Looking back on Walt's selection of Orlando 50 years ago

The Orlando Sentinel has this article about how Walt selected Orlando to build Walt Disney World.

Flying over Central Florida on that fine fall day, Walter Elias Disney looked down at the green land punctuated by the blue water of a hundred inland lakes, and he saw the future.
It was the future of his company and its economic success, of course. But it also was the future of his lifelong plans for creating something just as meaningful to him personally as his California theme park had been when it had opened eight years earlier. This time, though, Disney's dream was bigger and his overarching idea was to prevent it from suffering from the same problems then plaguing his first themed attraction as the tacky tourism ugliness of Anaheim closed in around the splendor of Sleeping Beauty Castle.

  Other sites considered were St. Louis, New Orleans and Niagara Falls.  The first two tried to push things that Walt did not want for his project.  The Falls had many favorable attributes except for one big thing - the winters.