The Walt Disney World Resort is an entertainment resort complex located about 20 miles (32 km) southwest of Orlando, Florida, United States. Opened on October 1, 1971, the resort is operated by Disney Experiences, a division of The Walt Disney Company. The property covers nearly 25,000 acres, of which half has been developed. Walt Disney World contains numerous recreational facilities designed to attract visitors for an extended stay, including four theme parks, two water parks, four golf courses, conference centers, a competitive sports complex and a shopping, dining, and entertainment complex. Additionally, there are 19 Disney-owned resort hotels and one camping resort on the property, and many other non-Disney-operated resorts on and near the property.
Celebration is a master-planned community (MPC) and census-designated place (CDP) in Osceola County, Florida, United States. A suburb of Orlando, Celebration is located near Walt Disney World Resort and was originally developed by The Walt Disney Company. Its population was recorded as 11,178 in the 2020 census.
Orange County is a county located in the central part of the U.S. state of Florida. As of the 2020 census, the county had a population of 1,429,908, making it the fifth-most populous county in Florida and the 28th-most populous county in the United States. Its county seat is Orlando, which, along with it being the county's largest city, is the core of the Orlando metropolitan area, which had a population of 2.67 million in 2020.
The Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, shortened to EPCOT, was an unfinished concept for a planned community, intended to sit on a swath of undeveloped land near Orlando, Florida. It was created by Walt Disney in collaboration with the designers at Walt Disney Imagineering in the 1960s. Based on ideas stemming from modernism and futurism, and inspired by architectural literature about city planning, Disney intended EPCOT to be a utopian autocratic company town. One of the primary stated aims of EPCOT was to replace urban sprawl as the organizing force of community planning in the United States in the 1960s. Disney intended EPCOT to be a real city, and it was planned to feature commercial, residential, industrial, and recreational centers, connected by a mass multimodal transportation system, that would, he said, "Never cease to be a living blueprint of the future".
Orlando is a city in and the county seat of Orange County, Florida, United States. The city proper had a population of 307,573 at the 2020 census, making it the fourth-most populous city in Florida behind Jacksonville, Miami, and Tampa and the state's most populous inland city. Part of Central Florida, it is the center of the Orlando metropolitan area, which had a population of 2.67 million in 2020. It is the sixth-largest metropolitan area in the Southern United States and the third-largest metropolitan area in Florida behind Miami and Tampa Bay.
The Walt Disney Studios, located in Burbank, California, United States, serves as the corporate headquarters for The Walt Disney Company media conglomerate. The 51-acre studio lot also contains several sound stages, a backlot, and other filmmaking production facilities for Walt Disney Studios's motion picture production. The complex also houses the offices for the company's many divisions, with the exception of Pixar Animation Studios, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century Studios, which remains on its namesake lot in nearby Century City as tenants of Fox Corporation.
Disney's Hollywood Studios is a theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida, near Orlando. It is owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company through its Experiences division. Based on a concept by Marty Sklar, Randy Bright, and Michael Eisner, the park opened on May 1, 1989, as the Disney–MGM Studios Theme Park, and was the third of four theme parks built at Walt Disney World. Spanning 135 acres (55 ha), the park is themed to an idealized version of Hollywood, California, and is dedicated to the imagined worlds from film, television, music, and theatre, drawing inspiration from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Disney Springs is an outdoor shopping, dining, and entertainment complex at the Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, near Orlando.
The Disney Vacation Club (DVC) is a vacation timeshare program owned and operated by Disney Vacation Development, Inc., a subsidiary of Disney Signature Experiences, a division of Disney Experiences, a segment of The Walt Disney Company. It allows buying a real estate interest in a DVC resort via a flexible points-based membership system. There are an estimated 220,000 club members.
Disney's River Country was the first water park at Walt Disney World Resort, Florida. River Country, located along the shores of Bay Lake and near Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground, was themed as a rustic, old-fashioned swimming hole. Opening on June 20, 1976, the park closed indefinitely on November 2, 2001. On January 20, 2005, after roughly three years of closure, The Walt Disney Company announced that the park would remain closed, permanently.
The Golf Disneyland is a golf complex operated by The Disney Experiences, located at Disneyland Paris in Marne-la-Vallée, France. The complex includes a Disney-themed golf course. Popular with adult visitors, it also has a children's section. Within the golf course is the Marriott Village. Other Disney Golf offerings include the Palm, the Magnolia, the Lake Buena Vista, and Oak Trail golf courses at the Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, FL.
