Home

Destinations

Hotels

Flights

Car Rental

Parking

WORLD NORTH AMERICA USA FLORIDA ORLANDO

Destination:

Orlando, Florida Hotels and City Guide

Orlando Hotels and Orlando Guide with Orlando maps, top attractions, room reservations and hotel deals at a wide range of the best Orlando hotels

City
Guide

Hotels

Maps

Currency

Weather

Transport

Business
Tips

Travel
Tips

Attractions

Eating
Out

Getting
There

Going
Out

Shopping

Featured Hotels in Orlando

Showing 1-2 of 4

Best Western Airport Inn

8101 Aircenter Ct, Orlando, Florida, 32809-7414, United States

Best Western Mt. Vernon Inn

110 S Orlando Avenue, Winter Park, Florida, 32789-3656, United States

Best Western Orlando East Inn & Suites

8750 E Colonial Drive, Orlando, Florida, 32817-4004, United States

Best Western Orlando West

2014 W Colonial Drive, Orlando, Florida, 32804-6908, United States

If you have decided to come to Orlando like millions of other people have to see theme parks, you will likely have a wonderful time, but to truly appreciate everything that this world class city has to offer, you need to rent a car, venture off of theme park property and explore. Orlando is so much more than just Disney and Universal. It is a city that is an hour’s drive from the glittering Atlantic Ocean and just over an hour’s drive from the even more amazing Gulf of Mexico. It is a city that has improved by leaps and bounds when it comes to both high end shopping and bargain hunting. It is a city with a drastically underrated restaurant scene, thanks to luminaries such as Wolfgang Puck and Emeril Lagasse. Best of all, Orlando is a playground for both young and old, even if you don’t set foot near It’s a Small World.

Orlando is blessed with one of the most desirable climates in the world. The city gets upwards of 300 days of sun every year, which means that you can be outside enjoying everything this wonderful place has to offer. There is a famous story told by many a Disney fanatic that tells the tale of how Walt Disney chose this part of Florida for his theme parks. Apparently, Walt studied weather data and patterns all across the state of Florida for years and found that the area just south of Orlando, now Lake Buena Vista, seemed to miss the usual afternoon thunderstorm more often than not. Walt then proceeded to buy his first acre of land for a dollar and his final acre for a million, once folks realized what was going on. To this day, if you look at the names written on the second story windows along Main Street USA in the Magic Kingdom, you’ll see the pseudonyms under which Walt himself bought up the 47 square miles the resort sits on today.

If you hang around locals enough, you’ll eventually hear Orlando referred to as a cow town. This is because before Disney showed up, that’s exactly what Orlando was. This bustling metropolis owes its current success and world reputation to Disney almost entirely. Prior to 1959, when Walt began scouting the area for his first theme park east of the Mississippi, Orlando was a common stopping point for cattle in their journey from Daytona Beach to Tampa. To this day, Interstate 4 links these two towns, with Orlando (almost) in the middle. It is safe to say that city planners had no idea that Orlando would soon be home to millions of people. When the interstate was built, the city planners never imagined today’s Orlando would exist, so they built the road going directly through downtown, instead of going around as is done in most cities. Today, I-4 is one of the most congested highways in the nation and is the chief reason some people choose not to rent a car and simply stay on theme park property, instead.

There can be no question that the city of Orlando is famous because of the Mouse’s House, but almost as soon as Disney opened its doors, other attractions sprouted up around it. Most of these interlopers are long since closed, but a few remain, such as Gatorland, the self prescribed alligator capital of the world. Today, family entertainment often dominates, with a half dozen full sized theme parks, the International Drive shopping and entertainment area and outlying attractions like the aforementioned Gatorland and the nearby Cypress Gardens in Winter Haven. Although the focus is clearly on family entertainment, there are nightclubs, bars and even a lively gay and lesbian community as well, so don’t worry if you aren’t a theme park kind of person, there is still plenty to do.

Orlando City Facts

Orlando Population- 1,294,000 (Source: UN Population Estimate Revision 2003)
USA Population - 300,038,000 (Source: UN Population Estimate Revision 2003)
Currency - US Dollar ($) = 100 cents
Time Zone - GMT - 5 hours(Daylight Saving Time is observed)
Language - English