Orlando Trivia
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48 free Orlando trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free Orlando trivia questions with answers. Seventy-five million people a year visit Orlando and almost none of them could tell you it used to be called Jernigan. This quiz fixes that. Fifty questions cover the city from Fort Gatlin and the Second Seminole War through the citrus Golden Era and the Great Freeze, the arrival of Martin Marietta and McCoy Air Force Base, and the day Walt Disney chose an inland swamp over Miami. Then it heads down International Drive: Universal, SeaWorld, Epic Universe, EPCOT's original meaning, and why the Magic Kingdom's tunnels are above ground. There are also questions on the Orlando Magic's name, Kaká and Orlando City, the Pride's first title, UCF's Knightro, Gatorland, Church Street Station, the films shot in town, Lake Eola's sinkhole and the neighbouring towns of Eatonville and Kissimmee. Easy questions for tourists, hard ones for locals. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the city and its landmarks, and each question shows its source.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Orlando is the county seat of which Florida county?
Orange
Orange County was Mosquito County until 1845, when lawmakers swapped a name the settlers disliked for one honouring the fruit that would come to shape the region.
Q 02Before it was Orlando, the settlement went by what name, after the cattlemen who first settled it?
Jernigan
Jernigan honoured Aaron and Isaac Jernigan. Aaron was later accused of murder after a brawl at the Orlando post office and, as the town had no jail, was taken to Ocala, where he broke out and fled to Texas.
Q 03Which Second Seminole War outpost, built in 1838, is the origin of the Orlando area?
Fort Gatlin
Fort Gatlin was abandoned by the army in 1839, within a year of being built, but settlers who arrived in the 1840s built up a community nearby that grew into Orlando.
Q 04What do historians say about Orlando Reeves, the man Orlando is supposedly named after?
No such soldier likely ever existed
No such soldier likely ever existed: historians found no Orlando Reeves in federal military records, yet the marker that junior high students paid for in 1939 still honours him beside Lake Eola.
Q 05Which Shakespeare play, whose hero is named Orlando, is one of the leading theories for the city's name?
As You Like It
As You Like It: James Speer proposed the name at a heated meeting by pointing to a spot known as 'Orlando's Grave', but his descendants insist his real motive was a love of Shakespeare's hero.
Q 06About how many residents did Orlando have when it was incorporated as a town in 1875?
85
85, of whom only 22 were qualified voters. The South Florida Railroad reached the town in 1880, and by 1885 it had grown enough to be chartered as a city.
Q 07Orlando's 'Golden Era' as hub of Florida's citrus industry ended with what event?
The Great Freeze of 1894-95
The Great Freeze of 1894-95 hit in two back-to-back cold waves that froze the fruit on the trees, and many ruined growers abandoned their groves for the North, California or the Caribbean.
Q 08Where does MCO, the code for Orlando International Airport, come from?
The former McCoy Air Force Base
The former McCoy Air Force Base, renamed in 1958 for Colonel Michael McCoy, whose B-47 bomber crashed near Orlando the year before; the airport that took over the field kept its code.
Q 09Who opened Walt Disney World in 1971, after Walt's death?
Roy Disney
Roy Disney, Walt's brother, took over the Florida project, had it renamed Walt Disney World as a memorial to Walt, and died less than three months after opening day.
Q 10What did Walt Disney see from a plane over Orlando in 1963 that helped sell him on the site?
A network of highways
A network of highways: Walt saw open land away from the coast with Interstate 4 and Florida's Turnpike on the way, roads that could carry the millions of visitors his plans needed.
Q 11Disney bought its Florida land through shell companies with joking names, including one called what?
Ayefour Corporation
Ayefour Corporation was a pun on Interstate 4, which runs past the site. The shell companies kept landowners from learning who the buyer was and pushing up their prices.
Q 12All four Walt Disney World theme parks sit inside which tiny city of only a few dozen residents?
Bay Lake
Bay Lake counted just 29 residents at the 2020 census. Florida created it and neighbouring Lake Buena Vista in 1967 so that Disney's land would have city powers of its own, free of county planning rules.
Q 13Which major theme-park resort is the only one located inside Orlando's city limits?
Universal
Q 21Which golf legend owned Orlando's Bay Hill Club and hosted a PGA Tour event there each March?
Arnold Palmer
Arnold Palmer owned Bay Hill until he died in 2016. The tournament has carried his name since 2007, and its winner now receives a red cardigan in his memory.
