Park tickets, airboats and clear kayaks. Orlando, decided.
What park-to-park at Universal really costs against a single park. Which airboat runs a full hour. Where the water is clear enough to paddle a glass-bottomed kayak. Reviews of every Orlando tour and ticket.
Orlando in four bookings: an airboat, a spring run, a park ticket, a launch pad.
The four days an Orlando trip usually hangs off. What each costs, how long it takes, and what the people who booked it say.
01The wildlife morningFlorida Everglades Airboat Tour and Wild Florida Admission with Optional LunchSawgrass at airboat speed, then the gator park next door on the same ticket. Go early, while the animals are still moving.
02The park decisionUniversal Orlando Resort Theme Park TicketsPark-to-park against a single-park day at Universal. The ticket that sets the shape of the rest of the week.
03The clear-water dayRock Springs 2-Hour Glass Bottom Guided Kayak Eco TourA glass-bottomed kayak on the Rock Springs run, where the floor of the boat turns into a window over the vent.
04The launch padKennedy Space Center with Transport from Orlando and KissimmeeShuttle Atlantis nose-down over the atrium, the Saturn V on its side, and a bus into the working half of Kennedy Space Center.
A single SeaWorld day, Universal park-to-park, or a pass that covers the small stuff.
Orlando sells admission four different ways and the gap between them runs to hundreds of dollars for a family. Here is what each kind starts at.
Theme parks on I-Drive, spring runs on the Wekiva, sawgrass south of Kissimmee.
Central Florida splits into a handful of clusters, and a week here is really a choice between them. Six starting points, and the best day out in each.
The gators start twenty minutes south of the parks, around Kissimmee.
Boggy Creek, the Kissimmee chain and the marshes east of Highway 192 run flat-bottomed airboats from half an hour to a full one, most of them bundled with a gator park you would otherwise pay for twice. Take the first slot of the day: the wildlife moves before the heat does.
Silver, Rainbow, Rock Springs: seventy-two degrees all year.
Central Florida floats on limestone, and the water coming back up through it is clear enough to count fish from the floor of a kayak. Silver Springs runs glass-bottom boats past wild monkeys. Rock Springs is a lazy river you float rather than paddle. Winter Park threads canals between the lakes and the old money.
Orlando is an hour from a launch pad and ninety minutes from the Gulf.
Every day trip →
Kennedy Space Center is an hour east on the 528 and eats a whole day. Clearwater is ninety minutes west for Gulf sand that actually squeaks. St Augustine is two hours north and four centuries older than anything else in the state. All three run as coach days with hotel pickup, which is the point when the alternative is a hire car and I-4.
Atlantis, the Saturn V, and a bus to the pads
The transport trips leave I-Drive early enough to get you through the gate before the coach queues build. Shuttle Atlantis hangs nose-down over the atrium with its payload doors open; the Saturn V lies on its side in a hall built to fit it.
Ninety minutes west to sand that squeaks
Orlando is landlocked and the Atlantic side is closer, but the Gulf beaches are the ones people come back talking about: white quartz sand, shallow warm water and a sunset the whole pier turns round to watch.
A Spanish fort, and streets older than the country
Founded in 1565, which makes it the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the United States. A coquina-stone fort on the waterfront, a narrow colonial grid behind it, and Flagler’s gilded-age hotels at the top of the street.
Orlando’s most-booked days out.
Every Orlando review →The tickets and tours more travellers take than anything else in Central Florida, and what earns each one the slot.
1
Florida Everglades Airboat Tour and Wild Florida Admission with Optional Lunch
Travel from Orlando to Kenansville for a 30-minute or one-hour airboat ride across 4,200 acres of protected wetlands. Guides such as Alex, Curtis, Jeff, and Bob point out gators and birds, while the included park adds lemurs, sloths, zebras, white alligators, shows, and feeding areas.
From · $37
Read our review →
2
Rock Springs 2-Hour Glass Bottom Guided Kayak Eco Tour
from $115
3
I-Ride Trolley Hop-on Hop-off Pass
from $6
4
SeaWorld Orlando: Park Admission Ticket
from $87
5
Everglades Airboat Ride and Wildlife Park Ticket
from $36
6
LEGOLAND Florida Theme Park Admission Tickets
from $57
7
Universal Orlando Resort Theme Park Tickets
from $146
8
Fun Spot America Theme Parks – Orlando
from $68
ICON Park is the wet-afternoon answer on I-Drive.
