Okay, who am I kidding? Sure the other Central Florida counties are great, and they all have their own offerings for visitors, but you really want the bread and butter of the Central Florida tourism scene, right? I thought so.

To do that, we have to look at the heart of Central Florida, to the county everyone knows and most love, Orange County.

To be sure, Orange County is not completely covered with tourism as most would think. In fact, only the western half is really devoted to tourism, more specifically the areas of the county west and south of Orlando. Why you ask? Well, as the saying goes, “It was all started by a Mouse.” In this case, literally, folks. That’s where Walt Disney set up shop.

Orlando, as you may have guessed, is the county seat for Orange, but what you may not know is that most tourism operations in the area are actually outside the City of Orlando’s limits!

If you really want to get into the thick of it, Walt Disney World isn’t technically in Orange County at all: for all intensive and legal purposes Walt Disney World is located in a special government district created by the Legislature of the State of Florida. Much to the envy of the other operators in the area (namely Universal and SeaWorld), county officials cannot conduct any official business in the area. It’s name? You’ve heard it before: The Reedy Creek Improvement District.

But that’s not why we’re here, is it? No. We’re here to understand the tourism spots in Orange County better, to help you understand where all of these great vacation resorts, attractions, restaurants, etc. are located.

So with that in mind, let’s take a look at the other greatest tourism map of Central Florida ever created (and this one is, probably the best one I’ve ever seen):

The image above has been modified to include my “Entertainment Districts.” They are located by the black box boundaries surrounding specific geographical areas. Starting with the top one (going north to south) they are: Downtown Orlando Entertainment District, Universal Orlando Entertainment District, SeaWorld/I-Drive Entertainment District, Walt Disney World Entertainment District and the Highway 192 Entertainment District.

Just like last week’s, the above image was made by the Orlando-Orange County Convention & Visitors Bureau (www.orlandoinfo.com). Now as you can see from the image, I divide the Orange County tourism area off into sections. These include: Downtown Orlando Area, Universal Orlando Area, SeaWorld/I-Drive Area, Walt Disney World Area, and the Highway 192 Area.

The reason I did this was to simplify the area into groups, since I noticed a long time ago that the tourism operations in Orange County tended to group together in separate areas on their own. In other words, you may have a very busy area with lots of attractions, restaurants, hotels, and shops, and then have nothing until you drive down the road to another busy area.

Of course today, my old clean borders for these sections are becoming broader and broader, as the areas are expanding with new construction, which is forcing one area to start to connect to another.

It took me a while to come up with a name that I liked for these tourism areas, in which each had all the major elements of a tourism area in and of themselves: attractions, hotels, restaurants, and shops. In the end, I came up with the term “Entertainment District”, and I’ve stuck with it ever since.

Something to understand right off the bat here is that the Orlando tourism scene is big; really big. What that means for us here is that most of these Entertainment Districts have your chain hotels, restaurants, etc. in every one of them, which may mean you have five or more of the same restaurant in Orange County. This is even true for the destination resorts like Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando, since I have intentionally included the very outskirts of those areas where you will find these sorts of businesses. Just like in California, business areas popped up around these semi-secluded Resorts.

More practically, for us this means that I’m not going to list all of the restaurants, hotels, etc. that are located in each area. What I will do, though, is try to give you a better understanding of the things that make each Entertainment District unique among the rest.

Since we now know the five major Entertainment Districts by looking at the map above, let’s get into them and see what some of the highlights of each are, shall we?

Downtown Orlando Entertainment District

Downtown Orlando is the most northern district that I’ve classified. It is, as we have already said, the county seat for Orange County. It’s also home to the old Church Street Station, which was a wonderful retail and entertainment complex near Orange Avenue, which is (arguably) the main thoroughfare through downtown Orlando. At night, Church Street would be shut to vehicular traffic, which made a visit to the area much more enjoyable. Unfortunately, over the years Church Street Station has been unable to keep it’s tenants due to lower and lower visitor attendance, and has basically been shut down for several years now. On the bright side of things, Church Street Station has been bought by a developer and is being converted into high density upscale apartments mixed with more retail and entertainment space. It’s not completed yet, but let’s hope the developer can restore the area to some of its former glory (www.churchstreetstation.com).

Adjacent to Church Street is the previously-mentioned Orange Avenue. This is home to many of the area’s night clubs, which are mostly visited by locals and are all independently owned. This area also had a great haunted attraction called Terror on Church Street, which closed along with the decline of Church Street Station (it was located on the corner of Church and Orange). Most of the clubs mentioned, if not all, are located on either side of Orange Avenue for three or four blocks.

Possibly the best features of the Downtown Orlando area are the government-connected attractions, which are either owned by the City or County Governments or initiated their funding. To start off with this group, let’s look at what is closest to downtown.

First up is the Orlando Centroplex (www.orlandocentroplex.com), which is the name for the expanded area which comprises the major sports and event venues of the area. This includes the TD Waterhouse Center (formerly the Orlando Arena or “O-Rena”) which is home to the Orlando Magic NBA team and any major concerts or events, the Expo Center which has meeting space for business functions, the Bob Carr Performing Arts Center which hosts Broadway performances, Tinker Field which is a small to medium size baseball facility, and last but certainly not least is the Citrus Bowl, which is an outdoor football stadium which hosts the annual NCAA College Football Florida Citrus Bowl (and is the home stadium of my wife’s and my alma mater: the University of Central Florida).

