Things To Do In SW Florida

Orlando’s red-hot real estate market cruised into overdrive for much of 2024 as developers turned out thousands of new homes, apartments, and hotel rooms — and big land deals promised much more construction to come. Some powerful trends stood out.

Tourism continued to dominate much of the development landscape across Central Florida. Universal raced to complete its Epic Universe theme park, scheduled to open in the spring, while Disney and Gov. Ron DeSantis ended their feud, clearing the way for the theme park giant to invest $17 billion in Central Florida over the next decade.

On the commercial side, 2024 sales prices shattered previous records for the most expensive hotel sale and shopping center transactions. Lake County saw its land sale record broken twice, and the office market showed signs of improvement. Orange County politicians battled with Orlando over annexations for much of the year only to reach a truce in the 11th hour.

Here is GrowthSpotter’s look at the year’s biggest stories. read more

The next vessel to take the title of world’s largest cruise ship is headed to Port Canaveral. Disney is sending a new ship to Port Everglades for the first time. And new ships will debut from Norwegian, MSC Cruises, Princess, Celebrity and more.

These are some of the cruise highlights for Florida coming in 2025.

The marquee event has to be the arrival of Royal Caribbean’s Star of the Seas, a sister ship to current titleholder Icon of the Seas. Landing the newest and largest ship is a first for Central Florida with the past titleholders all making their debuts out of South Florida.

Those ports, though, will get plenty of new ship action as well while cruise lines feed demand with new hardware. Port Canaveral, Port Everglades and PortMiami saw record passenger counts of nearly 20 million in 2024, with each forecast to grow further in the coming year.

Here’s a rundown of what’s new in Florida cruising in 2025:

Royal Caribbean’s Star of the Seas: Coming in at more than 250,000 gross tons, it will be incrementally bigger than Icon of the Seas, which debuted out of PortMiami in 2024 and can sail with 10,000 people on board including crew and passengers. read more