Orlando is Still a Top Tourist Destination

Years ago, anyone could come to Florida and purchase acres of wetlands and a concrete-block house for less than $10,000. Although Deltona was considered first, that is exactly what the Disney Corporation did in Kissimmee. Uncle Walt, dug canals, drained the wetlands, felled trees. The sturdy house was transformed into Cinderella’s pink castle, and the swamp turned into an advertising bonanza called Disney World. In Central Florida, Universal, SeaWorld, Wet 'n Wild, Animal Kingdom, Epcot and MGM soon followed.

Central Florida is a Vacation Destination

Today, the U.S. Department of Commerce ranks Orlando as the third favorite vacation city in the nation. In the past 30 years, over 1.2 billion tourists visited Central Florida and most of them headed for the theme parks. These guests provide such huge tax benefits when they buy airline tickets and hotel rooms that Florida can get by without a state income tax. On the other hand, some of those tax dollars are spent on Central Florida counties.

Orange County Gets Its Tax Cut

Orange County is known as a sponsor county -- the tax benefits are applied throughout the state. According to the local newspaper, The Orlando Sentinel, Florida gets 10 percent of all the sales taxes it collects in the entire state just from Orange County. Most taxes are spent on airport runways, roads and ramps leading into and out of the theme parks, and construction of new hotels and convention centers and sports arenas -- most of which are aimed at bringing even more tourists in.

Central Florida Tourists Become Residents

Almost everyone who lives in Orlando, all 18,680,367 citizens according to an April 2007 Florida Demographic survey sponsored by the Florida Legislature, is or was a tourist at one time. In the 1960s, the population barely scraped 60,000. Although there are few natives other than the Miccosukee Indians and the hundreds of babies born in the Sunshine State every single day, according to City-Data.com, over 1000 people still move to Florida daily. Most of them are ex-tourists. In spite of Florida's former reputation as a retirement Mecca , according to The Orlando Property Group, the median age in Orlando is 35.9: prime child-rearing years.

In Orlando, tourism is progress, since past claims to fame -- picking oranges, the space program and designing nuclear warheads – declined thanks to citrus canker, the Challenger, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Tourism is still Orlando’s one and only lifeline.

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