The Walt Disney World Resort, also called Walt Disney World or Disney World, is an entertainment resort complex in Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista, Florida, United States, near the cities of Orlando and Kissimmee. Opened on October 1, 1971, the resort is operated by Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, a division of The Walt Disney Company. The property covers nearly 25,000 acres, of which half has been used. The resort comprises four theme parks, two water parks, 31 themed resort hotels, nine non-Disney hotels, several golf courses, a camping resort, and other entertainment venues, including the outdoor shopping center Disney Springs.
Disney California Adventure Park, commonly referred to as California Adventure or by its acronym DCA, is a theme park located at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. It is owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company through its Parks, Experiences and Products division. The 72-acre (29 ha) park is themed after the history and culture of California, which celebrates the adventure of the state through the use of various Disney, Pixar and Marvel Studios properties. The park opened on February 8, 2001 as Disney's California Adventure Park and is the second of two theme parks built at the Disneyland Resort complex, after Disneyland Park.
The Disneyland Resort, commonly known as Disneyland, is an entertainment resort in Anaheim, California. It is owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company through its Parks, Experiences and Products division and is home to two theme parks, three hotels, and a shopping, dining, and entertainment district known as Downtown Disney.
Magic Kingdom Park is a theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida, near Orlando, Florida. Owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company through its Parks, Experiences and Products division, the park opened on October 1, 1971, as the first of four theme parks at the resort. The park was initialized by Walt Disney and designed by WED Enterprises. Its layout and attractions are based on Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California, and are dedicated to fairy tales and Disney characters.
FastPass, FastPass+, and MaxPass were virtual queue systems created by the Walt Disney Company to speed up customer access to certain attractions and amenities at the Disney resorts and theme parks. First introduced in late 1999 as a virtual queue, the systems all allowed guests to avoid long lines at the attractions on which the system was installed, freeing them to partake in other attractions during their wait. There was generally no extra fee for the service.
DisneyQuest was a chain of indoor interactive theme parks in the United States operated by the Disney Regional Entertainment subsidiary of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts.
An E ticket was a type of admission ticket used at the Disneyland and Magic Kingdom theme parks before 1982, where it admitted the bearer to the newest, most advanced, or popular rides and attractions.
The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, also known as Tower of Terror, is a series of similar accelerated drop tower dark rides located at Disney's Hollywood Studios, Tokyo DisneySea, Walt Disney Studios Park, and formerly located at Disney California Adventure. The attraction is inspired by Rod Serling's anthology television series, The Twilight Zone, and takes place in the fictional Hollywood Tower Hotel in Hollywood, California. The Tokyo version features an original storyline not related to The Twilight Zone and takes place in the fictional Hotel Hightower. All versions of the attraction place riders in a seemingly ordinary hotel elevator, and present a fictional backstory in which people have mysteriously disappeared from the elevator under the influence of a supernatural element many years previously.
Tokyo Disneyland is a 115-acre (47 ha) theme park at the Tokyo Disney Resort in Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, near Tokyo. Its main gate is directly adjacent to both Maihama Station and Tokyo Disneyland Station. It was the first Disney park to be built outside the United States and it opened on April 15, 1983. The park was constructed by WED Enterprises in the same style as Magic Kingdom in Florida and Disneyland in California. It is owned by The Oriental Land Company, which licenses the theme from The Walt Disney Company. Tokyo Disneyland and its companion park, Tokyo DisneySea, are the only Disney parks not wholly or partly owned by The Walt Disney Company.
Walt Disney Studios Park is the second of two theme parks built at Disneyland Paris in Marne-la-Vallée, France, which opened on 16 March 2002. It is owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company through its Parks, Experiences and Products division. It is dedicated to show business, movie themes, production, and behind-the-scenes. Though this was the original vision, in the 2010s, in a similar manner to its sister park, Disney’s Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World in Florida, the park began to distance itself from the original studio backlot intention and entered a new direction of immersive theming and attraction development inspired by iconic Disney stories. In 2019, the park hosted approximately 5.2 million guests. The park is represented by the Earffel Tower, a water tower similar to one that was installed at the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank, California.
Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, Inc., formerly Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Worldwide, Inc. and informally known as Disney Parks, is one of The Walt Disney Company's five major business segments and a subsidiary. It was founded on April 1, 1971, exactly six months before the opening of Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida, just outside of Orlando.
Universal's Islands of Adventure, originally called Universal Studios Islands of Adventure, is a theme park located in Orlando, Florida. It opened on May 28, 1999, along with CityWalk, as part of an expansion that converted Universal Studios Florida into the Universal Orlando Resort. The resort's slogan Vacation Like You Mean It was introduced in 2013.
The ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter was a "theater-in-the-round" attraction located in the Tomorrowland section of the Magic Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World Resort. A co-production between Walt Disney Imagineering and Lucasfilm, the attraction was a darkly humorous science fiction experience that used binaural sound to achieve many of its effects.
Stitch's Great Escape! was a "theater-in-the-round" attraction based on Disney's Lilo & Stitch franchise. A non-canon prequel to the original 2002 film that detailed Stitch's "first" prison escape, it was located in the Tomorrowland area of Magic Kingdom at the Walt Disney World Resort, as the fourth attraction to occupy the building and theater space that was previously used for Flight to the Moon, Mission to Mars and the ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter. Designed by Walt Disney Imagineering, many of the animators who worked on Lilo & Stitch were directly involved with the attraction's development. The attraction, which struggled with a mixed reception from park guests during its existence, was the only major permanent attraction based on Lilo & Stitch to have operated in the United States; all other such major attractions since have been exclusive to non-American Disney Parks resorts.
The Walt Disney World Dolphin is a resort hotel located between Epcot and Disney's Hollywood Studios in the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida, and across from its sister resort, the Walt Disney World Swan. Both hotels were designed by Michael Graves, and are connected by a palm-tree lined covered walkway crossing a lagoon. The Dolphin opened on January 13, 1990 as part of a joint venture between the Walt Disney Company, Tishman Hotel Corporation, MetLife and Starwood Hotels and Resorts, which was merged into Marriott International in 2019. The land the resort occupies is owned by the Walt Disney Company, while the buildings themselves are leased by Disney to the Tishman Hotel Corporation and MetLife but operated by Marriott International under the Sheraton Hotels and Resorts brand. The Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin are a part of the Walt Disney Collection of resorts; because of this they are Disney branded and guests of the resort have access to special Disney benefits available to Disney Resort Hotel guests only.
The Magic Carpets of Aladdin is a ride in Magic Kingdom, at Walt Disney World. It is based on the 1992 film, Aladdin. It is similar to the Dumbo the Flying Elephant attraction in that riders in the front rows control how high their carpets fly, and the ride lasts about 90 seconds. Aladdin's magic lamp is at the top, rather than Timothy Q. Mouse. At the entrance, there is a camel that squirts people as they walk by, much like the Stitch figurine outside the World of Disney store. Guests who have visited Adventureland before may notice that this area has a new look. The shops look like the marketplace buildings from Aladdin, and different characters from Aladdin are in some of the buildings to do meet & greets and sign autographs.
Space Mountain is an indoor, space-themed roller coaster in Tomorrowland at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Opened on May 27, 1977, it was the second roller coaster built at Disneyland, and was the second of the five versions of Space Mountain built by The Walt Disney Company. Its exterior façade is one of Disneyland's four "mountain" structures that serve as park landmarks.
Disneyland is an amusement park in Anaheim, California, which opened in 1955. It is the only one designed and built under the direct supervision of Walt Disney.
MagicBands and MagicBands 2 are plastic bracelets that contain RFID radios, used at Walt Disney World Resort. The MagicBands form the central part of the MyMagic+ experience, providing a way for the system to connect data to guests. This includes connecting park tickets, hotel room keys, payments, and PhotoPass information to the MagicBands. The bands were announced on January 7, 2013 by Tom Staggs as a part of MyMagic+.
The Disney Skyliner is a gondola lift system at Walt Disney World in Bay Lake, Florida. It opened on September 29, 2019, with five stations located at resorts and theme parks. Each gondola cabin can hold up to ten guests, or up to six if there is a wheelchair or electric scooter. Guests sit on twin, inward-facing, wooden benches. Strollers 30" x 48" and smaller are able to roll directly into the gondola and do not have to be folded.
