The Disney Collection – Orlando, Florida - Atlas Obscura
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The Disney Collection

Orlando Public Library
Orlando, Florida

An unassuming corner inside downtown Orlando's library offers a whole new world of the park and its history. 

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A 1967 Orlando Sentinel Orange County Public Library
A 1967 Orlando Sentinel Orange County Public Library
Disney World's monorail in 1971 Orange County Public Library (Public Domain)
Orlando Public Library Visitor7 / CC BY-SA 3.0
Archival Boxes with material not to be removed from the library jessemiers (Atlas Obscura User)
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The Magic Kingdom isn’t Orlando’s only spot for Disney enchantment. An unassuming corner inside downtown’s Orlando Public Library offers a whole new world of the park and its history.

The Disney Collection is the city’s 50-year-old trove of documents chronicling Walt Disney World, from groundbreaking in the 1960s to the present. Tucked into a row of shelves and dusty filing cabinets Sneezy would hate, the collection houses more than 200 books, dozens of periodicals, hundreds of pieces of memorabilia, and press clippings dating back to 1971.

The fourth floor of a municipal building may not sound like “the most magical place on earth,” but Disney fanatics will be spellbound by items so rare they’re not allowed out of the library, including original park concept art, press releases, speeches, and photographs of rides that no longer exist.

Nothing is too specific for this collection. Notable items found by the Orlando Sentinel in 2018 included “everything from a guide on how to draw Disney Princesses to Epcot’s 1993 plumbing code.” Who needs the Magic Kingdom when you have that?

Know Before You Go

Orlando Public Library is open Sun 1 p.m. - 6 p.m., Mon - Thu 10 a.m. - 7 p.m., and Fri - Sat 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.

disney amusement parks libraries collections
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