The Place for Government Per Diem Rate Hotels

City Overview

There is no disguising the fact Orlando is a city built on theme parks - lots of them. Until 1966, there was precious little here in central Florida, but growth has spiralled thanks to a huge influx of tourists following the arrival of Walt Disney World Resort.

From the original Magic Kingdom, which opened in 1971, Disney has added three more theme parks, two water parks and a host of associated development, including hotels, shops and golf courses to make it a true 'World' resort. It is also home to a number of Government per diem hotels offering excellent accommodation for the busy government traveler.

With Disney setting the example, SeaWorld (three theme parks) and Universal (two) have added to Orlando's reputation as the family entertainment capital of the world. Between them, they draw nearly than 50 million visitors every year, and that has meant a huge growth in associated hotels, restaurants and shops, plus a host of smaller-scale attractions.

However, this young city has also developed its own identity, with a number of high-tech industries relocating here. The downtown area is fast developing yuppie overtones and there are ambitious plans to become a major cultural centre. The city is also America's number two convention location.

Having said that, the main attraction for 99% of visitors remains the theme parks, and the likes of the nearby Kennedy Space Center. And, in order to attract the all-important repeat visitors, Orlando has become adept at re-inventing itself and providing new attractions at regular intervals.

Getting Around

Airport

Orlando International Airport (MCO)
Tel: (407) 825 2001 (general enquiries) or 8463 (flight information).
Website: www.orlandoairports.net  

Orlando International Airport is located 14km (9 miles) southeast of Orlando city centre and some 35km (22 miles) east of Walt Disney World Resort. It serves both domestic and international destinations.

The airport is consistently voted number one for customer satisfaction in the USA and facilities include a 446-room Hyatt hotel, 100 shops and restaurants, a full service bank, a hair salon and spa and a post office. Six car hire companies (including Alamo, Avis and Budget) operate direct from the airport, with many more operating outside the airport. MearsTransportation (tel: (407) 423 5566; website: www.mearstransportation.com) offers a shuttle service from the airport to all the area's hotels.

Orlando Sanford International Airport (SFB)
Tel: (407) 585 4000.
Website: www.orlandosanfordairport.com  

Orlando Sanford International Airport is located 29km (18 miles) to the north of Orlando. It has become a major UK gateway for many of the main British tour operators, and in the last few years has also been developed by various US low-cost carriers. It is much more limited in its scope and services but processes new arrivals extremely quickly compared to Orlando International. There are several car hire companies operating here, including Alamo, Dollar and Hertz, and another more based beyond the airport, while there are numerous taxi and shuttle companies offering round-trip transportation to the hotels, including Mears.

Trains

Amtrak (tel: 1 800 872 7245; website: www.amtrak.com) provides the main rail link to Orlando, with a direct service to downtown Orlando, plus Winter Park, 16km (10 miles) to the north, and Kissimmee, from New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington DC. The Silver Service operates daily from the northeast; since Hurricane Katrina, Sunset Limited from Los Angeles extends east only to New Orleans.

By Road

Hire cars are almost omnipresent in Orlando and companies like Alamo, Dollar and National have some of the biggest fleets in the world here. Basic car hire is quite cheap - although various taxes and fees can add considerably to the price. UK nationals must remember to bring both parts of their driving licence if they have a photo licence. Seat belts must be worn at all times, front and back, and child seats must be used for under fives. Local speed limits vary from 55-70mph (88-112kph) on the motorways to as low as 15mph (24kph) in built-up areas (notably near schools).

Florida in general is served by two main motorways - I-95 from the northeast, and I-75 from Canada and the Midwest, both of which run down either coast, plus I-10, which runs the full width of the USA from Los Angeles to link up with I-75. You can reach Orlando from I-95 or I-75 via I-4, which runs east-west through central Florida. Almost all the attractions of Orlando can be reached via I-4, while Highway 192 is the main route immediately to the south serving the Kissimmee area. The (toll) Central Florida GreeneWay (417) then circles a large part of Orlando and is useful for reaching both airports.

Coach services
Greyhound (tel: 1 800 231 2222; website: www.greyhound.com) offers daily services from Jacksonville and points north, as well as from Miami. American Coach Lines (tel: 1 800 488 6876; website: www.americancoachlines.com) offers charter bus services from Maryland, North Carolina and Georgia to Orlando and Florida.

