Orlando: Theme Parks and Beyond

Is there anyone left on the planet who doesn’t know that Mickey, Donald, Shamu and Woody Woodpecker reside in Orlando, Fla., at the world’s greatest collection of theme parks? As a 20-year resident of Orlando with a wife and two children, ages 11 and 17, I’ve done my fair share of theme park hopping. Planned and executed with patience and a positive attitude, theme park visits are some of the best vacation experiences anywhere for people of all ages.

Orlando Culture 

While I still enjoy Orlando’s bastions of make-believe, it’s the rest of the Orlando area that makes this a truly special place to live and visit. Beyond the theme parks, Orlando is an area surprisingly rich in cultural, natural and sporting attractions. Orlandoans are a diverse group as well. It’s not uncommon to see many part-time Orlando residents from the U.K., Germany or South America who own condos and homes and who first discovered the city after a visit to a theme park. If you research closely, you’ll see the fruits of that migration with English pubs and taverns in the Kissimmee, Spanish and Cuban restaurants in east Orlando and Brazilian steak houses on International Drive.

• The Expedition Everest roller coaster surges forward and backward through forbidden mountain.
• Courtesy of the Orlando/Orange County Convention & Visitors Bureau, Inc.

A great trip to Orlando includes a combination of theme parks and other Central Florida experiences. One mistake many one-week visitors make is trying to do a theme park a day for seven days straight. Unless you’ve gone through Army Ranger training and are in superb physical condition, I suggest a more balanced itinerary of three or four theme parks with a couple of days off to explore the rest of Orlando. With countless lines, crowds, whiny kids (their kids, not yours), sensory overload and the broiling Florida sun, visiting a theme park can, at times, be a grueling experience fit for a commando.

If you decide to stay solely in the theme park corridor, chances are you’ll never see any of Orlando because the tourist zones are away from residential ones and most of the population lives north of both Walt Disney World and SeaWorld. One exception is Universal Studios Florida, which sits in the middle of a residential area across the street from a high school.