The Carolwood Pacific Railroad (CPRR) was a 7+1⁄4-inch gauge ridable miniature railroad run by Walt Disney in the backyard of his home in the Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It featured the Lilly Belle, a 1:8-scale live steam locomotive named after Disney's wife, Lillian Disney, and built by the Walt Disney Studios' machine shop. The locomotive made its first test run on December 24, 1949. It pulled a set of freight cars, as well as a caboose that was almost entirely built by Disney himself. It was Disney's lifelong fascination with trains, as well as his interest in miniature models, that led to the creation of the CPRR. The railroad, which became operational in 1950, was 2,615 feet (797 m) long and encircled his house. The backyard railroad attracted visitors to Disney's home; he invited them to ride and occasionally drive his miniature train. In 1953, after an accident occurred in which a guest was injured, the CPRR was closed to the public.
The Walt Disney World Railroad (WDWRR) is a 3-foot narrow-gauge heritage railroad and attraction located within the Magic Kingdom theme park of Walt Disney World in Bay Lake, Florida, in the United States. Its route is 1.5 miles (2.4 km) in length and encircles most of the park, with train stations in three different park areas. The rail line, constructed by WED Enterprises, operates with four historic steam locomotives originally built by Baldwin Locomotive Works (BLW) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It takes about 20 minutes for each train to complete a round trip on the WDWRR's mainline loop. On a typical day, the railroad has two trains in operation; on busy days, it has three trains.
Discovery Island is an 11.5-acre (4.7 ha) island in Bay Lake, Florida. It is located on the property of Walt Disney World in the city of Bay Lake. Between 1974 and 1999, it was an attraction open to guests, who could observe its many species of animals. Disney originally named it Treasure Island, and later renamed it Discovery Island. It currently sits abandoned, but can be seen by any watercraft in Bay Lake. Discovery Island is now the name of one of the lands in Disney's Animal Kingdom.
Shades of Green is a resort owned by the United States Department of Defense (DOD) in Bay Lake, Florida on the Walt Disney World Resort property near Orlando. While the resort is on the Walt Disney World Resort, it is annexed as a military resort. It is one of five Armed Forces Recreation Centers (AFRC) resorts and is part of the military's Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) program. The resort was expanded between 2004 and 2006 and funds itself from non-appropriated funds, with all profits being reinvested into it.
Walt Disney's Carolwood Barn is a museum located within the Los Angeles Live Steamers Railroad Museum (LALSRM) complex at Griffith Park in Los Angeles, California. The barn, which was originally located in the backyard of Walt Disney's Holmby Hills home, features artifacts and displays related to Disney and his lifelong fascination with trains. The barn and surrounding exhibits are open to the public the third Sunday of each month from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. PST. Admission is free.
Michael Broggie is an American author and historian who specializes in the history of Walt Disney and The Walt Disney Company—specifically Disney's connection to railroads. He is the son of Roger E. Broggie, who was selected by Walt Disney to be the first Imagineer.
The Earffel Tower is a faux water tower located at Walt Disney Studios Park at Disneyland Paris in Seine-et-Marne, and formerly at Disney's Hollywood Studios at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida, near Orlando. Adorned with a set of Mickey Mouse ears, it is inspired by the real water tower located at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California. A pun on the Eiffel Tower, it is based on water towers commonly found on Hollywood studio backlots of the first half of the 1900s, which were originally a safety measure to douse fires on highly flammable wooden film sets. However, the Earffel Tower has never contained water.
The Fort Wilderness Railroad (FWRR) was a 3.5-mile (5.6 km), 2 ft 6 in narrow-gauge heritage railroad located at Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground in Walt Disney World. The railroad officially opened on January 1, 1974, and provided transportation for the resort's various campsites. Due to issues with track maintenance, pedestrian safety, noise concerns, and the low fuel capacity of its steam locomotives, the FWRR closed permanently in February 1980. Railroad ties remain in place along certain sections of the railroad's former right-of-way, and its four locomotives and surviving passenger cars are now owned by private collectors.
Baldwin Park is a master-planned community in Orlando, Florida. The mixed-use community is located northeast of Downtown Orlando, bordering Winter Park.
