Next Door to Mickey Mouse

Fess up. If you could quit your job, pull your kids out of school, sell your house, and say goodbye to your friends, you'd move to the doorstep of Walt Disney World, in a heartbeat. But who can do that? Scott and Michele Atwood did. And in doing so they built a Disney business. Here's how!

From cold, snowy Michigan, Michele Atwood tried to run her popular Disney site, The Main Street Mouse. It wasn't easy. All the action was many hundreds of miles away, in Orlando. Her dream—her Disney dream—was to earn enough money from The Main Street Mouse to support her family. But from Michigan? No way.

So she shut down the site and got a real job. Except ... she didn't! If Disney couldn't come to her, she'd go to it.

She persuaded her husband, Scott, that it made perfect sense to pull up stakes and rent a house near Disney World, a house they'd never seen, and count on the website to pay the bills.

After some difficult times, Florida began to feel like home, and The Main Street Mouse became one of the biggest, most successful Disney fan sites in the world. And they blogged happily ever after!

The Atwoods' story is a real Disney dream come true.