Orlando — how to spend a short stay without spending it queuing
Orlando, Florida
Orlando is organised around the theme parks, and the single most useful thing to know is that a two or three night stay is not enough time to do them properly — which frees you to do something else.
The major parks are built to absorb multiple days. Compressing one into a short stay means paying full price for a fraction of the value, and spending most of it in queues rather than on rides. If parks are the whole point of the trip, plan a longer one. If they are not, the city is a great deal more interesting than its reputation suggests.
Orlando has a real downtown and a set of neighbourhoods that have nothing to do with tourism. Winter Park, a short drive north, is a genuinely pleasant town in its own right — a brick main street, a chain of lakes, and a scale that suits an afternoon. It is the easiest way to spend a day here without a ticket.
The lakes are the underrated part of central Florida. There is a chain of them running through the area, and a boat tour of them is a slow, quiet, cheap thing to do that most visitors never consider because it is not marketed at them.
Food here is better than expected once you leave the tourist corridor. The stretch along International Drive is built for volume; the independent places downtown and in the surrounding neighbourhoods are where the actual cooking happens.
Worth your time
Winter Park
The best non-park day in the area, and it costs nothing to walk around. A real town rather than an attraction, which after a day near the resorts is the point.
The Winter Park scenic boat tour
An hour on the lakes and canals for very little money. Slow in the good sense, and one of the few genuinely local things on offer.
A single park, committed to properly
If you are going to do a park on a short stay, do exactly one and be there when it opens. Two parks in three days is how people come home tired and out of pocket.
What we would skip
Saying so is the point. A guide that recommends everything recommends nothing.
Park-hopper tickets on a short trip
You pay for flexibility you have no time to use. On two or three nights the maths almost never works.
The dinner shows
Expensive for what they are, and they consume an entire evening. The same money spent downtown buys a considerably better meal.
International Drive as a destination
Fine to pass through, not worth planning around. It is a strip of chains that exists because of proximity, not because it is good.
Booking things to do
We do not have booking links on this page yet. When we add them they will be plainly marked, and the recommendations above will not change because of them — what we think is worth doing is decided before anyone is paid for it.
Wayrali is an independent booking platform operated by Filone Inc. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Hilton Grand Vacations, Hilton, Bluegreen Vacations, or any resort brand. Stays are booked using inventory we control directly.
Filone Inc., 1900 West Oakland Park Boulevard, Unit 5881, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33310