Orlando is the county seat of Orange County, Florida with a population of 220,000 (US Census 2006). Tourists to this small town are a staggering 54 million - that is 5.4 crores, more than 2x the city of Mumbai - every year. 

In 1965, Walt Disney chose the swampland near Orlando near Lake Beuna Vista, to set up its second theme park, to be called Walt Disney World (first theme park is in Hollywood, California and is called Disneyland). Nobody expected Orlando to become such a huge success that it draws more tourists than the first theme park in California. Orlando has more theme parks than any other location in the world - there are four Disney theme parks, two Disney water parks, 3 Universal parks and several independent water parks etc.  Orlando also has several large convention centers - makes a lot of sense - everybody likes to mix business with pleasure. 

Well if you are wondering why I am talking about  Orlando because we were there for seven glorious days of fun.  Orlando is a fast growing economy solely driven by tourism - growth was very visible betwen my first trip ten years ago to my trip this year.  There were more theme parks than there were in 1997, more hotels and more everything.  Orlando has more hotel rooms than any other place in the world. 

I had more fun this time because we went as a family and our kids enjoyed it so much.  The tourists are unanimous that Universal Studios theme park is more adult fun and if you have children who are 8 plus then they will like Universal.  Our kids are less than 8 so we stuck to Disney.  This is an amazing vacation destination - you can spend a month there and you would not have seen everything.  More later.