Lake Buena Vista, FL

A lot of travelers refer to Orlando, FL as the site of Walt Disney World, but the “House of Mouse” is actually located in an Orange County municipality known as Lake Buena Vista, so if your hotel is located in Lake Buena Vista, you are actually staying on Disney property and can enjoy the benefits of being only a few minutes away from Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and rest of the attractions that the Disney World resort has to offer.

Lake Buena Vista has the unique distinction of being a town that everyone wants to visit—but not a lot of people live here. The only residents of Lake Buena Vista—there were less than 20 residents counted in the 2000 census—are Disney employees that live in a small community on Royal Oak Court, north of Downtown Disney. The only other Disney-owned town in Orange County is the neighboring municipality of Bay Lake, which also has a population about of 20 people based upon the 2000 census data.

Both Lake Buena Vista and Bay Lake were incorporated in the late 1960s when the Walt Disney Company purchased large tracts of land for the future site of the Disney World resort. Just a few miles east of Lake Buena Vista is the Disney-planned town of Celebration, where the focus is on townhomes and single family housing as opposed to hotel units.