Orlando Hotels, Hotels in Orlando, Orlando Accommodations

Best Western Airport Inn, Buena Vista Suites, Caribe Royale, Celebrity Resorts Lake Buena Vista, Celebrity Resorts, Clarion Hotel Universal, Comfort Suites Universal Studios, Crowne Plaza International Drive, Enclave Suites, Hawthorn Suites, Hilton Garden Inn, Homewood Suites Universal, Homewood Suites UCF, Howard Johnson Maingate West, Howard Johnson Plaza, La Quinta Inn International Drive, Masters Inn - MainGate, Masters Inn Kissimmee, Microtel Inn & Suites, Quality Suites Maingate East, Radisson Barcelo, Radisson Inn Lake Buena Vista, Radisson Resort Parkway, Riu Orlando, Seralago Hotel & Suites, Sheraton Safari Resort,
Sheraton Suites, Sleep Inn Universal Studios and Star Island Resort Orlando by CRS have the most competitive rates, saving you at least 30% over regular hotel rates year-round. Save big $$ at CRS hotels in Orlando. Choose from budget to four-star accommodations - all at discount rates. Stay at the best, but pay less with CRSHotels

Check Availability for Orlando Hotels

Orlando City Information
The Mickey Mouse draw card has turned Orlando into the third-ranking US destination for overseas travellers, after Los Angeles and New York City. The city 'built on the peel of an orange' has also established itself as part of Florida's high-tech corridor.

While everybody knows the big-name theme parks - they've spawned smaller versions in most of our home countries - the real treasures of Orlando's psyche are the sidekicks: Holyland is peddling God; Reige's Firearms rent out real semiautomatics for a blast; and Skull Kingdom is endearingly low-tech.

Orlando boasts not only the space technology industries focused on the Florida Space Coast but a healthy dose of bits and bytes makers as well. So you'd better watch your step in this 21st-century boomtown: according to a 1998 study, the stampede to Orlando has made it the most dangerous place in the US for pedestrians.

The biggest city in central Florida, Orlando is dominated by Lake Eola in its northeastern downtown quadrant. The most famous downtown icon is Church Street Station, a collection of restaurants, bars and shops located between Interstate 4 and the railroad tracks. Orlando is 6km (4mi) from Universal Studios, 16km (10mi) from Sea World, and 32km (20mi) from Walt Disney World, all located southwest of downtown in an area appropriately known as the Tourist Quarter.

Downtown
If you're looking for Walt Disney World, look again - it's located in the entirely separate city of Lake Buena Vista. Orlando's a city in its own right, and the locals would feel just fine, thank you very much, if all those ear-wearing yahoos would just get back in their cars and keep moving.

Once the outta-town attractions are pared away, Orlando's main distractions comprise the Harry P Leu Gardens, an estate with over 2000 varieties of camellia and an 18th-century mansion; the Orlando Science Center, which has a gator hole and the physics-phriendly Tunnel of Discovery; and the Orlando Museum of Art, which showcases Mayan archeological finds. Given these heart-pounding highlights, most visitors use Orlando as a base from which to make excursions to nearby theme parks.

SeaWorld
A combination amusement park, aquarium and beer garden, SeaWorld is fine family entertainment. If you like leaping dolphins, sliding sea lions and crashing whales, you're in for a treat. Highlights include the Kraken roller-coaster, dolphin nursery, Terrors of the Deep aquarium and the ever-popular otters.

Not quite as crass as it sounds, SeaWorld puts its money where its mouth is, sending out a SeaWorld Animal Rescue Team to rescue endangered manatees and restore them to health. It has one of the best animal rescue outfits in the country, and the team is partially funded by park admissions.

Universal Studios
Orlando's Universal Studios is a combination working movie studio and theme park. What this means essentially is that you can admire stars from afar and live vicariously through them. Some of the trademark attractions include Terminator 2: 3D, a spectacular 3D experience where you get to be Ahhhhnold, and Back to the Future, with phenomenal special effects.

Walt Disney World
This is a self-contained city. Apart from the four main parks (Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney-MGM Studios and Animal Kingdom), there are three water parks, a shopping district, 22 hotels, countless eateries, a police force, transport systems, medical centres, even kennels for the pooch. Watch out for the mouse.

In its first year, Disney World saw over 10 million visitors, and it remains one of the world's top tourist destinations, now attracting more than 20 million visitors a year. It's also the world's biggest amusement resort, covering an area twice the size of New York's Manhattan. It would have made Walt very, very happy.

Kennedy Space Center
To some people, the finest words ever spoken by an American were Neil Armstrong's 'One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,' spoken as he became the first man to walk on the moon in 1969. Since then, we Earthlings have had a longstanding love affair with space travel and the scientists who make it possible. There's no better place to stand in awe of the 'right stuff' than the Kennedy Space Center, off the coast of central Florida.

The centre draws 2 million people a year to its Gallery of Spaceflight, packed with real spacecraft and scale models. It was established in 1958, when the National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) started Project Mercury to compete with the Soviets' successful launch of Sputnik. The US started launching its spaceships from Cape Canaveral, a stone's throw from the Kennedy Space Center, because of its weather, its proximity to the ocean (for splash landings) and the huge, unpopulated tracts of land available to the government for testing. Mercury was succeeded by Project Gemini, then Project Apollo, which landed a man on the moon. The Space Coast still maintains facilities for unmanned and space shuttle launches.

Titusville, the main gateway to the Kennedy Space Center and the wildlife refuge, hosts the Astronaut Hall of Fame, dedicated to exhibiting every detail of the astronauts' lives and boasting a shuttle-landing simulator ride and G-force trainer. Titusville also has excellent vantage points from which to watch shuttle launches.

The Kennedy Space Center is on Merritt Island, on the eastern side of the Intracoastal Waterway (called Indian River here). The NASA Causeway is the main east-west thoroughfare and begins at the junction of Highway 405 and Highway 1. The Banana River separates the main Kennedy Space Center complex from Cape Canaveral, the site of the first launches of the US space program. You'll need a car to get to the Space Coast. Greyhound buses only get as close as Titusville, 7 miles (11km) west of the Space Center, off Highway 405.