The Walt Disney World Resort, informally known as Walt Disney World or simply Disney World, is an

entertainment complex inLake Buena Vista, Florida. The resort opened on October 1, 1971 and is the
most visited vacation resort in the world, with an attendance of 52.5 million annually. It is owned and
operated by Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, a division of The Walt Disney Company. The property
covers 42,000 acres (16,997 ha; 66 sq mi), in which it houses 24 themed resort hotels, four theme parks,
twowater parks, four golf courses, and numerous additional recreational and 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, though he died in 1966 before construction on "The Florida
Project" began. 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. Original plans called for the inclusion of an
"Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow", a planned city that would serve as a test bed for new
innovations for city living.
In 1959, Walt Disney Productions began looking for land for a second park to supplement Disneyland,
which opened in Anaheim, California, 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.
[1]

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.
[2]

To avoid a burst of land speculation, Disney used various dummy corporations to acquire 27,443 acres
(11,106 ha) of land.
[2]
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 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, referred to as
"outs".