Hopefully, you’re joining us here after reading parts I and II of this series. If not, what are you waiting for? The old articles are going to be pulled off the site today! Hurry, get on over to the All Ears on Central Florida section and read them before they’re gone!

Now that I’ve provided a little motivation for those who tried to skip the first two articles, let’s get back to our discussion of my Orange County “Entertainment Districts.”

We’ve already covered the first two, namely Downtown Orlando and Universal Orlando, but let’s pull that map up again just to get our bearings, shall we?

The image above has been modified to include my “Entertainment Districts.” They are located by the black box boundaries surrounding a specific area, and starting with the top one (going north to south) 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.

Okay, well it looks like the next “Entertainment District” up is...

SeaWorld / I-Drive Entertainment District

The SeaWorld / I-Drive Entertainment District is comprised of two areas, surprisingly the SeaWorld Orlando Resort and the International Drive corridor!

International Drive (www.internationaldriveorlando.com), otherwise known as “I-Drive”, is a menagerie of numerous shops, attractions, restaurants, hotels, tours, and the Orange County Convention Center. It could easily be called the Main Street of Central Florida tourism for the sheer number of tourism operations in the area. To the north end of I-Drive you’ll find the southern entrance to Universal Orlando, and to the south of I-Drive you’ll find the SeaWorld Orlando Resort.

In this Entertainment District, some of the unique attractions include: Air Florida Tours, numerous miniature golf courses & movie theaters, Fun Spot, Vans Skate Park, World Bowling Center, YMCA Aquatic Center, Hard Rock Vault Museum, Magical Midway, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, the Skull Kingdom haunted attraction, SkyVenture skydiving wind tunnel, Titanic: The Exhibition, XS, and WonderWorks. (See the above web site for more information)

On a separate note here is the Wet n’ Wild Water Park (www.wetnwild.com), which was bought by Universal Orlando a while back, but is located outside of the Universal Orlando Resort. Also close to the I-Drive area is the Holy Land Experience Theme Park (www.holylandexperience.com).

On the food side of things, the choices are really too numerous to mention, but you do have two unique dinner shows in the area, namely the Sleuth’s Mystery Dinner Theater (www.sleuths.com) and Pirate’s Dinner Adventure (www.piratesdinneradventure.com).

The crown of shopping is held firmly by the king of the area, namely the Belz Factory Outlet World (www.belzoutletmall.com) on the northern tip of International Drive. Here you can find over 170 name brand outlet stores with some really great prices. Across the way is a newer mall for the area named Festival Bay (www.belz.com), as well as an upscale mall called The Mall at Millenia (www.mallatmillenia.com) down the road off of Interstate 4. Down towards the southern end of I-Drive are two more regional shopping areas: the Mercado (www.themercado.com) and Pointe Orlando (www.pointeorlando.com).

Of course, there is the Orange County Convention Center (www.orlandoconvention.com) and the numerous hotels in the area, all of which can be explored from the www.internationaldriveorlando.com web site.

On the southern end of International Drive, we have an Orlando theme park which has been around for quite some time, namely the SeaWorld Adventure Park (www.seaworld.com/seaworld/fla).

SeaWorld is now known as SeaWorld Orlando with the addition of Discovery Cove. To explain Discovery Cove correctly, let’s look at a map of the SeaWorld Orlando Adventure Park:

SeaWorld is by far the best aquatic park in the state. The variety of marine species mixed with education makes this park one to “see” if you’re intrigued by the “sea.” Okay, I’m sorry for that. To be serious, SeaWorld does a heck of a lot for the community, especially when it comes to rescues of injured marine animals. Often the State of Florida will readily call the SeaWorld Animal Rescue Team to assist in a rescue, which may have the team bring back the animal to the park for veterinary care. If the animal can be released into the wild later on, it will be. If it is deemed that the animal cannot survive in the wild, then the animal will remain at the park in captivity. Most if not all animals in the park were either rescued from the wild or were born at the park itself.

