Orlando

Disney World's first park (1971) cannot be walked into from the car park. You park at the ticket centre and take a monorail or ferry across the lagoon, so arrive 30 minutes before opening. Castle fireworks run every night; Main Street fills an hour ahead.

Opened in 1982, it greets you with Spaceship Earth, a silver sphere with a slow ride inside. Behind it, World Showcase sets 11 national pavilions round a lagoon loop of nearly 2 km. Each sells its own food and drink, and many walk it a glass per country.

Hogsmeade, the Harry Potter village, is in Islands of Adventure at Universal Orlando. The Hogwarts Express runs to Diagon Alley in the next park, and boarding needs a ticket covering both. The window views are screens, telling a different story each way.

Cape Canaveral is about an hour's drive east. The shuttle Atlantis hangs tilted with its payload doors open, as it sat in orbit. The Saturn V lies on its side in a separate hall reached by the complex's own bus. Launch days jam the roads.

The lake is right in the centre of downtown, and its central fountain, built in 1957, is lit in colours at night. Swans live along the shore, and swan-shaped pedal boats are for hire. Every Sunday a farmers' market sets up on one side.

Since 1938 a pontoon boat has toured three lakes in this suburb through the narrow canals joining them. The canals are barely one boat wide, so the gardens of the big houses feel within reach. There are no reservations; passengers board in turn at the dock.

It holds the world's largest collection of Louis Comfort Tiffany's work. The Tiffany Chapel, shown at the 1893 Chicago fair, is rebuilt whole in one room. It stands where the Park Avenue shops end to the north, easy to pair with the lake boat tour.

The water wells up at around 22C all year, so even in high summer it feels cool. Canoes can follow the run downstream. On weekends the car park fills during the morning, and the gate closes whenever the park reaches capacity.

From November to March, when the river turns cold, hundreds of manatees move up into the warm water where the run begins. In that season there is no swimming; you watch from the boardwalk. The colder the morning, the more gather, so go early.

It began in 1949 as a roadside gator stop, and unlike the big parks you walk boardwalks over a swamp holding hundreds of alligators. Several times a day keepers dangle chicken and the gators leap clear of the water, so check the schedule at the gate.

Disney's animal park, opened in 1998, centres on the Tree of Life, its trunk and roots carved with hundreds of creatures. Morning safari trucks catch the animals on the move; on many days this park shuts before Disney's others.

Disney's film-lot park, where the Star Wars land opened in 2019 around a full-size Millennium Falcon. Inside its cockpit six riders split the flying, shooting and repairs between them, and the pilot seats are by far the busiest.

Universal's newest park, opened in May 2025. Five lands, Super Nintendo World, the Harry Potter Ministry of Magic and the Isle of Berk among them, ring a central garden. It stands apart from Universal's two older parks; switch by shuttle or car.

A marine park that doubles as a coaster park, with rides such as Mako, named for the shark, and Pipeline. The manatee area is a care pool for injured or sick wild manatees, so the animals on view change from season to season.

Disney's shopping and dining district needs no ticket, and its parking garages cost nothing. Shops and restaurants line the lakefront, which suits an evening on a day without park tickets. The souvenirs are the same stock sold inside the parks.

A botanical garden on a lake in central Orlando, best known for camellias that bloom in winter. A guide leads visits into the old farmhouse on the grounds, and the paths offer a quiet break from the theme-park crowds.

Roughly an hour south of Orlando by car, the tower went up in 1929 on one of the highest hills in peninsular Florida. Inside the pink marble is a carillon of 60 bells, and each afternoon a recital rings across the gardens.

The closest stretch of Atlantic sand to Orlando, roughly sixty minutes' drive east. The Cape Canaveral pads are near enough that on a launch day a rocket can be watched rising from the beach. Anglers crowd the tip of the wooden pier.

The refuge that surrounds Kennedy Space Center. Black Point Wildlife Drive is a one-way dirt loop for watching wading birds and alligators from the car, and from the viewing deck under the Haulover Canal bridge manatees surface to breathe.