Celebration, Florida worth a visit when in Orlando

Celebration is a small town of 9,000 residents designed and constructed by the Walt Disney Company on part of its large land holdings near Orlando. The company brought in world renowned architects and town planners to design a modern town based around ideas from the past. Much of the architecture and town plan was borrowed from cities such as Charleston, South Carolina, Savannah, Georgia and New Orleans, Louisiana. The town includes miles of walking and biking trails and expanses of open space including lakes and parks. The town also has a downtown area featuring shops and restaurants and during the Winter holidays events designed to attract tourists to the town. Some of these events include ice skating and a daily “snow” fall that occurs every evening on cue accompanied by holiday music. Check out some of the things to see and places to eat in the town that Disney built.

Market Street & Town Center

The center of life in Celebration, Florida is the Town Center. Here are located shops, restaurants and public buildings. During the Winter holidays you can also let your kids try their hand at ice skating on an artificial ice rink and every night it “snows” on Market Street (although here the snow is really just foamy soap bubbles!) Your kids can also take a ride on a holiday train or you can your family can hop aboard a horse drawn carriage to tour the residential areas of Celebration.

Be sure to grab a bite to eat at one of the many restaurants or a sweet treat at the bakery or ice cream shop.

Lake Rinehart

You can also take a walk along the lake that fronts the Town Center called Lake Rinehart. Here you will find families and couples out for an evening stroll, teens skateboarding, toddlers learning how to ride their first bike, and father’s teaching their sons to fish. The view of downtown Celebration from across the lake cannot be beat.

Residential Areas

You can’t leave Celebration without touring the many different residential areas of the town. The homes take their design cues from the historic southern cities of Savannah, Georgia; Charleston, South Carolina; and New Orleans, Louisiana. You will see rows of town homes in the Savannah Square neighborhood that looked like they were plucked right out of Savannah. And Victorian gingerbread houses that seem like fantastical doll houses.