Walt Disney World
The Walt Disney World Resort is the world's
biggest and most attended recreational resort some twenty miles
southwest of Orlando, Florida spread across a vast 30,080 acre
landscape of sub-tropical forests and wetlands with four
outstanding theme parks, 23 on-site resort hotels, two water
parks, two health spas and fitness centers, a campground and
other venues for recreation and entertainment. The huge empire
would open in 1971 and change the face of Orange and Osceola
counties. Initially, the Magic Kingdom theme park would open,
with Epcot coming on board in 1982, the Disney Hollywood Studios
in 1989 and finally, the Animal Kingdom opened in 1998. The
resort was the result of Walt's dream to open a resort that
would be based on Disneyland in California, but with sports,
recreation, entertainment and unusual themed resort hotels.
Besides the theme parks, the resort has Typhoon Lagoon and
Blizzard Beach for water parks; Downtown Disney, ESPN Wide World
of Sports complex, Disney's Boardwalk, and Disney's Wedding
Pavilion. The huge property includes five golf courses, catch
and release fishing areas, watercraft rentals to use on the
Disney lakes and ponds, firework cruises and surrey bike
rentals. According to the May 2008 issue of Park World, the
Magic Kingdom would welcome 17 million visitors, the Animal
Kingdom had 9.49 million, Epcot had 10.9 million and Hollywood
Studios had 9.51 million. When the resort first opened there
would be 5500 cast members employed here and today that number
is around 66,000. Of that number, over 5000 are devoted to
maintenance and engineering, that includes 600 painters and 750
horticulturists. The streets are steam cleaned every single
night, and there is a tree farm located on the property so when
a tree dies, it can be replaced with a thirty year old tree
right away. The cast members that are permanently assigned to
painting the antique carousel horses use real gold leaf. It is
an enormous resort as can be seen, and when attended by those
millions of folks from around the world coming here to visit,
the area becomes a huge conglomeration of people from all over
the world.
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