I don't understand my here in Central Florida no one is offering Vinyl Pools. If I was young and wanted to start a business in this area, Leesburg to Ocala, it would be a vinyl pool business.
In 1978 I built my own home as general contractor in Pensacola and had a 16x32 vinyl pool 8' deep with steps and a ladder and decking installed. It took two weeks total and price was $5,000. Here's a photo right after installation.
Recently I did a search on Zillow of my old address and found the home was for sale in 2012 with photos still online. Here's a picture of the same pool 35 years later, looks like it has held up fairly good and the home sold for four times the price.
In 1980, two years after I built this home I sold the home and built a nicer, bigger home and used the same pool builder (Don Phillips Pools) but this time went with an 18x36 pool, with diving board and underwater lights and more decking, total price was $7700, that's hundred not thousands.
Initially my first pool was only Don's second pool he built, he started in business in '78. In the two years until he built my second pool, he had three crews working full time building pools every two weeks. In fact Don had bought himself a $300K fishing boat and was one of the top professional fisherman in the Pensacola area. So I know even though his prices were extremely low, he was making a good living. With inflation of course we'll never see those prices again but they would certainly be less than what T&D and the others are charging. A vinyl pool is much more comfortable. Your feet are walking on vinyl bottom rather than hard concrete. If your knees hit the sidewalk, the walls are cushioned with a thin layer of foam. BTW, birdcages are not used in the Pensacola area, just fenced yards around pools.