As CinemaBlend’s resident theme park expert, I pride myself on my knowledge of parks. If you want to know what the best food at Disneyland is, or why After Hours events at Disney World are great, I'm your guy. I certainly don’t pretend to know everything, there’s always something new or a detail I’ve missed, but social media has been going crazy recently after somebody pointed out something about Disneyland and Walt Disney World that I really should have noticed, because it was staring me right in the face.
It was recently pointed out that there’s something about the names Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World which seems so coincidental that it can’t possibly be a coincidence (except it is).
Disneyland And Disney World’s Names Have An Interesting Coincidence
An image has gone viral on Reddit as well as social media of a news broadcast out of Palm Springs that shows something quite interesting about the names of Disney’s two U.S. theme parks. Specifically, the name Disneyland contains the letters LA together, while Walt Disney World features the letters ORL, meaning that both parks contain the abbreviated names of their locations, Los Angeles and Orlando.
Woah. 😳 from r/WaltDisneyWorld
This is blowing the minds of a lot of people, and I get it. This is something I certainly hadn’t noticed either and while it’s likely just a coincidence, it’s not an unremarkable one. There’s just one problem, it's wrong.
Disneyland And Walt Disney World Aren’t Located Where You Think
When we talk about where major landmarks are it’s normal to associate them with the largest city or the metropolitan area nearby. Hell, most people, including natives refer to most of Southern California as “L.A.” So, it’s easy to think of Disneyland as being in Los Angeles or Disney World as being in Orlando, but neither thing is actually true.
Disneyland is located in Anaheim, CA, which is in Orange County. Orange County is a drastically different area a full 25 miles south of L.A. With traffic, you can expect a drive from L.A. to Disneyland to take you around 45 minutes. And the O.C. is a pretty conservative area of the state compared to the more diverse and liberal Los Angeles. These things are not the same.
Walt Disney World is closer to Orlando, but you’re still looking at about a 30-minute drive if you’re in the city to get to the resort. Walt Disney World is located in two cities. Most of the resort is located in the city of Bay Lake, though officially the address of Disney World is in the city of Lake Buena Vista.
What’s more, Disney World is actually located in the Orlando Tourism Oversight District (formerly the Reedy Creek Improvement District), and as such there’s an argument that Disney World is a city unto itself.
Yes, I’m being pedantic, but the idea that it was somehow planned that the resorts would have these names in order to include these letters is silly. If it was intentional then International Disney Parks would have names that use similar structures. Instead, the only reason the Disney Resort in Paris has the city's name built into it is that it's called...Disneyland Paris.
