small-business owners in the area such as the vendors in nearby Disney Springs, who are concerned about threats of rising taxes under the new governing district. 

A Bernie Sanders supporter, Ms. Scaramucci leans much further left than many residents of Golden Oak. She said she hopes that the DeSantis drama will burn out over time.

“I know that Disney legal is very, very thorough,” she said. “The mouse may be tiny, but it has big teeth.”

But Mr. Tupy said that, in his experience, politics doesn’t come up much when Golden Oak residents get together.

 “Disney is more of a religion,” he said. “We worship the mouse.”

Source: The Wall Street Journal