This past November we made a quick trip to Orlando, Florida, home to Disney World, Universal Studios and Sea World. I was immediately impressed with the sheer size of the city and the amount of construction going on. Walt was on to something when he started picking up acres upon acres of swamp land back in the 1960's. Apparently Disney owns, designs and built the entire resort which houses something like 30 hotels and owns 24 of them. Unlike Disneyland where you can stay on property or in the resort and simply walk over, at Disney World we took an Uber to a parking lot then a ferry to the gate, no half day, in and out trips for this place. Driving around you see grass and bodies of water everywhere, apparently a swamp is a piece of land with lots of vegetation while ponds are just bodies of water? There's some general signage but you really can't see much of the parks at all from the road. There's four parks total, Magic Kingdom, Epcot Center, Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom. We opted for a Hopper pass and hit up three of the four parks in a single day, phew!
Magic Kingdom is basically like Disneyland with the castle and the main street and your different lands. In a nice touch you can set up your first three Fast Passes online once you buy tickets and there's cool spots like Gaston's Tavern and a Snow White mine car ride. Hollywood Studios houses shows and roller coasters along with one of the last Planet Hollywood's in the world, it's not even a restaurant though, just a gift shop with some 90's era photos of Stallone and life sized Arnold Terminator 2 prop. The Turner Classic Movie ride was a nice throwback to Hollywood but lines were insane for the Aerosmith coaster and Tower of Terror. Epcot has that giant golf ball looking thing and several science attractions along with beautifully designed sections of the world complete with people from those countries to work there. It was Food & Wine Fest time so it was PACKED. Tooling around Orlando was fun, most of our Uber drivers were from New York or Jersey and had just had enough of the cold weather. Target didn't sell hard booze but there was a liquor store next door so it worked out. Nearly every restaurant we went to asked if you wanted to make it a double for $2-3 bucks more, we couldn't afford not to!
All in it would be pretty easy to spend a few days or even a week in town as there was plenty to Disney and Orlando in general we didn't get to see. With so many hotel options prices were considerably less than in Anaheim, California. There's also an interesting trend of seafood offering buffets we didn't get to nosh at so next time it will be lobster-pocalypse.
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