A four-hundred-foot observation wheel, an aquarium, a wax museum, an upside-down house and a Titanic exhibition, all inside a few hundred metres of pavement. Combo tickets beat two singles, and nearly all of it is under a roof.
Every I-Drive ticket →
Dinner in Orlando comes with jousting, pirates or a magic act.
Medieval Times runs a tournament while you eat with your hands. Pirates Adventure floods a galleon in the middle of the room. Drawn to Life is Cirque du Soleil built around Disney animation. Then there are the ghost walks around Church Street and the escape rooms further up I-Drive.
- 1The Outta Control Magic Dinner Show in Orlando
- 2The Escape Game Orlando: Epic 60-Minute Adventures on I-Drivefrom $46
- 32 HR Interactive Walking Ghost Tour in Downtown Orlandofrom $77
Orlando by price, from a six-dollar trolley pass upwards.
Every tour and ticket on the site, grouped by what it costs. A good number of the best Central Florida days come in under the price of lunch inside a park.
Trolley passes, aquarium and museum entry, thirty-minute airboats and the drive-through gator parks.
The full days: park admission, Kennedy Space Center with transport, glass-bottom kayak runs and the dinner shows.
Multi-park tickets, private charters and the small-group days that cap the numbers on board.
Three things that only happen in Central Florida.
Roller coasters exist everywhere. A kayak you can watch a spring vent through, a boat that drives across grass, and a lagoon that lights up when you paddle it do not.
The Clear Kayak
Florida sits on porous limestone and the aquifer pushes back out through it at seventy-two degrees, every day of the year. On the runs at Rock Springs, Silver Springs and Rainbow Springs the water is clear enough that a polycarbonate hull turns the floor of the boat into a window. Turtles pass underneath, and the vent itself boils sand.
- 1Rock Springs 2-Hour Glass Bottom Guided Kayak Eco Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,459 reviews
- 2Glass Bottom Kayak Eco Tour through Rainbow Springs★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 943 reviews
- 3Glass Bottom Kayak Tours of Silver Springs★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 580 reviews
The Airboat
An aircraft propeller in a cage, a hull with no keel and six inches of water is all it takes to cross sawgrass no other boat can touch. Captains cut the engine somewhere out in the middle of the prairie and the marsh goes very quiet, which is usually when people start noticing the alligators.
- 1Florida Everglades Airboat Tour and Wild Florida Admission with Optional Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,576 reviews
- 2Everglades Airboat Ride and Wildlife Park Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,459 reviews
- 390 minute Everglades Airboat Tour near Orlando Florida★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,222 reviews
Bioluminescence
From roughly June to October the Indian River Lagoon fills with dinoflagellates that flash when the water is disturbed. Paddle blades leave green trails and startled fish fire off underneath the boat. The trips run on the darkest nights of the month, so the moon calendar decides your date rather than you.
- 1Florida Bioluminescent Kayak & Paddle Board Adventure★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 178 reviews
- 2LED Glow in the Dark Clear Kayak or Paddleboard in Paradise★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 157 reviews
- 3Clear Kayak Glow in the Dark Tour Through Winter Park★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 102 reviews
Four Orlando bookings you cannot leave until you land.
Most of Central Florida can be sorted from a hotel lobby on the morning of. These four run on daily capacity caps, water temperature and a moon calendar, none of which care when your flight gets in.
- 01Discovery Cove Admission Ticket & Additional ParksAdmission is capped at a few hundred people a day, and the dolphin slots inside that go first of all.
- 02Florida Bioluminescent Kayak & Paddle Board AdventureThe glow runs through the warm months and only on genuinely dark nights, so the moon decides which dates exist at all.
- 03Silver Springs Clear Kayak Manatee, Monkey & Wildlife AdventuresManatees crowd into the warm springs when the rivers cool, roughly November to March. Outside that window the swim is just a swim.
- 04Kennedy Space Center with Transport from Orlando and KissimmeeLaunch days close parts of the complex and sell out first, and the bus into the working side runs to a fixed timetable.
From June to September Orlando thunders every afternoon.
Sea breezes off both coasts collide over the middle of the peninsula and build a storm most summer afternoons, usually somewhere between two and five. It passes inside the hour, but it shuts the water rides and empties the queues while it lasts. Put the outdoor day in the morning and hold an indoor ticket for the afternoon.
By area - the parks, I-Drive, the springs, the coast
By kind of day - water, wildlife, tickets or after dark
Parks, springs, sawgrass and the Space Coast: the week most people end up doing.
Airboat
Clear kayaks
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