Okay, I know what you’re thinking. “What gives, Dave? You said we’d explore Walt Disney World last week!”

Well, I must apologize for delaying this finale until now. There is a good reason for the delay. I’m in my last semester here in my program and I’ve been tied to our computer night and day it seems, cranking out papers. To top it all off, I have finally begun my tourism job hunt in Central Florida.

But who’s here to listen to excuses? How about we get the show on the road and dive into the Walt Disney World Entertainment District!

WALT DISNEY WORLD ENTERTAINMENT DISTRICT

I absolutely love that artist’s rendering above. You can really comprehend a map easier and more completely by using a three dimensional viewpoint, and I think the one above is simply magnificent.

However, to break the report down into manageable groups, let’s use another map that is more two dimensional:

As you can see from this image, we have four major zones inside the Walt Disney World Resort. The first is the one to the north in light blue called the Magic Kingdom Resort Area. This was to be the only resort area in the entire landmass owned by the Walt Disney Company. Based upon Walt’s master plan for the resort, the Magic Kingdom area was to be the only park along with some hotels. The area in pink was where Walt’s EPCOT city was to be built. Of course, plans changed once he and Roy had passed away, shelving the EPCOT city concept and building the EPCOT: Center theme park in its place instead.

I guess it’s a mixed blessing, though, since that decision opened the possibility for multiple theme parks being clustered in an area. The Walt Disney Company created the modern theme park under the vision of Walt and the ability of Roy, and now had created the multi-park resort as well.

In the Magic Kingdom Resort Area, you’ll find of course the Magic Kingdom Park, as well as the Contemporary Resort, the Polynesian Resort, the Walt Disney World Wedding Pavilion, the Grand Floridian Resort and Spa, the Wilderness Lodge, the Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground, as well as the Walt Disney World Speedway. Of note in this area are two attractions that are no longer open to the public, namely the Discovery Island nature sanctuary, and the River Country water park.

The next area moving south is the Epcot Resort Area, which has, expectedly, the Epcot Theme Park! (Do you see the pattern here?) What is interesting here is that while the Magic Kingdom Park’s front faces the resorts in its area, Epcot does not. This forced Disney to add a second entrance to the park in the World Showcase section, just southwest of the United Kingdom pavilion. From that point, you are right at the Beach Club, Yacht Club, and Boardwalk Resorts. This cluster of resorts is situated around a body of water which connects to the World Showcase Lagoon. This area is probably one of the best looked-over areas of Walt Disney World, since if you are not staying at one of these properties and didn’t know about the back entrance to Epcot, you would most likely miss it entirely.

Connected to this area as well are the Swan and Dolphin Hotels, which are not owned by the Walt Disney Company. As a reward for on-time completion of EPCOT: Center (as well as some litigation from other issues) the Tishman Hotel Corporation was allowed to lease and build these two hotels on Disney property as long as the designs were approved by Disney before construction began. These resorts sit due west of the Beach, Yacht, and Boardwalk resorts, and have walkways and Friendship boat transportation access to them.

Also in the area is the Caribbean Beach Resort, which is south of Epcot’s World Showcase, across Buena Vista Drive (which we’ll discuss a little later). For additional Entertainment, we have the Fantasia Gardens Mini-Golf also located nearby.

Something unique in our discussion here is that of the Disney-MGM Studios. You see, the Studios do not have their own hotels as they are connected to the Epcot Resort Area via the same waterways I mentioned before. If you decide not to take the Friendship boats to or from the Studios, you can always utilize a sidewalk built on the bank of the connecting waterway. Of course, with all the walking you’ll be doing throughout your time at Walt Disney World, you probably should take every opportunity you can to skip any unnecessary walking!

To the east of the Epcot Resort Area is the Downtown Disney Resort Area. Originally, this area was known as the Disney Village, which took up the space that the Downtown Disney Marketplace currently does.

This area can be confusing if you’re not aware of the layout, so let me try and explain. Downtown Disney is the entire area from the Art of Disney store to the Cirque du Soleil theatre. It is, however, split into three sections, which are the Marketplace to the Northeast with shops, Pleasure Island in the middle with various night clubs, and West Side to the west with attractions, signature restaurants, and a few shops. Of course, there are numerous restaurants and shops throughout each of the three sections.

