1971
Walt Disney World opens
The Magic Kingdom opened near Orlando to a modest crowd, the first step of a Florida resort that grew into the most visited vacation destination in the world.
On October 1, 1971, the Magic Kingdom opened its gates in central Florida, southwest of Orlando, together with two hotels, the Contemporary Resort and the Polynesian Village Resort. About 10,000 guests came on the first day. The number was deliberately modest: Disney officials wanted to avoid the overcrowding that had marred the opening of Disneyland in California 16 years earlier. A grander dedication followed from October 23 to 25.
The project had begun with a search for land in 1959. Market surveys showed that only a small share of Disneyland’s visitors came from east of the Mississippi River, where most Americans lived, and Walt Disney disliked the businesses that had crowded around his Anaheim park. After flying over sites in Florida in 1963, he chose land near Bay Lake, close to planned highways. To keep prices from soaring, the company bought more than 27,000 acres through shell companies with names such as the Ayefour Corporation. Much of it was swamp, and some tracts sold for as little as $100 an acre. A reporter for the Orlando Sentinel finally uncovered the secret in October 1965.
Walt Disney never saw the result. He died in December 1966, before construction began. His older brother, Roy O. Disney, postponed his retirement to see “The Florida Project” through. Walt’s dream of an experimental planned city was set aside, and the company built a theme park resort modeled on Disneyland instead.
Why it matters
At the October dedication, Roy announced that the resort would be called Walt Disney World in honor of his brother, so that people would remember the man who started it all. The resort kept growing: EPCOT Center opened in 1982, the park known today as Disney’s Hollywood Studios in 1989, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom in 1998, along with water parks, golf courses, and dozens of hotels.
Walt Disney World is the most visited vacation resort in the world, with average annual attendance of more than 49 million in 2024, and the Magic Kingdom has long been the world’s most visited theme park. Its opening helped turn central Florida into a global tourism destination, and the resort is the largest single-site employer in the United States.
Did you know?
Some of the shell companies Disney used to buy the land in secret are remembered in the park itself. Their names appear on windows above Main Street, U.S.A., in the Magic Kingdom.
