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Bernard de la Villardière will offer this evening at 11.10pm onwards M6a new issue of your magazine “exclusive request” with this evening’s program the document Orlando (USA), the world capital of amusement parks.
With seventy-five million visitors each year, Orlando (Florida) is the number one tourist destination in America, ahead of New York and Las Vegas. It is the city with the largest number of amusement parks per square kilometre. Disney, Universal or even Sea World… The big names in entertainment have settled there. A global success that has given the idea to small family parks, such as Icon Park, Fun Spot America or even Machine Gun America (where children have been shooting war weapons since the age of 13), to try their luck here.
To distinguish themselves, these challengers embarked on a race for records: the world’s highest free fall at a height of ninety meters, the highest catapult that propels customers at a height of four hundred and fifty meters or even the highest flying chairs.
However, even fifty years ago, Orlando was a small agricultural center where oranges grew. In 1971, Walt Disney changed the fortunes of this quiet corner of Florida by building the first theme park: Magic Kingdom, today the most visited in the world.
Since then Orlando has had three hundred parks, for an annual turnover of eighty billion dollars and employs three hundred thousand people. Its unemployment rate is one of the lowest in the United States.
If magic works in parks, outside it is often disillusionment. Apartments are rare and rents are overpriced. Along the way to the parks, decrepit motels house an unusual population: park workers, unable to find lodgings elsewhere due to low wages. They settle down with their families in small rooms of spartan comfort. Some have no choice but to sleep in the car.
Investigate Orlando, the entertainment capital of the world, where life isn’t that fun for everyone.
