The Walt Disney World Resort, also called Walt Disney World or Disney World, or simply abbreviated WDW, is an entertainment resort complex in Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista, Florida, United States, governed by the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District. The resort is located within Orange and Osceola counties, and located closest to the cities of Winter Garden and Kissimmee in Greater Orlando. 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 used. Walt Disney World contains four separate theme parks, two water parks, two mini-golf courses, and four golf courses. There are twenty-one Disney-operated resorts on the property, and many other resorts on and near the property. Disney World also contains the Boardwalk, The Fort Wilderness area, The ESPN Sports Complex, Disney Springs, Flamingo Crossings areas for shopping, dining, and entertainment.
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.
Lake County is a county in the central portion of the U.S. state of Florida. As of the 2020 census, the population was 383,956. Its county seat is Tavares, and its largest city is Clermont. Lake County is included in the Orlando–Kissimmee–Sanford Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Disneyland Paris is an entertainment resort in Chessy, France, 32 kilometres east of Paris. It encompasses two theme parks, resort hotels, a shopping, dining and entertainment complex, and a golf course. Disneyland Park is the original theme park of the complex, opening in 1992. A second theme park, Walt Disney Studios Park, opened in 2002. Disneyland Paris celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2022; by then 375 million people had visited, making it the most visited theme park in Europe. It is the second Disney park outside the United States, following the opening of the Tokyo Disney Resort in 1983, and the largest. Disneyland Paris is also the only Disney resort outside of the United States to be completely owned by The Walt Disney Company. It includes seven hotels: Disney Hotel Santa Fe, Disney Hotel Cheyenne, Sequoia Lodge, Newport Bay Club, Hotel New York – the Art of Marvel, The Disneyland Hotel, and Davy Crockett Ranch.
The Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, shortened to EPCOT or E.P.C.O.T., 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".
Eustis is a city in Lake County, Florida, United States. It is part of the Orlando–Kissimmee–Sanford Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 23,189 at the 2020 census.
Lake Buena Vista is a city in Orange County, Florida, United States. It is mostly known for being the mailing address for Walt Disney World—although almost all of the resort facilities, including all four theme parks, are physically located in the adjacent city of Bay Lake. It is one of two Florida municipalities inside the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, which also contains Walt Disney World, the other being Bay Lake. The permanent residential population of Lake Buena Vista was 24 at the 2020 census.
Elias Charles Disney was a Canadian-American construction worker and entrepreneur. He is best known as the father of Roy and Walt Disney, co-founders of The Walt Disney Company.
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 Experiences division and is home to two theme parks, three hotels, and a shopping, dining, and entertainment district known as Downtown Disney.
Acron is a ghost town in eastern Lake County, Florida. Established during the late 19th century, near Paisley, it is best known as the town where Flora Call and Elias Disney, the parents of Walt Disney, and Roy O. Disney lived for a short time after they were married in nearby Kismet on New Year's Day, 1888. The location, which is just northeast of Lake Akron, is about forty miles (65 km) due north of what is now Walt Disney World.
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 Disney family is an American family that gained prominence when brothers Roy and Walt began creating films through the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, today known as mass media and entertainment conglomerate The Walt Disney Company. The Disney family's influence on American culture grew with successful feature films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 and the opening of the Disneyland theme park in 1955. Other Disney family members have been involved in the management and administration of the Disney company, filmmaking, and philanthropy.
Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development, Inc., commonly referred to as Imagineering, is the research and development arm of The Walt Disney Company, responsible for the creation, design, and construction of Disney theme parks and attractions worldwide. The company also operates Disney Live Entertainment and The Muppets Studio and manages Disney's properties, from Walt Disney Studios in Burbank to New Amsterdam Theatre and Times Square Studios Ltd. in New York City. Founded by Walt Disney to oversee the production of Disneyland, it was originally known as Walt Disney, Inc. then WED Enterprises, from the initials meaning "Walter Elias Disney", the company co-founder's full name. Headquartered in Glendale, California, Imagineering is composed of "Imagineers", who are illustrators, architects, engineers, lighting designers, show writers and graphic designers.
Disney Experiences, colloquially known as Disney Parks, is one of the Walt Disney Company's three major business segments and a division of that company. 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.
Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa is a Victorian themed hotel and spa located at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. The property opened on June 28, 1988, as the Grand Floridian Beach Resort. The name changed to Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa during the fall of 1997. The resort contains 867 rooms among six buildings at an average of 400 square feet (37 m2) per room.
Tower of Terror is a 1997 American supernatural horror television film written and directed by D. J. MacHale and starring Steve Guttenberg and Kirsten Dunst. It is based on the theme-park attraction, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida, and aired on ABC on October 26, 1997, as a presentation of The Wonderful World of Disney. It is Disney's first film based on one of its theme-park attractions, and the only one produced for television.
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. It is the sister resort of the Walt Disney World Swan. Both hotels were designed by Michael Graves. The Dolphin opened on June 4, 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 Tavares, Eustis & Gulf Railroad (TE&G), advertised as the Orange Blossom Cannonball, was a tourist railroad company operating excursion trains on historic track owned by the Florida Central Railroad, from October 2011 to late March 2017. It had stops in three cities in the northern portion of Central Florida. The TE&G was a subsidiary of the Reader Railroad, based in Arkansas.
Lillian Vickers-Smith is regarded as the first woman sports editor for a newspaper when she obtained the title working for The Leesburg Commercial in Florida in 1938.
Conant is a ghost town in Lake County, Florida stretching from the area of Lady Lake, Florida to north of the Marion County, Florida line. It was established in 1884 on what was then the Florida Southern Railroad, and it was named for Sherman Conant. It was a "real estate town" developed by the Hollingshead Firm. During the Great Freeze, crops died and the town experienced wildfires, forcing many members of the community to relocate. By 1919, it was merely a ghost town.
