Bay Lake, Florida in the context of "Disney's Animal Kingdom"

Orlando (/ɔːrˈlændoʊ/ or-LAN-doh) is a city in and the county seat of Orange County, Florida, United States. Part of Central Florida, it is the fourth-most populous city in the state and its most populous inland city, with a population of 307,573 at the 2020 census. The Orlando metropolitan area, with over 2.94 million residents, is the third-largest metropolitan area in Florida and 20th-largest in the United States.

Orlando is one of the most-visited cities in the world primarily due to tourism, major events, theme parks, and convention traffic. It is the fourth-most visited city in the U.S. after New York City, Miami, and Los Angeles, with over 3.5 million visitors as of 2023. Orlando International Airport is the 7th-busiest airport in the United States and the 18th-busiest in the world. The two largest and most internationally renowned tourist attractions in the Orlando area are the Walt Disney World resort, opened by the Walt Disney Company in 1971 and located about 21 miles (34 km) southwest of Orlando in Bay Lake, and the Universal Orlando resort, opened in 1990 as a major expansion of Universal Studios Florida and the only theme park inside Orlando city limits.

In the United States, tourism is a large industry that serves millions of international and domestic tourists yearly. Foreigners visit the U.S. to see natural wonders, cities, historic landmarks, and entertainment venues. Americans seek similar attractions, as well as recreation and vacation areas.

Tourism in the United States grew rapidly in the form of urban tourism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By the 1850s, tourism in the United States was well established both as a cultural activity and as an industry. New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, all major U.S. cities, have attracted numerous tourists since the 1890s. By 1915, city touring had marked significant shifts in the way Americans perceived, organized, and moved.

An amusement park is a park that features various attractions, such as rides and games, and events for entertainment purposes. A theme park is a type of amusement park that bases its structures and attractions around a central theme, often featuring multiple areas with different themes. Unlike temporary and mobile funfairs and carnivals, amusement parks are stationary and built for long-lasting operation. They are more elaborate than city parks and playgrounds, usually providing attractions that cater to a variety of age groups. While amusement parks often contain themed areas, theme parks place a heavier focus with more intricately designed themes that revolve around a particular subject or group of subjects.

Amusement parks evolved from European fairs, pleasure gardens, and large picnic areas, which were created for people's recreation. World's fairs and other types of international expositions also influenced the emergence of the amusement park industry.

Magic Kingdom Park, or simply the Magic Kingdom, is a theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida. It opened on October 1, 1971, and is owned and operated by the Walt Disney Company through its Experiences division. The park was initiated by Walt Disney and designed by WED Enterprises. Modeled after Disneyland in Anaheim, California, Magic Kingdom’s layout and attractions share many of the same themed features inspired by fairy tales and Disney intellectual properties.

The park icon is Cinderella Castle, inspired by the fairy-tale castle featured in the 1950 animated film. In 2024, the park hosted 17.83 million visitors, making it the most visited theme park in the world for the eighteenth consecutive year and the most visited theme park in North America for at least the past 24 years. The park has become a cultural touchstone and symbol of modern American pop culture.

Disney's Hollywood Studios is a theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida, near Orlando. It is owned and operated by the Walt Disney Company through its Experiences division. Based on a concept by Marty Sklar, Randy Bright, and Michael Eisner, the park opened on May 1, 1989, as the Disney–MGM Studios Theme Park, and was the third of four theme parks built at Walt Disney World. Spanning 135 acres (55 ha), the park is themed to an idealized version of Hollywood, California, and is dedicated to the imagined worlds from film, television, music, and theatre, drawing inspiration from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Disney's Hollywood Studios was initially developed as both a theme park inspired by show business and an operating production studio, with active film and television production services, an animation facility for Walt Disney Animation Studios, and a functioning backlot. Construction on the combined park and studio began in 1987, but was accelerated when the construction of the similarly themed Universal Studios Florida began a few miles away. To increase public interest and the variety of film representation within the park, Disney entered into a licensing agreement with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), from which the park's original name was derived. The park's production facilities were removed throughout the 2000s, and many of the park's soundstages were retrofitted for newer attractions and guest use. The park's current name took effect in 2008, with the removal of the MGM-branding throughout the park. In the 2010s, the park began to distance itself from the original studio backlot intention and entered a new direction of immersive theming and attraction development inspired by imagined worlds from Hollywood storytellers.

Mulan is a 1998 American animated musical coming-of-age action-adventure film based on the Chinese legend of Hua Mulan, and produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation. The film was directed by Barry Cook and Tony Bancroft and produced by Pam Coats, from a screenplay by Rita Hsiao, Chris Sanders, Philip LaZebnik, and the writing team of Raymond Singer and Eugenia Bostwick-Singer, and a story by Robert D. San Souci. Ming-Na Wen, Eddie Murphy, Miguel Ferrer, and BD Wong star in the English version as Mulan, Mushu, Shan Yu, and Captain Li Shang, respectively, while Jackie Chan provided the voice of Li Shang for the Chinese dubs of the film. The film's plot takes place in China during an unspecified Imperial dynasty, where Fa Mulan, daughter of aged warrior Fa Zhou, impersonates a man to take her father's place during a general conscription to counter a Hun invasion.

Mulan was the first of three features produced primarily at the Disney animation studio at Disney-MGM Studios (now Disney's Hollywood Studios) in Bay Lake, Florida. Development for the film began in 1994, when a number of artistic supervisors were sent to China to receive artistic and cultural inspiration.