The 33 Best Places in Orlando

Five hundred acres of manicured Florida grounds sit at the headwaters of the Everglades, which is a strange and quietly wonderful fact about a resort this polished. The Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes holds a Forbes Five Star and a Michelin Key, with championship golf, a Five Star spa, lakefront trails, and a celebrity chef restaurant on site. Disney is close enough to be convenient and far enough to feel optional.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
2. Michelin Guide 1 Key

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

The nightly Disney fireworks are visible from the rooms, but the rooms themselves look like they could be in Singapore or Milan, which is either the point or the whole joke. This is a full-scale Four Seasons resort sitting on the edge of Walt Disney World, with a spa, an 18-hole golf course, and a kids' club so thoroughly Disneyfied it reads as a diplomatic gesture toward the neighbors. Guests get early park admission, half an hour before the gates open to everyone else.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels
3. The 50 2025 · Most Admired Hotel Group Award

A 17-million-gallon lagoon sits outside the door, and guests spend their days kayaking, paddleboarding, or simply floating around what amounts to a manufactured beach in landlocked Orlando. The Conrad is a Forbes Four Star resort with 433 rooms, floor-to-ceiling windows, and two Jack Nicklaus golf courses competing for attention with the water slides. Walt Disney World is less than three miles away, so the clientele write themselves.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

A Greg Norman-designed golf course and a 40,000-square-foot spa suggest this Forbes Four Star resort has no real interest in competing with the theme park circus a few miles up the road. The JW Marriott Orlando, Grande Lakes sits on its own landscaped grounds with a waterpark for the kids and a reimagined lobby lounge for the adults who pretend they don't also enjoy a waterpark.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

The clock in the lobby and the gilded Peacock Alley lounge are lifted straight from the New York original, which is either charming or slightly unsettling depending on your relationship with theme parks. This Forbes Four Star resort earns its keep with a nature preserve on one side, a golf course on the other, and genuinely attentive service throughout. Magic Kingdom is fifteen minutes away, but the pool makes it easy to forget that entirely.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

Floor-to-ceiling smart windows that use AI to regulate room temperature set the tone at this 17-story, two-tower hotel in Lake Nona, a tech-forward community about ten minutes from Orlando International. The architecture actually waves, which is either charming or on the nose depending on your mood. A sculpture garden, art collection, and a vivid pool area fill the grounds. It holds a Michelin Key.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

Rum on tap and ropa vieja on the menu: Otto's High Dive is a neighborhood rum bar in a whitewashed brick room that feels like Old Florida never really left. The kitchen runs a short Cuban-Floridian menu with tropical leanings, and the daiquiris come by the pitcher if you've committed to the evening. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, which tracks for a place this unfussy and this easy to love.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
3. Time Out The 20 best restaurants in Orlando

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America

The marble lobby skips every mouse ear in a ten-mile radius, which tells you what kind of resort this is. The JW Marriott Bonnet Creek sits close enough to the parks to catch the EPCOT fireworks from the sixth-floor Activity Garden, yet the design runs cool and geometric rather than costumed. A sprawling pool, mini golf, and a rock-climbing wall mean families aren't exactly suffering, just doing it in a quieter register.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

Richly figured Italian marble sets the tone in the lobby, and the rooms follow with a modern minimalism that still manages to feel warm rather than austere. This boutique hotel sits a few minutes from the theme parks but reads more Miami than Orlando, which is either an escape or an irony depending on your mood. Akira Back oversees both the rooftop restaurant and the flagship downstairs. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

The SkyBar rooftop wraps 360 degrees around the Orlando skyline, which is a reasonable argument for staying here instead of somewhere closer to the mouse. This is a hotel in downtown Orlando, lean and stylish in the European AC mold, with 180 rooms and more shared space than the footprint suggests: Foxtail Coffee, a restaurant leaning into the brand's Spanish roots, and that rooftop. A long way from theme park carpeting in every sense.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Eater 18 Best Cocktail Bars for Staying Out Late in Orlando

Rattan furniture, grass skirts, and cocktails arriving in vessels that would embarrass a prop department set the tone at this tiki cocktail bar on East Central. The drinks are genuinely stiff under all the kitsch, and the signature comes in a schooner glass, fuschia-hued and finished with a flaming sugar cube on a lemon slice. South Pacific camp done with a straight face, which somehow makes it funnier.

