Once upon a time in the swamps of central Florida, a man saw more than pines and oranges. Walt Disney had a vision to build a family place where moms and dads could take their families for memories that would last forever. I also wanted it to be an affordable and accessible place for everyone and at the same time have a beautiful climate all year round.
Unfortunately, Walt didn’t live long enough to see his vision come true here in Florida, but his brother Roy made sure his vision was completed. Walt came to Florida in the 1960s and bought 25,000 acres (40 square miles) under the name MT Lott. He had the intelligence to buy as much land as he could without drawing much attention to land grabbing. The stage was set to begin building what Walt described as his “Florida Project.”
Magic Kingdom was the first to be installed in 1971, followed by Epcot in 1982, Hollywood Studios in 1989, and finally Animal Kingdom in 1998. In addition to theme parks, Resorts were built for Disney guests to stay at. To date, there are 34 resorts on the property and 28 of them are owned and operated by Disney. However, this is constantly changing and some more complexes are now being worked on to accommodate more visitors.
Hollywood Studios, for example, is currently building its Star Wars-themed complex that will be located right at the back of its park. This will be a great addition for people wanting something new and for travelers who have been to Disney World multiple times. There are so many vacant properties in its 40 square miles that they could build another 100 resorts and 20 additional theme parks, but where does it end?
With parks at capacity now and lines averaging over 3 hours for some of its latest attractions, where do you begin to contemplate building larger parks to better accommodate all of your guests or do you just keep building more parks? small but having more to choose from? What appears to be happening is the current expansion of the park!
If you take an overcrowded current park and enlarge it, this would seem to solve your problem, don’t you think? Well, this would make sense if all parks had rides and popular attractions equally. Unfortunately, this is not the case. For example, Animal Kingdom launched Pandora: Avatar and for the first year so far the lines have been steady at 3 o’clock and away from the business of their other parks.
Now Hollywood Studios released Toy Story Land and drove visitors away from the other parks, sometimes leaving Epcot like a ghost town. I hope that each park will one day be the same in its attractions, shows and resorts, but there is currently some delay and it is affecting attendance levels in all four parks as a whole. With all its land, I’d like to see much bigger parks, more activities for guests to overcome overcrowding, and more importantly, lower costs for consumers.
Patrick writes for Kissimmee-based authorized ticket reseller – the Official Ticket Center, which specializes in offering discounts to Orlando’s major theme parks and includes discounted tickets to Disney, SeaWorld, discounted tickets to Universal Studios, and admission to many other exclusive areas of fun and entertainment. and events in and around the Florida Sunshine State.