Local Transport

Public Transport

The rather plodding Lynx bus system (tel: (407) 841 5969; website: www.golynx.com) is Orlando's only public transport, but it covers most of the city, Orlando International Airport, the theme parks and most of the main tourist areas. The routes (Links) are symbolised by pink paw-print signs. One-, seven- and 30-day passes are available, all of which represent significant savings if you take more than two regular-price journeys a day. Link 51 runs from the airport to downtown Orlando; Link 42 goes from the airport to International Drive, Link 50 runs from downtown to Disney's Magic Kingdom; Link 56 runs from Kissimmee's Highway 192 to the Magic Kingdom; and Link 38 runs from International Drive to downtown. In addition, many hotels offer free shuttle service to the theme parks, and all Disney resort properties offer complimentary transportation (bus, ferry or monorail) to the Disney parks.

In downtown Orlando, the free Lymmo bus service operates around the city centre. On International Drive (one of the main tourist thoroughfares), there is also the I-RideTrolley (tel: (407) 248 9590; website: www.iridetrolley.com), a cheap bus service linking all the main hotels and points of interest. There are one-, three-, five-, seven- and 14-day passes available, all of which represent great savings on individual journeys.

Taxis

Taxis are common in all areas. Three of the biggest taxi firms are StarTaxis (tel: (407) 857 9999), DiamondCabCo (tel: (407) 523 3333) and Yellow/CityCab (tel: (407) 699 9999).

Driving in the City

Most attractions are well signposted and easy to find on Orlando's road system but traffic can be very heavy on key routes in the morning (0800-0930) and evening (1600-1800). Motorway I-4 is the key east-west route but should be avoided at rush hour, while International Drive can also be seriously congested in the evening. Universal Boulevard is a good alternative. To the south, Highway 192 is the main route to Disney from the busy Kissimmee area, but (toll) Osceola Parkway is often a better bet.

Car Hire

As mentioned above, this is a huge area for car hire and there are rental offices all over the main tourist areas. Alamo (tel: 1 800 462 5266; website: www.alamo.com) and Dollar (tel: 1 866 434 2226; website: www.dollar.com) are easily the two biggest companies in town.

General Information

Location

Florida, southeastern USA.

Time zone

GMT - 5 (GMT - 4 from second Sunday in March to first Sunday in November).

Electricity

110 volts AC; standard two-pin plugs are used.

Average January temperatures

22ºC (71ºF).

Average July temperatures

33ºC (92ºF).

Annual rainfall

1,280mm (50.1 inches).

Things to do

Sightseeing Overview

Just about everything in Orlando starts with Walt Disney World Resort. Almost a city in its own right, this 111-sq-km (43-sq-mile) resort wonderland boasts four theme parks and a host of other attractions. You can easily spend a week or more exploring the four parks, and while most of it is firmly family orientated, there is plenty to amuse and entertain adults.

Outside Disney, the International Drive area is the other main draw. Both SeaWorld Orlando (which has its flagship main park, an exclusive Caribbean-themed hands-on dolphin park, and a brand new water park) and the Universal OrlandoResort (which consists of two theme parks and a dining/shopping/entertainment district) are located here, along with a raft of smaller-scale attractions like Wet ‘n Wild water park, Skull Kingdom haunted house, Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum and a host of good restaurants and shops.

Just to the south is Kissimmee, which adds more attractions and some more natural diversions, like airboat rides, horse riding, tremendous mini golf, fishing and hiking.

Tourist Information

Orlando/Orange County Convention & Visitor Bureau (CVB)
Suite 100, 6700 Forum Drive
Tel: (407) 363 5872.
Website: www.orlandoinfo.com  
Opening hours: Mon-Fri 0900-1700.

The CVB also has an Official Visitor Center, open seven days a week, offering attraction tickets, maps, hotel offers and other discounts.

Visitor Center
Suite 101, 8723 International Drive
Tel: (407) 363 5872.
Opening hours: Daily 0830-1830.

Kissimmee Convention & Visitors Bureau
1925 E Irlo Bronson Memorial Highway, Kissimmee
Tel: (407) 944 2400.
Website: www.floridakiss.com  
Opening hours: Mon-Fri 0800-1700 (except major holidays).

Passes

The Orlando/Orange County CVB offers the free Magicard, with discounts for many of the attractions, restaurants, sports and shops. Download and print online or apply online for home delivery (USA only).