Next in the “Government-influenced” group is that of the Orange County Regional Historical Center (www.thehistorycenter.org).

This is a brand new location for the O.C. Regional History Center, and it houses many exhibits on the area’s changes from citrus to tourism and other significant events which affected the region. Their signature exhibit, which is aptly called “The Day We Changed”, explores the vast transformations the area has undergone since Walt Disney decided to build his “East Coast Disneyland” here. Hey, wasn’t Corey Thomas just talking about that very same topic in his Main Street Chronicles here on Mickey News?

Finally for the Downtown Orlando Entertainment District is Loch Haven Park, which is located north of the downtown area and includes the Orlando Science Center and the Orlando Museum of Art.

First up, let’s take a look at the Orlando Science Center (www.osc.org).

The Orlando Science Center is quite possibly the greatest overlooked attraction in the entire Central Florida region (in my opinion). The old location is adjacent to the new expanded building, and for years the City of Orlando has had trouble justifying the expansion costs due to low attendance numbers. This is due to its geographic location in my opinion, as Loch Haven Park is considerably north of Downtown Orlando, which itself is often not in the vicinity in which area visitors often travel to. The Science Center was always impressive in my mind, even for the old location which was a local field-trip staple. The new location hosts a new telescope, planetarium and laser-light show, and overall scientific exhibits, attractions, and shows. The bridge you see in the photo is from the new parking garage across the street, which alleviated the minimal parking Loch Haven Park had.

Also in Loch Haven Park is the Orlando Museum of Art (www.omart.org).

My wife and I recently re-visited the Orlando Museum of Art in Loch Haven Park to see the traveling exhibit of “Chihuly across Florida”, which was an exhibit of artist Dale Chihuly’s amazing glass sculptures, some of which are in the Disney Cruise Line Ships and the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas. While that exhibit has since past, you can still get to see some of the beauty of his work at www.chihulyflorida.com . These types of outstanding exhibits are why it’s a good idea to check out the Orlando Museum of Art from time to time. As my wife and I experienced, you never know what beautiful things you may find yourself gazing at.

Universal Orlando Entertainment District

The Universal Orlando Resort (www.universalorlando.com) is the other big boy on the Orlando block, after Walt Disney World of course. The Universal Orlando Resort underwent an incredible and dramatic overhaul when the Islands of Adventure Theme Park was added to the property.

The addition of Islands of Adventure (the park on the top left side of the map) brought with it everything else in the photo except for the Universal Studios Florida Theme park (which is on the top right of the above map). Yes, you heard me correctly, everything else you see there.

The layout of the Resort is ingenious for what they had to work with. I say “what they had to work with” since the entire resort is constrained in size: they have about 30-50% more land left of the Royal Pacific Hotel, but then that’s it. Walt’s foresight about buying as much land as possible was right on the money... since Universal surely wishes it had more than it currently does. The Resort is literally land-locked by Interstate 4 on the left, a High School on the top, residential and commercial buildings on the right, and tourist operations to the bottom...and that’s across the respective streets that are there, mind you. You can literally drive around the entire resort within 10 minutes, given all green lights and no traffic.

Anyway, back to the layout of the Resort. To maximize their usable space, Universal decided to go with a parking garage approach, in which they proceeded to build two of the largest parking garages I’ve ever seen in my life. Once parked there, guests proceed via elevated covered walkways (complete with moving sidewalks) to a hub, and then onto the Universal CityWalk area.

The Universal CityWalk area is Universal Orlando’s answer to Walt Disney World’s Downtown Disney area. It’s here that you’ll find a 20 screen Universal Cineplex, along with numerous clubs such as Bob Marley – A Tribute to Freedom, Pat O’Brien’s, CityJazz, The Groove, and Hard Rock Live. You’ll also find a load of unique restaurants here such as Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville, the Motown Café, NBA City, NASCAR Café, the Latin Quarter, Pastamoré, Hard Rock Café, and Emeril’s Restaurant Orlando.

Once you’ve walked through Universal CityWalk on the way to your theme park of choice, you have had an opportunity to see all of the fun CityWalk has to offer, which may lead to a revisit later on that night. That’s the brilliance of the Universal Orlando Resort’s layout... everything is centered around and within walking distance of CityWalk, with guests forced to walk through the area to get to the theme parks. This approach may lead to guests coming back for a meal or a night of fun.

If you head to the left at the center fountain in CityWalk, you’ll be heading for Islands of Adventure. If you head right at the CityWalk center fountain, you’ll be heading to the Universal Studios Florida park. I could go through each park, but that would be a waste of time. Check out www.universalorlando.com if you’re really interested.

Also on the Resort are several hotel properties, but nowhere near the number that Walt Disney World possesses. Included in this elite group is the Portafino Bay Hotel with its Italian/Mediterranean styling, the Hard Rock Hotel (take a guess as what the theme is there), and the newer Royal Pacific Resort, which is more of a group of asterisk-shaped towers than a master-planned resort like the other two.

What about the rest of the Entertainment Districts?

Well, now that we’ve covered the top two, it’s time to work our way down through the International Drive/SeaWorld Orlando, Walt Disney World, and Highway 192 areas, right?

Well, I think this article has been long enough, so I’m going to have to come back with these areas next week. Until then...

Thanks for stopping on by, and I’ll see you next week!