Walt Disney World
- According to Carlson Wagonlit Travel's 2006 Travel Trends Survey, Orlando is the second most popular U.S. travel destination. Las Vegas, Nevada (home of the TopCoder Open) took first place.
- Out of the estimated 50 million tourists who visit Orlando each year, over 2 million are international visitors, with the majority of foreign tourists coming from the United Kingdom.
- Even though few people outside of Florida knew where Orlando was before Walt Disney World opened in 1971, the city of Orlando had been around for more than century before that; it was incorporated in 1875.
- The official nickname of the city of Orlando is "The City Beautiful," although it is also known as "O-Town."
- Disney's Epcot has the world's first geodesic sphere. It has a 150,000 square foot outside surface and an inside volume of 2,200,000 cubic feet. To hold the sphere, support pylons were driven 185 feet underground. The famous facets of the Spaceship Earth Pavilion are constructed of 11,000 triangles of alucabond, a thermal polyethaline core bonded to aluminum.
- Disney World is the world's largest consumer of fireworks, setting off about a million shells per year. At Epcot, the nightly fireworks display fires off 1,105 individual shells, launched from 750 mortar tubes and 56 firing modules located at 34 positions around the lagoon. The display is run by a network of 26 computers.
- There's a strange, unspoken fascination with the number 14 within Disney World's construction. The Magic Kingdom is 14 feet above ground, the monorail is 14 miles long, and the big Tree of Life in Disney's Animal Kingdom is 14 stories tall.
- The Disney World monorail is the world's most heavily traveled monorail, carrying 50,000,000 people a year. In fact, it has moved more than 1 billion riders since it first started carrying passengers back in 1971. Since 1971, the total miles logged by Walt Disney World monorail trains would equal to more than 30 round trips to the moon.
- More than 50 million Cokes are consumed each year at Walt Disney World Resort. Guests also gobble 10 million hamburgers, 7 million hot dogs, 9 million pounds of french fries and more than 300,000 pounds of popcorn.
- The Disney World project officially launched in 1966. In December of 1966, Walt Disney died of cancer. He never saw the park completed. In fact, the entire Disney World project almost died with Walt. In 1967, after a year of debate within the company, Walt's brother Roy Disney decided to move forward with the project plans.
Park Pass Perks!
TopCoder is thrilled to bring the most elite collegiate programmers and designers from all over the world to the 2007 TopCoder Collegiate Challenge finals in Walt Disney World, Orlando, Florida, USA. In fact, we're so excited to bring you here, we're letting you stay an extra day to allow you enjoy all Disney World has to offer!
All the finalists will get a one-day park hopper pass to use for Saturday, November 3 as part of their prize for being a finalist. The pass will enable finalists to hit up all of Disney's best parks!
Awesome Rides You Won't Want To Miss!
- At Disney - MGM Studios: Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Rockin' Rollercoaster starring Aerosmith, and Star Tours - the ultimate Star Wars™ thrill ride
- At Magic Kingdom: Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Splash Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean, and The Haunted Mansion
- At Epcot: World Showcase, Mission: Space, Spaceship Earth, and Test Track
- At Animal Kingdom: It's Tough to be a Bug, Dinosaur, Kali River Rapids, Kilimanjaro Safari, and Expedition Everest