Attractions

Fantasy of Flight
An aviation-themed museum with a difference, this one-off attraction just south of Kissimmee offers a clever ‘immersion experience' into the history of flight, with flight simulators, an extensive vintage aircraft collection and fascinating behind-the-scenes tours. Stay for lunch or dinner at their lovely Compass Rose 1930s vintage diner.
1400 Broadway Boulevard SE, Polk City
Tel: (863) 984 3500.
Website: www.fantasyofflight.com  

Boggy Creek Airboats
For a journey out into the real Florida, head to one of Boggy Creek's two locations in Kissimmee for their half-hour airboat ride around one of the local lakes, taking in the alligators and other animal life of the area. Better still, try their one-hour night tour when they go out to find 'gators in the dark - and their eyes glow red!
3702 Big Bass Road, Kissimmee
Tel: (407) 304 9550.
Website: www.bcairboats.com

Restaurants

B-Line Diner
This 24-hour diner features an amazing range of comfort food around the clock and is located inside the lovely Peabody Hotel.
9801 International Drive
Tel: (407) 352 4000.
Website: www.peabodyorlando.com  
Price: $$

Café Tu Tu Tango
Tapas-style cuisine, with some vegetarian specialities, plus an amazing artist-colony theme, with live entertainment.
8625 International Drive
Tel: (407) 248 2222.
Website: www.cafetututango.com/orlando  
Price: $$$

Jiko
At Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge is their signature African-themed restaurant which features superb African-Asian fusion cuisine.
2901 Osceola Parkway, Walt Disney World Resort, Bay Lake
Tel: (407) 938 3000.
Website: www.disneyworld.com
Price: $$$$

Sweet Tomatoes
Salad lovers should make a beeline for this buffet-style diner, which also offers pizza, pasta and fresh breads.
6877 Kirkman Road
Tel: (407) 363 1616.
Website: www.soupplantation.com  
Price: $

Tchoup Chop
American master chef Emeril Lagasse has created a simply superb Asian/Pacific restaurant at Universal's Royal Pacific Resort.
6300 Hollywood Way
Tel: (407) 503 2467.
Website: www.emerils.com  
Price: $$$$

Todd English's bluezoo
Bluezoo is another of Orlando's underwater-themed, but gorgeous, restaurants. It's the best example of fusion cuisine, heavy on the fish, with price tags that seem to draw conventioneers whooping it up on an expense account.
Walt Disney World Dolphin
Tel: (407) 934 1111.
Website: www.swandolphin.com
Price: $$$$

Victoria & Albert's
Frette linens, Riedel crystal - this is a pull-out-all-the-stops kind of place. It's on a much more intimate scale than many of the Disney resort restaurants, with only 18 tables in the main dining room and another five in the private fireplace room, plus a chef's table in the kitchen. It's a kind of old-timey fancy restaurant ambiance, but chef Scott Hunnel's culinary vision is emphatically 21st century.
Disney's Grand Floridian Resort
Tel: (407) 939 3463.
Website: www.disneyworld.com
Price: $$$$

Night Life

Orlando boasts a surprisingly vibrant and active night-time bar and club scene, with three main venues, Downtown Disney's Pleasure Island, Universal's CityWalk and Downtown Orlando, where there is an ever-changing line-up of nightclubs.

At Pleasure Island, seek out the Adventurers Club for eclectic live comedy and Mannequins for pure dance; at CityWalk, don't miss Bob Marley's for live music and the groove at their standout dance club; and in Downtown Orlando, don't miss bars like Sky 60, Eye Spy and Wall Street Cantina (all on Orange Avenue) and excellent nightclubs like The Social (on North Orange Avenue), with live music (blues, rock and jazz) and resident DJs or the Monkey Bar (on Wall Street) for its suave cocktails. Other one-off clubs worth noting are the duelling pianos of Jellyrolls at Disney's Boardwalk Resort and House of Blues at Downtown Disney.

Shopping

Shopping in Orlando is truly world class, with every kind of retail outlet known to man, from flea markets to tourist traps to magnificent designer-label malls. The discount outlet shopping plazas are particularly common here and boast some of the best value. However, they are spread out far and wide and there is no central shopping area as such, although the 19km (6-mile) length of International Drive comes closest to being a shopping area as it is home to numerous plazas of the gift shop variety, plus two tourist-orientated shopping and dining centres, The Mercado and Pointe Orlando, which both offer some one-of-a-kind shops and restaurants.

The essential shopping venues, though, are the Orlando Premium Outlets, 8200 Vineland Avenue, just off International Drive, for a good range of big-name brands at discount prices; Prime Outlets Orlando (formerly Belz Outlets0, 5401 West Oak Ridge Road at the top of International Drive, for more of the same; Lake Buena Vista Factory Stores, 15767 South Apopka-Vineland Road, for an equally tempting range price-wise; the huge Florida Mall, 8001 South Orange Blossom Trail, Orlando's largest mall; Mall at Millenia, 4200 Conroy Road, just off motorway I-4, which is the newest and smartest mall in Florida; and Festival Bay, 5250 International Drive, an entertainment centre with restaurants, mini-golf, skateboarding and cinemas, plus some good one-off shops.

