50 years ago, Walt Disney flew over Orlando and Central Florida and decided this region would be the site of his newest theme park. His decision that led to Walt Disney World changed Orlando’s world forever.

50 years ago, Orlando changed dramatically as Walt Disney flew over the region and decided that the unspoiled natural paradise of Central Florida was the best place to grow his dream of an attraction that would far surpass Disneyland



It was about 60 degrees that morning, and the high would reach only 81, if even that. Summer’s relative humidity had given way to a more tolerable dewpoint, and there would be no rainfall on such a pleasant autumn day. Instead, Orlando and the rest of the outlying region would bask in the sunshine for which the state was known.





But 50 years ago, at the same site, you would see practically nothing except … well, practically nothing. At least, nothing of note other than Central Florida’s typical muddy and alligator-filled sloughs, sinkhole-formed lakes teeming with fish, and palm-covered and palmetto-tangled flatlands.

At the time, that wouldn’t be surprising, given that, just a few years earlier, the 1960 census showed Orlando had a population of just 86,880, while Orange County’s was only 262,655.

South of Orlando, in Osceola County, Kissimmee had about 12,000 residents and two main economic mainstays — citrus packing and ranching. The area’s few two-lane hardtop roads and vast expanses of cattle land and citrus groves were testament to the openness of the country and the scarcity of its human inhabitants.





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Today, 50 years later, the story is well-known yet can be easily forgotten or overlooked by those of us who weren’t here before Disney arrived and made a momentous decision that would forever change this region.

The historic flight got underway on Nov. 17, 1963.


The group with Disney on that multi-day flight from California included Buzz Price, Joe Fowler, Donn Tatum, Jack Sayers and Esmond Cardon “Card” Walker.

Harrison “Buzz” Price was a research economist who, aside from Disney, himself, was most responsible for physically placing Disneyland and Walt Disney World where the themed attractions are today. Disney relied on Price’s guidance multiple times, including when he earlier had scouted Central Florida before 1963 and informed Disney that the mild winters here would be advantageous to any expansion plans Walt might harbor.


Tatum had served in multiple high-profile roles with Disney’s operations and later would go on to help lead the creation of both Walt Disney World and its Epcot resort. He also was the first non-Disney family member who one day would be named president of Walt Disney Productions. His name adorns a window overlooking Main Street U.S.A.

Sayers was an ex-CBS broadcaster and executive and a longtime friend of Disney who would go on to serve as chairman of Disneyland’s Park Operating Committee. His name can be seen on a window above Main Street U.S.A., as well.

Walker literally worked his way up at The Walt Disney Co., starting in the mailroom, serving in a camera department, taking time off to serve in the U.S. Navy in WWII, then returning to The Walt Disney Co. and eventually working his way up to vice president of advertising and sales before becoming the company’s chief operating officer. After Roy E. Disney died in 1971, he would be the company’s president, too. Because of his efforts, the company expanded to overseas markets, and he even went on to create the Disney Channel in 1982.

These men, as bright and endeavoring as they were, didn’t just pile into the plane with Walt and fly east to have a look around. In fact, the trip to Florida wasn’t the first time Disney had considered the Sunshine State as serving a role for his expansion plans, even if he didn’t have a firm idea of what shape those plans might take as the 1950s came to a close.


Yet time and again, the ideas came to naught because of various obstacles, all of which weren’t just financial.

But, by 1963, Disney’s company and its leaders were moving closer to creating another Disneyland-like experience east of the Mississippi. And for good reason.

Though it seems hard to believe today, most of Disneyland’s ticket-buying guests lived on or near the West Coast. Statistically, few Disneyland visitors came from east of the Mississippi River in the late ’50s and early ’60s.


Disney knew he needed another theme park, and this time he was determined to control all aspects of its creation and its existence — its size, its physical buffer to surrounding communities, and even its long-pondered theme that would surpass any the world had known at the time, even if they would come to see elements of it at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York.

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Disney, at the time, viewed the St. Louis site favorably, though that all changed when a slightly intoxicated Busch brewing executive loudly proclaimed over dinner that any theme park that didn’t sell alcohol to its guests was doomed to economic failure.




As the plane flew south of Orlando, Disney and others on the flight looked down at the rich landscape that filled their view. Below were citrus groves and green palms, blue lakes and wildlife that filled both brush and sky. Most everywhere was the green expanse of Central Florida’s Atlantic coastal plane. It was a sunny fall day, and, no doubt, everything below the plane’s flight path stood out in a subtropical wonder foreign to anyone living north of Ocala or Jacksonville.

And, yet, through the middle of it all was an ugly gash of human progress, a scar of dirt and gravel, metal and freshly poured concrete. It was the construction of Florida’s Turnpike, tearing through the countryside south of Orlando and heading northwestwardly and across the recently-completed ribbon of asphalt that was Interstate 4.



Disney and, perhaps, others aboard the plane knew what they were seeing below. One roadway, Interstate 4, bisected the Sunshine State from east to west. The other, Florida’s Turnpike, would connect South Florida with Orlando and, more importantly, go farther north to connect to Interstate 75, a roadway that already brought untold legions of sunshine-seeking tourists to the state from the North.

According to Richard Foglesong’s “Married to the Mouse,” a 2001 work of immense wealth of details about how Disney created his kingdom here in Central Florida, there was a decisive moment during the plane’s flight south of downtown. It was there, somewhere circling over Central Florida south of Orlando, that Disney looked down, saw the land he wanted to make his own and said, “That’s it.”

And with that, the dawn of what was to become Walt Disney World changed Central Florida’s world forever.

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Pick up one in a travel office in Detroit or Dubai, Chicago or Rio de Janeiro, and most likely travelers don’t even have to read the contents once they see the city’s name on the cover. Even if people have never traveled here, they still most likely know about the city and its themed attractions. They know about Mickey Mouse and Cinderella Castle. They know about Shamu, too, and the Harry Potter attraction. They even probably have heard about the city’s high-tech industry and its University of Central Florida, its Orlando Magic and now its new major-league soccer franchise.