1. Eater 18 Best Cocktail Bars for Staying Out Late in Orlando

1. Eater 18 Best Cocktail Bars for Staying Out Late in Orlando

1. Eater 18 Best Cocktail Bars for Staying Out Late in Orlando

1. Eater 18 Best Cocktail Bars for Staying Out Late in Orlando

The password comes from their social media, which is either charmingly old-fashioned or exactly what a speakeasy is now. Either way, the third-floor of one of Orlando's oldest buildings is a genuinely dim, close-quarters cocktail bar where the drinks are stiff and the couples are very comfortable with each other. A small outdoor ledge offers escape when the room gets cozy. Dress the part and look like you belong.

1. Eater 18 Best Cocktail Bars for Staying Out Late in Orlando

A neon sign reading "Good Vibes Only" hangs on the living green wall, which tells you something about the room and something about yourself for liking it anyway. This swanky sushi bar on East Colonial does Japanese with Pan-Asian riffs, and the marble bar stays busy most nights. The omakase is where the kitchen gets interesting. A James Beard nominee two years running, and a Michelin Selected pick.

1. James Beard Awards 2023 · Nominee · Best Chef: South · Henry Moso
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Orlando

Cocktail names like "Stay the Fuck Outta Malibu" tell you more about the room than any décor description could. This cocktail bar shares a wall with Will's Pub and the self-described metal tiki bar next door, and the crowd arrives ready to argue about politics between rounds of rotating seasonal drinks. The rooms are oddly shaped and a little dingy, with French Provincial details that got lost along the way, which somehow makes the whole thing work.

1. Eater 18 Best Cocktail Bars for Staying Out Late in Orlando

1. Eater 18 Best Cocktail Bars for Staying Out Late in Orlando

The lighting in this tiki cocktail bar inside Tuffy's Bottle Shop lands somewhere between "jungle shrine" and the Colonel Kurtz scene in Apocalypse Now, which tells you everything about the mood before you've ordered anything. The tiki program goes well past Mai Tais, and the vessels the drinks arrive in are half the show. Two-hour sittings keep things moving; pace yourself on the namesake Suffering Bastards, or your morning will know about it.

1. Eater 18 Best Cocktail Bars for Staying Out Late in Orlando

Terrazzo floors and a name that promises sunshine it has no intention of delivering, since this cocktail bar on Mills Avenue doesn't open until evening. The vibe skews beachy and unhurried, with tropical, creatively built drinks that have made it a quiet favorite among people who take their rum seriously. It's a sister bar to the Guesthouse, and the two share a sensibility: thoughtful without being fussy.

1. Eater 18 Best Cocktail Bars for Staying Out Late in Orlando

The apothecary shelves and absinthe selection set the mood before you order anything. This cocktail bar in Winter Park has been doing serious, seasonally sourced drinks long enough to have inspired a generation of imitators, and the bartenders here still treat the work like a graduate seminar. Patience is part of the deal; a well-built drink takes as long as it takes. Literate regulars seem to mind the wait least of all.

1. Eater 18 Best Cocktail Bars for Staying Out Late in Orlando

1. Eater 18 Best Cocktail Bars for Staying Out Late in Orlando

1. Eater 18 Best Cocktail Bars for Staying Out Late in Orlando

1. Eater 18 Best Cocktail Bars for Staying Out Late in Orlando

1. Eater 18 Best Cocktail Bars for Staying Out Late in Orlando

The restaurant's name painted across the side of the building sets the tone before you're even inside. Tori Tori is a Mills District izakaya, meaning you'll spend a happy evening moving between yakitori skewers, creative sake cocktails, and fried rice packed with crab. No reservations, so the drill is arriving early or accepting your fate in the line out front, which most regulars seem to take as a point of pride.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Time Out The 20 best restaurants in Orlando
3. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Orlando