The great thing about Downtown Disney is that it has its own parking, which is free! This allows anyone to enjoy Pleasure Island, AMC 24 Theatres, DisneyQuest, Cirque du Soleil, Virgin Megastore, World of Disney, etc., without any admission ticket or parking fee like the theme parks.

Across Buena Vista Drive here is the Casting building for the resort (hiring), as well as the Team Disney building (Resort Management). Down Buena Vista Drive a little west is the Typhoon Lagoon water park.

As far as resorts in this area go, the new Disney Vacation Club’s Saratoga Springs Resort is located due north of the Downtown Disney Marketplace section. To the east, we have the Downtown Disney Resort Area hotels section, which is a row of non-Disney hotels such as Courtyard by Marriott, Wyndham Palace, Hilton, and Doubletree. These hotels lease the land from Disney, and are considered to be partners with the Walt Disney World Resort. In this row you will also find the building for the Reedy Creek Improvement District government. To the west of Downtown Disney, we have Disney’s Old Key West Resort, along with nearby refurbished Port Orleans: Riverside and Port Orleans: French Quarter Resorts.

The last area to mention is Disney’s Animal Kingdom Resort Area, which as you guessed, contains Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park!

This area is still rather sparse due to its newer development, but does contain the Animal Kingdom Lodge, Coronado Springs Resort, The All Star Movies, Music, and Sports Resorts, the Blizzard Beach water park, the adjacent Winter Summerland Mini-golf course, and the Resort’s only free-standing McDonald’s. Look for this area to become more developed later on as the resort expands to the north and west of this area.

Of course, even though we have covered many places within Walt Disney World, we still have missed some!

For one, I didn’t mention many of the golf courses in the Resort, of which most are located around the Magic Kingdom area. Also of note is the Wide World of Sports Complex, which sits on the backside of Highway 192, but must be accessed from within the Resort. Also left out is the new Pop Century Resort, which is located south of the Caribbean Beach Resort.

Now that you know the areas that make up the Walt Disney world Resort, how are you going to get around to all of them?

The answer to that question is twofold: bus transportation or drive.

The Walt Disney World bus transportation system is the Resort’s alternative to expanding the Walt Disney World Monorail System. It allows anyone to travel from one guest area in the Resort to another guest area free of charge.

Decide to drive within the Walt Disney World Resort? Then you need to remember one road. Forget Main Street U.S.A.; you need to remember Main Street W.D.W., otherwise known as Buena Vista Drive. If you take a look at the dark green line I have created in the pervious map, you can see immediately what I’m talking about. This stretch of road can take you to all of the guest areas of the Resort. If you follow the smaller, lighter green lines I have added to the previous map, you can see how you would use connecting roads from Buena Vista Drive to access all of the major attractions.

One other suggestion would be that if you ever see a road sign in WDW that says “To All Guest Areas”, take it. Otherwise you will be heading outside of the Walt Disney Resort area; this is their way of telling you that. If you were trying to find the entrance for Epcot and just saw a sign that said this, you had better take the ramp or you’ll find yourself heading for the Resort’s outer borders.

The south side of the Walt Disney World Entertainment District was already covered in this series as the Highway 192 Entertainment District; but to cover the Walt Disney World Entertainment District properly, we also have to look at the northeast.

It is there that the Walt Disney World Entertainment District’s borders were expanded by me due to the number of restaurants in this area, as well as a few hotels, attractions, and shops. If you follow Buena Vista Drive all the way east out of Walt Disney World, you will come to a great little shopping plaza called “Crossroads.” Crossroads has many chain restaurants in it, as well as a unique adventure-themed restaurant called Jungle Jims. If you go north from the Crossroads plaza, you will also hit other chain restaurants, hotels, and shops.

Well, you ready to go yet?

This series has hopefully been some help to you in learning about Central Florida Tourism, and I would encourage you to refer back to the articles in it as you need to when planning your next Central Florida vacation.

For the Walt Disney World Resort, visit their web site at www.disneyworld.com , or take a look around here at Mickey News for information, photos, and more.

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