Orlando-Walt Disney World

The Walt Disney World Resort, informally known as Walt Disney World or simply Disney World, is an entertainment complex in Bay Lake, Florida (mailing address is Lake Buena Vista, Florida), near Kissimmee and Orlando and is the flagship of Disney's worldwide corporate empire. The resort opened on October 1, 1971 and is the most visited vacation resort in the world, with an attendance of over 52 million annually. 

Walt Disney World is owned and operated by Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, a division of The Walt Disney Company. The property covers 27,258 acres (11,031 ha; 43 sq mi), housing 27 themed resort hotels, nine non–Disney hotels, four theme parks, two water parks, four golf courses, one nine-hole walking golf course for young golfers (no electric carts allowed), two themed miniature golf courses, one camping resort, a downtown-like shopping district, and other entertainment venues. Magic Kingdom was the first and original theme park to open in the complex followed by Epcot, Disney's Hollywood Studios, and Disney's Animal Kingdom, which opened later throughout the 1980s and 1990s. 

Designed to supplement Disneyland in Anaheim, California, which had opened in 1955, the complex was developed by Walt Disney in the 1960s. "The Florida Project", as he called it, was originally to be built in hopes of differential in design and scheme from Disneyland with its own diverse set of rides. Walt Disney's original plans also called for the inclusion of an "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow", a planned community that would serve as a test bed for new innovations for city living. After extensive lobbying, the Government of Florida created the Reedy Creek Improvement District, a special government district that essentially gave The Walt Disney Company the standard powers and autonomy of an incorporated city. However, Disney died on December 15, 1966, before construction began. Without the creative mind of Disney spearheading the construction of Walt Disney World, the company instead created the resort very similar to Disneyland, just on a much larger scale, along with abandoning Walt's concept of an experimental planned community. 

In 1959, Walt Disney Productions began looking for land for a second park to supplement the Disneyland in Anaheim, California, which had opened in 1955. Market surveys revealed that only 5% of Disneyland's visitors came from east of the Mississippi River, where 75% of the population of the United States lived. Additionally, Walt Disney disliked the businesses that had sprung up around Disneyland and wanted control of a much larger area of land for the new project. 

Walt Disney flew over the Orlando-area site (one of many) in November 1963. Seeing the well-developed network of roads, including the planned Interstate 4 and Florida's Turnpike, with McCoy Air Force Base (later Orlando International Airport) to the east, Disney selected a centrally located site near Bay Lake.To avoid a burst of land speculation, Walt Disney World Company used various dummy corporations to acquire 30,500 acres (12,343 ha; 48 sq mi) of land. In May 1965, some of these major land transactions were recorded a few miles southwest of Orlando in Osceola County. Also, two large tracts totaling $1.5 million were sold, and smaller tracts of flatlands and cattle pastures were purchased by exotic-sounding companies such as the "Ayefour Corporation", "Latin-American Development and Management Corporation" and the "Reedy Creek Ranch Corporation"; some of these names are now memorialized on a window above Main Street, U.S.A. in the Magic Kingdom. In addition to three huge parcels of land were many smaller parcels, called "outs". Much of the land acquired had been platted into 5 acres (2 ha) lots in 1912 by the Munger Land Company and sold to investors. Most owners were happy to get rid of the land, which was mostly swamp. Another issue was the mineral rights to the land, which were owned by Tufts University. Without the transfer of these rights, Tufts could come in at any time and demand the removal of buildings to obtain minerals. Eventually, Disney's team negotiated a deal with Tufts to buy the mineral rights for $15,000. 

Working under a strict cloak of secrecy, real estate agents who did not know the identity of their client began making offers to landowners in southwest Orange and northwest Osceola counties in April 1964, shortly after Walt Disney chose the site for his new theme park. Careful not to let property owners know the extent of their land-buying appetites, the agents quietly negotiated one deal after another, sometimes lining up contracts to buy huge tracts for little more than $100 an acre. Because they knew that recording the first deeds would trigger intense public questioning about what was going on, Disney's representatives waited until they had a large number of parcels locked up through options before filing their paperwork. 

Rumors as to the purpose of the land purchases at first pointed towards development in support of the nearby Kennedy Space Center as well as a second Disney amusement park. An Orlando Sentinel news article in May 1965 believed Disney was behind the land purchases, but added that Walt Disney himself, when interviewed during a Kennedy Space Center visit, denied any connection, saying he was more concerned with expanding Disneyland than with building a second park. In October 1965, Emily Bavar, an editor from the Sentinel, visited Disneyland as the park was celebrating its 10th anniversary and asked Disney again if he was buying up the land for a second Disneyland park; Bavar later described that Disney "looked like I had thrown a bucket of water in his face" before denying the story. Disney's evasiveness, combined with other research during her California visit, prompted Bavar to author a story that the Sentinel ran in its October 21, 1965 edition where she predicted that Disney was purchasing the land in preparation for a second theme park. Three days later, the Sunday edition of the Sentinel proclaimed that Disney was indeed the mystery buyer. 

Walt Disney had planned on revealing the Disney World project on November 15, 1965, but in light of the Sentinel story, Disney asked Florida Governor Haydon Burns to confirm to the press the following Monday that he planned to build "the greatest attraction in the history of Florida". Disney joined Burns in Orlando for the official reveal of Disney World on the previously-planned November 15 date.