Before news broke of Walt Disney’s “Florida Project,” if someone had said the word “Orlando” to you, would you have immediately recognized it as “a city somewhere in Florida,” or would you have thought “Where the hell is that?”
For me, “Where the hell is that?”
But I didn’t live anywhere near Florida.
Same here.
Pretty much. I was in New York, and we knew Miami (and older people who read Hemingway Key West) and that was about it.
My grandparents had retired to Tampa, so I knew Orlando as “that place you drive through on your way from Tampa to the Atlantic Coast.”
Knew where it was, had been sent there to live with relatives for awhile. (Ex-military and not that far from Cape Canaveral.)
I’m from NY. Orlando wasn’t on the map of anyone outside of Florida before Disney came along.
I knew of Orlando because Alas, Babylon takes place near there and the protagonist meets his brother at McCoy AFB early in the book. Can’t say I knew much more, though.
I knew of it because my grandparents had form many years wintered in nearby Lake Wales.
And, Colibri, I would never use New York city residents’ geographic knowledge of places outside of NY be a guide to what everyone knows. In all my experience they seem not to know about and not care they don’t about places outside of NY. I was told by friends how nice it was when I moved from Cleveland to Chicago that I would be able to visit more often as I’d be closer. Others were sure that my Milwaukean wife grew up in Minnesota.
Pretty much this. ↑↑↑
I come from a family of pilots, like geography and as far as I can actually remember, I knew where a lot of places were. I have always ‘done maps.’
I am sure that every kid that went to the same school as I knew that by the 6th grade.
Hey! I went to a private Jewish school in Manhattan, and we had to learn the placement of all the states, and the state capitals in the second grade, and world capitals in the third. Personally, I could find Israel on a map, and name all the countries around it, and I knew the names of all the Soviet SSRs besides Russia. We also were expected to spell the states, their capitals, and foreign countries, correctly; I remember having “Czechoslovakia” on a spelling test.
Most non-New Yorkers I knew couldn’t even name the five boroughs, but thought New York City was the state capital.
I was born later, but as a european… From when I was very small there was always a paperback of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, a singularly turgid Mills & Boon type romance for intellectuals which I took literally years to get around to reading, hanging about, so that.
And after, there was Tasso’s Orlando furioso, which I have also avoided reading in full.
This for me too.
I grew up 10 miles from Disneyland. I was also pretty geographically aware. When they announced Disneyworld I said “it’s in Or-what-o?”. Nobody in SoCal had ever heard of Orlando. Miami, Tampa, Talahassee, Jacksonville, sure. But where the hell is Orlando?
Remembering that before Disney, Orlando was a sleepy agricultural town with a population of 5000 people. And no interstate.
Absent WalMart, how many Americans today would know of Bentonville Arkansas? They were similar sized towns before they got famous.
Had no idea. 1950 here. My father was from The Bronx, and thought anything north of Yonkers was Upstate. I’m pretty sure that not only did I not know where Orlando was, even having read Alas Babylon, I still couldn’t locate it quickly on a map (and have never been there). Most of our vacations involved hiking in and around the Adirondacks. Dad really didn’t see the point in fake stuff. My inlaws took the girls when they were little, and they were just thrilled. Bet THEY could find it in a heartbeat!
I did get through customs once by being able to spell my birthplace very rapidly- Schenectady-
1949 here. The first time I heard the name Orlando was the name Orlando Cepeda, the San Francisco Giants’ first baseman.
I hope there’s not a trick question here because I would have sworn I knew about Orlando all my life, the one in Florida. Surely I have known about it since the 1950’s because we were there on one of our trips to Ocala, Silver Springs, St. Pete, Clearwater, Sarasota, Daytona, Jacksonville and other places around the state. Panama City and Destin were our most frequent destinations, and I had/have relatives in Pensacola and Tallahassee. I have yet to be as far south as Miami or The Keys, but anywhere north of The Glades is pretty familiar to me.
If it matters I have never been to Disneyworld or EPCOT and have no plans to do so.
The Tilda Swinton movie came to mind, though. And ABBA’s song.
You mean “Fernando”? or is there a more obscure song I haven’t heard?
If I had to do the same again, I would, my friend Fernando.
Yes. Mondegreen, perhaps. I realized my error but not in time to beat anybody to the punch.
Wonder how many close associations there must be:
Orlando and Isabella
San Orlando valley
Orlando the Bull
Orlando McClain
Wilbur and Orlando Wright
Cleveland, Orlando