Coordinates: 28°25?7?N, 81°34?52?W
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, Florida. The property often is abbreviated Walt Disney World, Disney World or WDW.
It opened on October 1, 1971, with the Magic Kingdom theme park, and has since added Epcot , Disney's Hollywood Studios , and Disney's Animal Kingdom .
History and development
In 1959, Walt Disney Productions, 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 first flew over the Orlando site on November 22, 1963, the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. He first flew over and appealed to the Sanford, Florida city council to allow him to build Disney World in Sanford, but his appeal was declined. The citizens of Sanford did not want the crime that was sure to come with tourism. He saw the well-developed network of roads, including Interstate 4 and Florida's Turnpike, with McCoy Air Force Base to the east, and immediately fell in love with the site.[citation needed] When later asked why he chose it, he said, "the freeway routes, they bisect here."[citation needed] Walt Disney focused most of his attention on the "Florida Project", both before and after his participation at the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair, but he died on December 15, 1966, five years before his vision was realized