Q 22Which finalist in the 1986 contest to name Orlando's NBA team ended up as the name of a rival franchise?
Heat
Heat: Orlando's committee felt the name gave the area a negative ring and chose Magic, and four months later Miami's new franchise picked Heat for itself.
Q 23Which two teams beat the Orlando Magic in the 1995 and 2009 NBA Finals?
Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Lakers
Universal lies inside the limits, but the boundary ends a few miles further south, so SeaWorld sits just outside Orlando and Walt Disney World is about 20 miles away.
Q 14Epic Universe, which opened in Orlando in 2025, includes a land built around which animated film series?
How to Train Your Dragon
How to Train Your Dragon gives the park its Isle of Berk, one of five worlds. Announced in 2019 and held up by the pandemic, Epic Universe took six years to reach opening day.
Q 15Which author's books fill one of Islands of Adventure's original islands?
Dr. Seuss
Dr. Seuss: Seuss Landing was there when the Orlando park opened in 1999, whereas the Wizarding World of Harry Potter only arrived in 2010 and sent attendance climbing.
Q 16SeaWorld Orlando was the chain's third park; which city got the first, in 1964?
San Diego
San Diego got the first SeaWorld and Ohio the second. The chain came to Orlando only after Walt Disney World had shown that tourists would flock to Central Florida.
Q 17What did EPCOT originally stand for?
Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow
Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow: Walt Disney pictured a working city of the future, but after he died the company dropped that plan and built a park closer to a permanent world's fair.
Q 18Because of Florida's high water table, how were Magic Kingdom's service tunnels built?
At ground level, with the park on top
At ground level, with the park on top: guests walk a storey above the tunnels on soil dug out to make the Seven Seas Lagoon, up a slope so gentle that few notice the climb.
Q 19Which civil rights leader gave his only public speech in Orlando at the Tinker Field ballpark in 1964?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at Tinker Field on 6 March 1964. The ballpark was pulled down in 2015, and a history plaza on the site now marks both the speech and its baseball past.
Q 20Which boy band did Lou Pearlman assemble in Orlando in 1993, before launching NSYNC from the same city?
Backstreet Boys
Backstreet Boys were named after the Backstreet Market, an Orlando flea market where teenagers hung out. Pearlman, who bankrolled both groups, was later jailed for 25 years over a huge Ponzi scheme.
Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Lakers: the Rockets swept Shaquille O'Neal's young team in 1995, and a year later O'Neal left to join the Lakers, who beat Dwight Howard's Magic in 2009.
Q 24Which former Brazil star became Orlando City SC's first MLS signing and Designated Player in 2014?
Kaká
Kaká signed after AC Milan released him, then was loaned straight back to São Paulo, the club where he began, because Orlando City would not kick a ball in MLS until 2015.
Q 25Which Orlando team won both the NWSL Shield and the league championship in 2024?
Orlando Pride
Orlando Pride beat Washington 1-0 in the final on a Barbra Banda goal, which gave Brazilian star Marta, at the club since 2017, her first NWSL title.
Q 26Which tournament brought five matches to Orlando's Citrus Bowl stadium in the summer of 1994?
The FIFA World Cup
The FIFA World Cup drew crowds of over 60,000 to a stadium that had opened in 1936 as a Depression-era public works project with just 8,900 seats.
Q 27UCF opened its first classes in 1968 under what name?
Florida Technological University
Florida Technological University was set up to train engineers for the space programme at nearby Cape Canaveral, and it became the University of Central Florida in 1978 as its courses broadened.
Q 28What is the name of the costumed mascot of the University of Central Florida?
Knightro
Knightro arrived in 1994. The school's first, unofficial mascot was the Citronaut, part citrus fruit and part astronaut, which students petitioned to replace after a single year.
Q 29Which attraction near Orlando opened in 1949, two decades before Walt Disney World, and is still owned by its founder's family?
Gatorland
Gatorland began when Owen Godwin bought roadside land to give passing motorists a close look at Florida's reptiles, and visitors still walk in through a giant gator's open mouth.
Q 30Which Orlando nightlife complex grew out of Rosie O'Grady's Good Time Emporium in 1974?
Church Street Station
Church Street Station grew to fill a city block and became Florida's fourth-largest attraction in the 1980s, then lost its crowds once the big theme parks opened nightlife districts of their own.