Amtrak launches construction on new Auto Train station in Florida

[stjr]

Disney did indeed make a visit or two in our area.
......So maybe old Ed did the right thing, then again, what would our downtown look like had it gone the other way?

I don't really miss Disney.  It created runaway uncontrolled growth in Orlando and a slew of low paying tourist jobs and overcrowded roads.  Orlando was impacted more by Disney because it was a sleepy farm town with no ocean, port, river, or other natural benefits to living there other than a few sink holes (they call them "lakes"), slightly warmer weather in the winter, and being located in the population center of Florida.  This last beneft is really its strength and compares to Atlanta being at the center of the Southeast US.  The better things in Orlando seem to me to derive from this central location, not necessarily from being a tourist mecca.

From what I understand, Orlando's qualitiy of life may have been more positviely improved by its proximity to the technology mecca of the Kennedy Space Center than from Disney.  Jacksonville missed the boat on not trying to piggyback this same opportunity over the decades.  At the beginning of the space program, we probably could have had the inside track being the more mature, connected, and larger market.

As a kid, I remember the real Orlando when it was nothing but orange groves as far as the eye could see.  All gone today.

They can keep the congestion, lack of community because everyone moved there from somewhere else within the last generation and because Orlando is, for many, just a stop on the way to somewhere else.    It's a family version of Las Vegas - a land of fantasies, not a place to live and play.  Couldn't pay me to live there.