The theme park covers around 27,000 acres (Image: Getty)
Theme parks come in all shapes and sizes. There are small family attractions, as well as huge resorts that attract millions of visitors every year. But there is one theme park that beats all the others when it comes to size. The attraction is so large that more than 2,500 Wembley Stadiums could fit inside its boundaries.
It covers around 27,000 acres, has four separate theme parks, dozens of hotels and employs more than 80,000 people. Today it is worth tens of billions of pounds, but when it first opened more than 50 years ago it looked very different.
Walt Disney World Resort in Florida cost around £3billion to build (Image: Getty)
Today, visitors can explore four theme parks, two water parks, four golf courses and Disney Springs (Image: Getty)
The attraction in question is Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, which opened its gates on October 1, 1971.
At the time, the project cost around $400million to build, which would be worth roughly £3billion to £3.2billion in today’s money.
That original investment paid for the Magic Kingdom theme park and two flagship hotels, the Contemporary Resort and Polynesian Village Resort.
However, the resort has expanded dramatically over the decades. Experts estimate recreating everything that now sits on the site would cost somewhere between £30billion and £50billion.
The idea came from Walt Disney, who wanted to create a much larger destination than Disneyland in California. He felt the original park had become surrounded by development and wanted a resort with enough space to create a completely immersive experience.
In the 1960s, Disney quietly bought thousands of acres of land in central Florida through a series of companies before revealing plans for what became known as Walt Disney World.
Sadly, Walt Disney died in 1966, five years before the resort opened. His brother, Roy O. Disney, oversaw construction and insisted the attraction should carry Walt’s name.
The resort has continued to grow ever since. EPCOT opened in 1982, followed by Disney-MGM Studios, now known as Disney’s Hollywood Studios, in 1989. Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened in 1998 and remains the largest single theme park in the world by land area.
Today, visitors can explore four theme parks, two water parks, four golf courses and Disney Springs, a huge shopping and entertainment district.
Some of the resort’s most popular attractions include Space Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, Avatar Flight of Passage, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance and The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.
In order to keep the resort running, Walt Disney World employs more than 80,000 people (Image: Getty)
Guests can stay overnight at more than 25 Disney-owned hotels (Image: Getty)
Guests can also stay overnight at more than 25 Disney-owned hotels, ranging from budget accommodations to luxury resorts.
Ticket prices vary depending on demand, but a one-day, one-park ticket typically costs between $119 (£88) and $209 (£156) per person.
In order to keep the resort running, Walt Disney World employs more than 80,000 people, making it the largest single-site employer in the United States.
Those jobs range from ride operators and hotel staff to engineers, veterinarians, horticulturists, performers and pyrotechnics specialists.
It is estimated that the resort supports more than 250,000 additional jobs across the wider region through tourism, transport, hospitality and supply chains.
