Walt Disney World Resort

Welcome to our page on information for Disney’s flagship theme park resort, the Walt Disney World Resort. Located in Central Florida outside Orlando, the Walt Disney World Resort is Disney’s largest theme park destination at 33,000 acres (the size of San Francisco). With the success of Disneyland in Southern California, Walt Disney dreamed of creating another theme park destination on the East Coast.

During the 1960s, Walt Disney secretly purchased Florida swampland under fake dummy corporations to keep prices low. Eventually word got out it was Disney, but by then, he had purchased enough land.

Reflecting on Disneyland and its small footprint, he wanted absolute control of the land around his theme parks to prevent the ills of Anaheim. With Disneyland’s success, cheap budget motels sprung up around Disneyland and the city of Anaheim eventually grew around the resort, preventing any major expansions. With 33,000 acres, Disney had plenty of land for his use.

However, he passed away in 1966, five years before the opening of Walt Disney World. In response, his older brother Roy Disney stepped out of retirement to lead the Florida Project. By October 1971, the Florida swampland transformed into one theme park, Magic Kingdom, two resort hotels, Disney’s Contemporary Resort and Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort and one campground. Roy passed away three months later but the resort continued to grow under new leadership.

Today, the Walt Disney World Resort is a beast. The resort now consists of four theme parks: Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Disney’s Animal Kingdom. It includes over thirty resort hotels, ranging from pricey deluxe resort hotels to full vacation villas via Disney’s timeshare program, Disney Vacation Club.

The resort also includes two water parks, Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon and numerous golf courses and miniature gold courses. Like Disneyland, it has its own entertainment district, Disney Springs, a massive shopping and dining area.

Based in California, we made our first visit to the resort in 2016. We visited each theme park and stayed on property at the Yacht Club Resort. In comparison to Disneyland where three to four days is plenty of time to see everything, Walt Disney World was a completely different experience.

We spent one week on property and did not see everything. Outside the parks and water parks, the resort includes recreation activities, hundreds of restaurants, numerous bars and tons more.

Since our first visit in 2016, we’ve been back each year with our most recent visit in August 2019. We’ve loved each of our trips and find Walt Disney World to be the easiest and most relaxing of all the Disney resorts, as it does a fantastic job catering to those on vacation.

For planners, like us, the resort does a fantastic job catering to those with a solid gameplan before arriving to the resort. In contrast to Disneyland, a local’s park with no preplanning available outside dining reservations, Walt Disney World is best enjoyed by taking advantage of its preplanning options, like Fast Pass+.

Due to its massive size and experience lineup, we are hard at work writing content for you to read! From hotels to parks to restaurants, this resort has it all. With our index below, click each available post to read our full review or commentary.

For example, our reviews critique restaurants or hotels. Our commentary analyzes such things like Fast Passes or best itinerary practices with the hope they will help or improve your vacation planning strategy. Additionally, each post contains plenty of pictures to help you make a decision.

Please continue to check back as we work to add more content. In the meantime, enjoy our posts below. If you have any questions, please let us know below in the comments. Thanks again for reading and we hope this helps you plan your amazing vacation to this awesome resort!