Individual shops worth looking out for are the eclectic art world of Hoypoloi (in Downtown Disney's West Side) and in Winter Park, Park Avenue features clothing boutiques like the trendy Tuni, 301 South Park Avenue, or Shou'Ture, 339 South Park Avenue, for fashion-forward shoes and a quick pedicure to boot.
Also worth checking out are Timothy's Gallery, 236 North Park Avenue, with ceramics, jewellery and home accessories; Golf Almighty, 501 South Park Avenue, for your golfing needs; and Doggie Door, 356 South Park Avenue, when you need a treat for the canine back home.

Events

Walt Disney World Marathon
Second week in January
This modern local tradition sees runners from all over the world racing around the parks of Disney World, with huge spectator interest.
Walt Disney World Resort
Website: www.disneyworldsports.com
 
Silver Spurs Rodeo
February and October
A twice-yearly celebration of an original American sport.
Osceola Heritage Park, Kissimmee
Website: www.silverspursrodeo.com

Winter Park Sidewalk Art Festival
March
One of America's most prestigious fine arts festivals.
Winter Park
Website: www.wpsaf.org

Gay Days
June
Disney World welcomes gay and lesbian travellers for a week of theme park celebrations.
Walt Disney World Resort
Website: www.disneyworld.com

Independence Day
4 July
Like everywhere else in America, 4 July marks huge celebrations, with fireworks and other entertainment.
Main festivities centred on Lake Eola, Downtown

Great Outdoor Festival
November
The Kissimmee area celebrates its tradition of fishing with a two-day lakeside pageant.
Lakefront Park, Kissimmee
Website: www.floridakiss.com

Christmas Holidays
Christmas and New Year holidays
Each of the four Disney parks, as well as SeaWorld Orlando and Universal, decorate lavishly for the Christmas and New Year holidays. There are special ‘hard ticket' (that means a special ticket with a specified time and date) events throughout the season at each park.

History & Culture

There is a small but thriving arts centre in Orlando, the majority of which is centred on the downtown area. The Orlando Ballet (tel: (407) 426 1733; website: www.orlandoballet.org) is Central Florida's only professional resident ballet company and one of the few ballet companies of its size performing the full-length classical ballets, mostly at the downtown Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre (but in 2009 many arts organisations will move to the new Orlando Centroplex).

Orlando Shakespeare Theater (tel: (407) 447 1700; website: www.orlandoshakes.org) offers classical productions year round at the John & Rita Lowndes Shakespeare Center on Princeton Street in the Loch Haven Cultural Park. The latter also houses the Mennello Museum of American Art (tel: (407) 246 4278; website: www.mennellomuseum.com) and family-friendly Orlando Science Center (tel: (407) 514 2000; website: www.osc.org).

The Bob Carr Performing Art Centre, 401 West Livingston Street (tel: (407) 849 2001; website: www.orlandovenues.net) is the premier venue for theatre, ballet and opera, while Orlando Repertory Theatre, 1001 East Princeton Street (tel: (407) 896 7365; website: www.orlandorep.com), is a professional company that works in partnership with University of Central Florida to stage family-appropriate classics and riffs on kids' literature. There's the regular main stage season, an ‘American Classics' series that honors US playwrights, and a youth academy for aspiring young actors.

Winter Park, just to the north, is home to two fine museums - The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, 445 North Park Avenue (tel: (407) 645 5311; website: www.morsemuseum.org), which features the world's finest collection of work by Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Cornell Fine Art Museum, 1000 Holt Avenue (tel: (407) 646 2526; website: www.rollins.edu/cfam).

For cinemas, Downtown Disney (AMC 24, Downtown Disney, tel: (407) 298 4488), Universal's CityWalk (Universal Cineplex, CityWalk, Universal Orlando Resort, tel: (407) 354 5998), Pointe Orlando (Muvico Pointe 21, Pointe Orlando, tel: (407) 926 6850) and Festival Bay (Cinemark 20 at Festival Bay, tel: (407) 352 1042) all boast multiscreen cineplexes, while the non-profit alternative cinema Enzian Theater, 1300 South Orlando Avenue (tel: (407) 629 1088; website: www.enzian.org), in the suburb of Maitland, is home to the Florida Film Festival each April.

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