Jason Cochran - Frommers EasyGuide to Disney World, Universal and Orlando 2015

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ISBN 978-1-62887-092-3 (paper), 978-1-62887-093-0 (e-book)

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Editor: Melissa Klurman

Production Editor: Heather Wilcox

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Cover Design: Howard Grossman

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AN IMPORTANT NOTE

The world is a dynamic place. Hotels change ownership, restaurants hike their prices, museums alter their opening hours, and buses and trains change their routings. And all this can occur in the several months after our authors have visited, inspected, and written about these hotels, restaurants, museums and transportation services. Though we have made valiant efforts to keep all our information fresh and up-to-date, some few changes can inevitably occur in the periods before a revised edition of this guidebook is published. So please bear with us if a tiny number of the details in this book have changed. Please also note that we have no responsibility or liability for any inaccuracy or errors or omissions, or for inconvenience, loss, damage, or expenses suffered by anyone as a result of assertions in this guide.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jason Cochran was awarded Guide Book of the Year by the Society of American Travel Writers Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition for this book. He also won the award for his guide to London, which he writes for Frommer's, and he is the author of the London, Orlando, and San Francisco guides for the Pauline Frommer series. He has written for publications including The New York Post, Travel + Leisure, USA Today, and Scanorama (Sweden) and been on staff at Entertainment Weekly, Budget Travel, and AOL Travel (Executive Editor). He devised questions for the first American prime-time season of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (ABC) and produced and hosted AfterShark, the AOL post-show for Mark Burnetts Shark Tank (ABC). He has appeared as a commentator on, among others, CBS This Morning, The Early Show (CBS), BBC World, Good Morning America, CNN, BBC World, and the CBC, and he is a video host on AOL. He is an alumnus of Northwestern Universitys Medill School of Journalism and New York Universitys Graduate Music Theatre Writing Program and editor of Frommers.com.

Thank you to all the cast members and staff members who assisted with information, access, and good humor. I also cant imagine doing without the on-the-ground assistance of Shanon Larimer, Wesley Brown, Jason Young, Tracy Temple, Kristin Harmel, Ken Kleiber, Katie Coleman (still), and Denise Spiegel and Heidi Colon of Visit Orlando. Finally, I am grateful to Arthur and Pauline Frommer. Their ideal of helping people of all means see the world with plainspoken, honest advice remains a beacon in an overwhelming ocean of information, and it continues to be an inspiration for many, including me.

ABOUT THE FROMMERS TRAVEL GUIDES

For most of the past 50 years, Frommers has been the leading series of travel guides in North America, accounting for as many as 24 percent of all guidebooks sold. I think I know why.

Although we hope our books are entertaining, we nevertheless deal with travel in a serious fashion. Our guidebooks have never looked on such journeys as a mere recreation, but as a far more important human function, a time of learning and introspection, an essential part of a civilized life. We stress the culture, lifestyle, history, and beliefs of the destinations we cover and urge our readers to seek out people and new ideas as the chief rewards of travel.

We have never shied from controversy. We have, from the beginning, encouraged our authors to be intensely judgmental, criticalboth pro and conin their comments, and wholly independent. Our only clients are our readers, and we have triggered the ire of countless prominent sorts, from a tourist newspaper we called practically worthless (it unsuccessfully sued us) to the many rip-offs weve condemned.

And because we believe that travel should be available to everyone regardless of their incomes, we have always been cost-conscious at every level of expenditure. Although we have broadened our recommendations beyond the budget category, we insist that every lodging we include be sensibly priced. We use every form of media to assist our readers and are particularly proud of our feisty daily website, the award-winning Frommers.com.

I have high hopes for the future of Frommers. May these guidebooks, in all the years ahead, continue to reflect the joy of travel and the freedom that travel represents. May they always pursue a cost-conscious path, so that people of all incomes can enjoy the rewards of travel. And may they create, for both the traveler and the persons among whom we travel, a community of friends, where all human beings live in harmony and peace.

Arthur Frommer

The Best of Orlando

I n 1886, a young unmarried mailman, frustrated with his fruitless toil in the Midwest, moved to the woolly wilderness of Central Florida to make a better go of life. The land was angry. Summers were oppressively hot, the lightning relentless, and the tough earth, sodden and scrubby, defied clearing. The only domestic creatures that thrived there, it seemed, were the cattle, and even they turned out stringy and chewy. Undaunted, the young man planted a grove of citrus trees and waited for things to get better. They didnt. His trees died in a freeze. Now penniless, he was forced to return to delivering mail, the very thing he had tried so hard to escape. By 1890, he gave up, defeated, and moved to Chicago to seek other work. The American dream appeared to fail Elias Disney.

The story could have ended there. But he was joined by his new bride, whose own father had died trying to tame Florida land. Back in the smoke of the Midwest, they had children and settled for an anonymous urban existence. One day, 8 decades later, long after the young man and woman had lived full lives and passed away, two of their sons, now in the sunset of their own lives, would return to Central Florida, to the land that broke their father, and together they would transform the recalcitrant swamp into the most famous fantasy land the world has even known.

Little did Elias know that the dream was only skipping a generation and that his sons Walt and Roy would become synonymous with the same land that rejected him. Had he known that the Disney name would in due time define Central Florida, would he have been so despondent? Even if he had been granted a fleeting vision of what was to be, and what his family would mean to this placeand, indeed, to the United Stateswould he have believed it?