Orlando, city in central Florida and one of the world’s premier tourist destinations. Orlando draws visitors with its several major theme parks, a delightful climate, and extensive convention facilities. Orlando’s evolution is divided into two eras: before and after the opening of the Walt Disney World theme park in 1971. Prior to that year, the quiet town functioned mainly as a service center for the surrounding citrus growing region and as the seat of sparsely-populated Orange County. Following the opening of Disney World, the Orlando area quickly became a booming metropolis that was home to both a major tourist playground and high technology industry.

Orlando is located near the center of the low-lying Florida Peninsula in the heart of a lake-studded region. The city’s climate is humid subtropical. Winter daytime temperatures in the lower 20°s C (lower 70°s F) have contributed substantially to the city’s tourist industry. But Orlando’s interior location—about 80 km (about 50 mi) from the cooling breezes of the Atlantic coast—gives it some of Florida’s hottest summer temperatures. Daytime temperatures in the summer are in the lower 30°s C (lower 90°s F) and are accompanied by high humidity and frequent afternoon thunderstorms. The city’s annual precipitation is 1,200 mm (48 in), and the months with the most rain are June through September.

Orlando is situated at the heart of a rapidly-growing metropolitan region spreading outward from the city center. Even with recent expansion, the city has maintained a downtown core characterized by brick streets, landscaped gardens, and oaks draped with Spanish moss. The city is in Florida’s lake district, and hundreds of lakes within close range provide residents with recreation. The focal point of downtown Orlando is Lake Eola and its surrounding park. A few blocks away Church Street Station, once a collection of dilapidated warehouses, has been renovated into Orlando’s leading complex for evening entertainment.

Metropolitan Orlando is also a mecca for outdoor recreation, much of it on the area’s many freshwater lakes and rivers. The Harry P. Leu Botanical Gardens, on Lake Rowena, is one of the major parks. The Orlando Magic play professional basketball at the TD Waterhouse Centre, and professional baseball’s Houston Astros hold spring training at Kissimmee. Each New Year’s Day the Citrus Bowl college football game is played at Orlando Stadium.

Central to the Orlando metropolitan landscape are three vast theme parks. The oldest and biggest is Walt Disney World, which includes the Magic Kingdom, Epcot (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow), Disney-MGM Studios, and golf courses, water parks, resort hotels, and nightclubs. Sea World of Florida focuses on the marine world through a combination of entertainment and informative displays. Universal Studios Florida combines rides and shows with a working studio for television and motion picture productions.

Walt Disney World Resort is the most visited and largest recreational resort in the world, containing four theme parks, two water parks, twenty-three themed hotels, and numerous shopping, dining, entertainment and recreation venues. Owned and operated by the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts segment of The Walt Disney Company, it is located southwest of Orlando.

In 1959, the Walt Disney Company, under the leadership of Walt Disney, began looking for land for a second resort to supplement Disneyland, which had opened in Anaheim, California in 1955. Market surveys revealed that only 2% of Disneyland's visitors came from east of the Mississippi River, where 75% of the population of the United States lived. Additionally, Walt Disney disliked the businesses that had sprung up around Disneyland and wanted control of a much larger area of land for the new project.

Walt Disney World Resort opened on October 1, 1971. Disney subsequently opened EPCOT Center in 1982, a theme park adapted from Walt Disney's vision for a "community of tomorrow". The park permanently adopted the name Epcot in 1996. In 1989, the resort added Disney-MGM Studios, a theme park inspired by show business, whose name was changed to Disney's Hollywood Studios in 2008. The resort's fourth theme park, Disney's Animal Kingdom, opened in 1998.

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