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This question proved trickier to answer than we first thought. Searches on "popular tourist attractions," "travel statistics," and "top travel destination" turned up mostly non-U.S. destinations. But a search on "U.S. tourist statistic" eventually lead us to the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) web site. ASTA's spring 2001 Hot Spots Survey (available in PDF format) shows that Orlando, Florida, is the number one U.S. travel destination. Hoping for more specific information, we headed to the Orlando category in the Yahoo! directory. Digging deeper, we clicked down through the Travel and Transportation
category to Local Guides and finally to Convention and Visitors Bureau. There we found the Orlando/Orange County Convention and Visitors Bureau site, which offers extensive reports on the area's tourism industry. According to the Bureau's Domestic Leisure Visitor Profile, "visiting a theme/amusement park was the most popular activity" for U.S. travelers to Orlando. Also on this site, a report from the Amusement Business Magazine
and the Orlando Business Journal put Disney World's Magic Kingdom at the top of the attraction attendance list with an estimated 15.4 million visitors in 2000. Disney World's Epcot Center, the Disney-MGM Studios, and Disney's Animal Kingdom fill the next spots on the attendance list. While none of these sites came right out and said it, judging from this data, we think it's pretty safe to say that the home of Mickey Mouse and friends gets the most visitors of any U.S. tourist attraction.
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