As much as any city in the USA, Lake Buena Vista Florida owes its existence to tourism. In particular, it has grown and flourished due to the creativity of Walt Disney and his company, who chose the Central Florida area as the place to build their second theme park venture in the mid 1960s.
Both the name of the theme park and the nearby city of Orlando are famous throughout the world. But Lake Buena Vista is much less of a known quantity. If it is known at all, it is as the entry point to the Walt Disney World theme park complex, which includes the attractions such as the Magic Kingdom, Epcot and Hollywood Studios – plus the water parks called Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach. Other well-known places include Pleasure Island, Downtown Disney and a host of golf courses and hotels. The area almost rivals Las Vegas in the sense that one leisure activity has produced tens of thousands of jobs and a massive expansion of residents.
Originally named the City of Reedy Creek after incorporation in 1967, it was renamed Lake Buena Vista in 1969 as the Disney corporation developed its plans and restructured its activities. It is still a somewhat unique entity, even forty years on, and some facts about Lake Buena Vista are:
1. The lake giving its name to the city was originally called Black Lake. It was renamed by the Disney team, apparently based on a street name close to their California headquarters.
2. The theme parks and Lake Buena Vista are located in Orange County, Florida, not within Orlando city limits as generally assumed.
3. It has almost no permanent residents but its theme park host attracts a world record number of visitors. There were approximately forty seven million theme park visitors in 2007, but according to the United States Census Bureau, as of 2000 there were only 16 people resident in the city (and it seems like nothing much will have changed by the time of the 2010 census!). Could that be a world record for a place with the highest ratio of number of visitors to inhabitants – if not, it must be very, very close.
4. The same census showed a total of only 11 housing units.
5. Not surprisingly, due to the small number of residents, Lake Buena Vista is a non-operating school district.
6. The median income for a household in the city was $39,375 (for a family, $62,500). The per capita income for the city was $25,769 and no resident in the city was below the poverty line.
7. The city is excellently served by two international airports – Orlando International Airport and Orlando Sanford International Airport.
8. The city has a total area of 4.9 square miles, again according to the United States Census Bureau, of which 4.8 square miles are land and 0.1 square miles (1.84{363bd2a98d15c88227082edbeda0d5f103110265c93869472e5f1256b705561e}) is water.
You can find more information about the city at my Lake Buena Vista Florida site.
