Sunday July 24 at 11:05 pm on M6, Bernard de la Villardière will invite you to follow an unpublished summer news from the magazine “Enquête Exclusive”: “Orlando (USA), world capital of amusement parks”.
With seventy-five million visitors each year, Orlando (Florida) is the number one tourist destination in America, ahead of New York and Las Vegas. It is the city with the highest number of amusement parks per square kilometer. Disney, Universal or even Sea World… The big names in entertainment have settled there. A global success that gave the idea to small family parks, such as Icon Park, Fun Spot America or even Machine Gun America (where children shoot with weapons of war from the age of 13), to try their luck here .
To stand out, these challengers have embarked on a race for records: the highest free fall in the world at a height of ninety meters, the highest catapult that propels customers to four hundred and fifty meters in the air or even the highest flying chairs.
However, even fifty years ago, Orlando was a small agricultural town where oranges grew. In 1971, Walt Disney changed the fate of this peaceful corner of Florida by building the first theme park there: Magic Kingdom, today the most visited in the world.
Since then, Orlando has three hundred parks, for an annual turnover of eighty billion dollars and employs three hundred thousand people. Its unemployment rate is one of the lowest in the United States.
If the magic operates in the parks, outside it is often disillusionment. Apartments are rare and rents are overpriced. Along the road to the parks, decrepit motels house an unusual population: the workers of these parks, unable to find accommodation elsewhere given their low salaries. They settle with their families in small rooms with Spartan comfort. Some have no choice but to sleep in their car.
Investigate Orlando, the entertainment capital of the world, where life isn’t so fun for everyone.
