A platform cofounded by a UCF graduate offers self-guided tours centered on history, food, outdoor destinations and even Christmas lights, which prove especially popular this time of year.
Built Story is an app and online platform that allows people to make custom, self-guided tours for customers to browse and take for $10 a piece. Orlando has two different holiday light tours — one based in Conway and Belle Isle and another that meanders through Oviedo and over to Casselberry.
Alexina Alonso, Built Story’s co-founder, used her background in history and community engagement to dream up this idea with her husband, Brian, who she met during grad school at Florida International University.
“We want to make stories more accessible and we want to preserve stories. We got into an incubator early on that helped us narrow it down into tours,” she said. “If you have great stories, why don’t you put your stories into our app so that other people can enjoy them?”
Anybody can craft a self-guided tour to share on the platform free of charge. When a customer purchases that $10 tour, the creator of that experience receives a share of the revenue.
A handful of tours are based in the Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, area (where the app’s founders are based) with themes including thrift stores, art galleries, history, cocktails and ghosts. Around the United States, travelers can browse tours of waterfalls, Civil Rights history, murals and architecture.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the app found a new function by providing self-guided Christmas light tours.
“Up here in North Carolina, we had neighbors who decorated for the holidays in huge ways. People were looking for things to do as we were shut down, but there were still Christmas lights,” Alonso said. “We had this history tour app that found a different purpose with Christmas lights.”
Both Orlando tours feature about two dozen stops including Central Florida favorites (and Orlando Sentinel Twinkly Award winners): Johannessen Lights, The Fye’s Crazy Christmas House, Bivona Lights and the touching COVID-19 memorial display in Orlando’s Lake Como neighborhood.
“Storytelling is always our vision and our mission,” Alonso said. “We do our best to gather the stories of the individual Christmas lights or holiday lights and include those. We really want to share that.”
Learn more
To explore Orlando’s self-guided Christmas light tours, visit builtstory.com or download the app on Google Play or the App Store.
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