International Drive — I-Drive to everyone who spends time here — runs roughly eight miles between Universal Orlando and the SeaWorld resort, lined with the mid-range hotels, chain restaurants, outlet malls, mini-golf courses, dinner shows, and minor attractions that form the connective tissue of the tourist corridor. It is Orlando at its most unfiltered: billboards stacked three deep, traffic moving slowly past Ripley's Believe It or Not and the Wheel (a 400-foot observation wheel), families in mouse ears debating which TGI Friday's to walk into.
None of this is particularly elegant, but I-Drive is extremely functional. Hotels here are cheaper than on Disney or Universal property, everything is walkable within a stretch, and the I-Ride Trolley runs the length of the corridor cheaply. The outlet malls at the southern end — two of them facing each other across the road — are a serious shopping destination. The ICON Park complex near the northern end has the Wheel, a SEA LIFE aquarium, and Madame Tussauds alongside the better restaurant options on the strip.