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.
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".
Magic Kingdom Park is a theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida, it opened on October 1, 1971, and is owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company through its Experiences division, the official park name has changed slightly over the years, from Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom (1971–1994) and The Magic Kingdom (1994–2017), the park was initialized by Walt Disney and designed by WED Enterprises. the park layout and attractions were based on Disneyland in Anaheim, California, and are dedicated to fairy tales and Disney characters.
Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress is a rotating theater audio-animatronic stage show attraction in Tomorrowland at the Magic Kingdom theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida, just outside of Orlando. Created by Walt Disney and WED Enterprises as the prime feature of the General Electric (GE) Pavilion for the 1964 New York World's Fair, the attraction was moved to Tomorrowland at Disneyland in Anaheim, California as Carousel of Progress, and remained there from 1967 until 1973. It was replaced in Disneyland by America Sings in 1974, and reopened in its present home in the Magic Kingdom in 1975.
Disney Experiences, commonly known as Disney Parks, is one of the three major divisions of The Walt Disney Company. It was founded on April 1, 1971, exactly six months before the opening of Walt Disney World.
Tomorrowland is one of the many "themed lands" featured at all of the Magic Kingdom styled Disney theme parks around the world owned or licensed by The Walt Disney Company. Each version of the land is different and features numerous attractions that depict views of the future. Disneyland Park in Paris includes a similar area called Discoveryland, which shares some elements with other Tomorrowlands but emphasizes visions of the future inspired by Jules Verne.
Horizons was a dark ride attraction at Epcot, a theme park at Walt Disney World in Bay Lake, Florida. Located on the eastern side of the Future World section of Epcot, the attraction used Disney's Omnimover system, but unlike most omnimover systems, it was suspended from a track above, which took guests past show scenes depicting visions of the future. It is believed to be the sequel to Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress, an attraction in Tomorrowland at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom. Horizons was the only attraction in Future World to showcase all of Epcot's "Future World" elements: communication, energy, transportation, anatomy, along with humankind's relationship to the sea, and the land.
The Happiest Homecoming on Earth or the Happiest Celebration on Earth was the eighteen-month-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Disneyland theme park, which opened on July 17, 1955. It commemorated fifty years of Disney theme parks and celebrated Disneyland's milestone throughout Disney parks all over the globe. The "Homecoming" name was only used for Disneyland Resort; all the other Disney Parks resorts used the "Celebration" name.
The Skyway was a gondola lift attraction at Disneyland, at the Magic Kingdom, and at Tokyo Disneyland. Since all versions of this attraction took riders back and forth between Fantasyland and Tomorrowland, the route from Tomorrowland was called Skyway to Fantasyland, and the route from Fantasyland was called Skyway to Tomorrowland.
Magic Music Days was a program put on by the Disneyland Resort, the Walt Disney World Resort, the Disneyland Resort Paris and the Hong Kong Disneyland Resort. Its intent bring in school and community groups to perform in the parks and/or take part in workshops or clinics. This program was replaced by Disney Imagination Campus which includes all performing groups and field trip ticket-only youth groups. Types of groups included:
CommuniCore was a pavilion dedicated to technological advance located at EPCOT Center in Walt Disney World, Florida. It occupied two semi-circular buildings behind Spaceship Earth at the center of Future World. The two buildings were known as CommuniCore East and West and housed rotating exhibits. The pavilion was closed and redesigned in 1994, and the former CommuniCore buildings became the home of Innoventions, which closed permanently on September 7, 2019.
The Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade is an American television special that airs on Christmas Day annually on ABC, airing live and taped, primarily inside the Magic Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, approximately one month prior to Christmas Day.
Stitch Encounter is an interactive show located in Walt Disney Studios Park, and in Tomorrowland at Tokyo Disneyland and Shanghai Disneyland Park. The first edition of the show at Hong Kong Disneyland was closed on May 2, 2016, to make room for Star Wars: Command Post, although it temporarily returned to Hong Kong in 2019 for a limited time as a "Magic Access Members"-exclusive event.
The Walt Disney World Explorer is a point and click Windows and Macintosh application developed by Mindsai Productions and Disney Interactive, and published by the latter. The application focuses on the Walt Disney World Resort near Orlando, Florida. It consists of narrated virtual tours, trivia, and slideshows of the resort's parks, attractions, hotels, and other related topics. Various minigames are also built into the application, such as a quiz that allows users to test their knowledge of the resort, and a game that involves finding Hidden Mickeys.
"There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" is the theme song to two Disney attractions, Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress at the Magic Kingdom of Walt Disney World and Innoventions at Disneyland. It was also used in one scene of the Epcot attraction Horizons.
Innoventions was a two-story exhibit in Tomorrowland at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Opening on July 3, 1998 as part of the New Tomorrowland, it featured rotating exhibits focusing on near-futuristic technologies. The attraction operated for nearly 17 years, closing on March 31, 2015. It occupied the Carousel Theater, a round two-story building in which the outer half of the first floor rotates. A similar attraction of the same name existed in Epcot at the Walt Disney World Resort until 2019.
Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party (MNSSHP) is a separate-admission Halloween-themed event held annually during the months of August, September, October, and November at the Magic Kingdom theme park of the Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, near Orlando, and at Disneyland Paris Resort outside Paris, France. The party began as a response to the Halloween Horror Nights event at Universal Studios Florida. Disney's event caters to a traditional family atmosphere, whereas Universal's has more of a "fright-centered" event with their monsters.
In Disney theme parks, the utilidor system is a system of some of the world's largest utility tunnels, mainly for Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom in Florida. The utilidors, short for utility corridors, are a part of Disney's "backstage" (behind-the-scenes) area. They allow Disney employees to perform park support operations, such as trash removal, and for costumed characters to quickly reach their destinations on the surface out of the sight of guests to avoid ruining the illusion that is being created.
The Disney Skyliner is a gondola lift system, part of the Disney Transport system, that opened on September 29, 2019, at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida. The system is composed of five stations that serve four resorts and two theme parks, with a fleet of over 250 gondola cabins that can accommodate up to ten guests per cabin, or up to six with an open wheelchair or other mobility device. Guests sit on twin, inward-facing, wooden benches.