They have added two thrill rides to the park, Journey to Atlantis (slightly like Splash Mountain) and the Kraken rollercoaster along with their traditional animal exhibits and shows. However, possibly the coolest section of the park is the Key West area, which is located at the bottom left of the park. I say that because it is here that you can walk up to dolphins and pet them, as well as feed them from the wall of their aquatic environment. It really is a wonderful experience, and the SeaWorld staff will even take a professional picture of your dolphin encounter for purchase if you wish.

The overwhelming success of the Key West area spawned SeaWorld’s newest park, namely Discovery Cove.

Discovery Cove (www.discoverycove.com) is a new theme park to the area, which was set up across the street from SeaWorld Adventure Park, literally. Think of it as a cross between the Key West area of SeaWorld, mixed with Typhoon Lagoon, minus the water rides. The idea with this park was to have an oasis setting (which as you can see above, they did a pretty good job with) in which people could relax in the water, but at the same time they could actually get in the water and swim with live dolphins.

The idea took off like wildfire, and is still a strong attraction for guests. However, there are some things to consider before packing your bathing suit: first off, you don’t swim with the dolphins all day: you have a set number of timed encounters which are supervised by a professional (for the safety of you and the dolphins). Secondly, the daily admission price per person is nowhere near Disney or Universal prices: around $150.00 for a non-dolphin encounter day to around $230 for a standard all-inclusive day. Lastly, you have to make an appointment for when you are going to visit. On the other hand however from those that I spoke with which had done it, they said that the experience was incredible and was well worth the money. I’ll let you check out their site and decide for yourself.

Walt Disney World Entertainment District

I could go on and on about the place here, but where would the fun in that be? I would need much more room to talk about it than I could ever squeeze in here.

I’ll tell you what, come next week, I’ll focus solely on Walt Disney World and how the Resort is designed, okay? Don’t worry: I wouldn’t forget about my favorite Entertainment District!

Highway 192 Entertainment District

The Highway 192 Entertainment District for me goes along the Highway 192 route from it’s beginning at US 27 (the dark line to the left of the image), to the city limits of Kissimmee (after marker number 15).

Osceola County has a real jewel on their hands here, since they have the magic word: space. Highway 192 takes up a lot of room, and they have managed to fill most of it up pretty well. To add to easy navigating, they have added huge number signs (markers) along the Highway, which allow visitors to identify where they are exactly on the route.

Another big thing going for this area is it’s proximity to Walt Disney World. In fact, a very large portion of Highway 192 is on Disney property technically. If you look at the map above, the darker pink indicates Walt Disney World’s area, which happens to cross over it. What’s on the south side of Highway 192? That’s the location of Disney’s Celebration; their master-planned residential community. Of course, don’t think you can just drive onto some back road of Walt Disney World from Highway 192… while there are some of those types of roads, most visitors use the World Drive entrance which looks just like the other arched entrances which feed into the resort.

Some items to speak of which are unique to the Highway 192 Entertainment District is Old Town (www.old-town.com), a kickback to the old Main Streets complete with numerous shops and restaurants. There is no admission fee or parking fee, and there is a classic car show every weekend. In addition, they have a SkyCoaster and a new Drag Race called G-Force which launches the first person to hit the gas pedal over 100 MPH in just a few seconds (the opponent will go just as fast, but will not “win the race” at the end).

Highway 192 also has many themed restaurants including dinner shows such as Arabian Knights (www.arabian-knights.com), Medieval Times (www.medievaltimes.com), and Capone’s Dinner & Show (www.alcapones.com). If you feel like cooling down a bit, 192 also has the Water Mania water park (www.watermania.com), and was once home to the Splendid China Theme Park (now closed).

“But What About Disney World!?!?”

Okay, okay, I know you’re dying to dive into the ‘World as we go along here, but the truth of the matter is that the Resort is SOOO large, I almost have to make it its own article.

So with that in mind, site back, explore some Walt Disney World pictures here on Mickey News in the meantime, and I’ll bring you what you’re waiting for next week: The Tourism Geography of Walt Disney World.

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