11 Best Sights in International Drive, Orlando

In the shadow of a 400-foot observation wheel and within the ICON Park entertainment complex stands a kaleidoscope of underwater colors, where you can see some 3,000 sea creatures and experience various habitats. Plan to spend the better part of an afternoon exploring, as all ages delight at the close encounters with the aquarium’s sharks, green sea turtles, and jellyfish. With an emphasis on education and conservation, exhibits are playful and informative, with fun features that include a 360-degree ocean tunnel and a virtual shark dive. Combo tickets are available for the aquarium, The Wheel at ICON Park, and Madame Tussauds.

The star ICON Park attraction is the 400-foot-tall observation wheel known simply as The Orlando Eye at ICON Park, which offers an almost unobstructed view of all the distant theme parks, lush green landscape, and the soaring buildings of the City Beautiful. Visibility on clear days can be more than 50 miles, reaching all the way east to Cape Canaveral. The Eye's 30 high-tech capsules complete a rotation every 30 minutes, and riders can use onboard Apple iPad Air tablets to locate points of interest. Rent a private capsule for up to 15 people, with champagne, for a sky-high experience. Ticket packages for ICON Park attractions are available.

The racing legend lent his name to this entertainment facility that offers boutique bowling on black-lit lanes, a video game and pinball arcade, virtual reality attractions, a shoot-em-up 7-D dark ride, and, naturally, racing. Pro-racing simulators add motion, vibrations, sound effects, and even add tension in the seatbelt so you feel as if you're on an actual racetrack. When you're ready to actually race, three indoor tracks let you whip around corners, change elevation, and zip into banked curves on small, high-torque karts. Add laser tag, a restaurant, and more than 100 screens tuned into the day's top sporting events, and you have a lot of entertainment packed into one exciting complex.

In terms of water thrills, SeaWorld's 59-acre Aquatica holds its own against the water parks at Disney and Universal. It offers more than 40 waterslides, from the gentle Kata's Kookaburra Cove to the free-fall experience of Ihu's Breakaway Falls, as well as beaches and lagoons, fast and slow rivers, and massive wave pools. Younger children are attracted to Walkabout Waters, a 60-foot-tall water-soaking jungle gym, where they can climb, slide, and get soaked. Teens and adults flock to the Dolphin Plunge, where two side-by-side, transparent tubes allow riders to join a pod of black-and-white dolphins underwater. The Ray Rush family raft ride offers multiple high-speed paths through enclosed tubes and transparent spheres. There are height requirements of at least 42 inches for some rides, and all visitors need to know how to swim.

The only theme park in Orlando that can be called "exclusive" offers relaxing swims and uncrowded, daylong encounters with dolphins, otters, sharks, and rays—all located right in the heart of Orlando. You can enjoy resort-style amenities amid tropical landscaping, white-sand beaches, waterfalls, and vast freshwater pools. Lockers, wet suits, parking, breakfast, lunch, drinks, and snacks are included in the regular admission price, as are snorkeling with tropical fish and rays in the Grand Reef, hand-feeding exotic birds in the Explorer's Aviary, or just floating on the Wind Away lazy river.

Add-ons—such as using a diving helmet in the Grand Reef, swimming with the sharks, or Atlantic bottlenose dolphin swim experiences—are available for an additional cost and often sell out, requiring reservations to be booked well in advance. Note that there are ticket options that get you into this park as well as SeaWorld, Aquatica, and Busch Gardens in Tampa (and varying combos of the four). Ticket prices vary wildly depending on day, the season, and the package options (there are many).

You can see the neon-lit rides from miles away as you approach International Drive. Four go-kart tracks offer a variety of driving experiences. Though drivers must be at least 10 years old and meet height requirements, parents can drive younger children in two-seater cars on several of the tracks, including the Conquest Track. Nineteen rides range from the dizzying Enterprise to an old-fashioned Ferris wheel to the twirling toddler Teacups.

Fun Spot, reminiscent of an old-fashioned fair, features Central Florida's only wooden roller coaster as well as the Freedom Flyer steel suspension family coaster, a kiddie coaster, and SkyCoaster—part skydive, part hang glide. There's also an arcade, and throwback rides such as the Tilt-a-Whirl. Gator Spot, created in partnership with the iconic Gatorland and starring several live alligators and other Florida wildlife, is a throwback to the old days of Orlando roadside attractions.

Featuring wax copies of real and fictional characters, Madame Tussauds lets you grab a selfie with the faux superheroes, including Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman, and Aquaman, as well as celebrities both living and dead—from Taylor Swift and Pink to Pitbull and Michael Jackson—and the rich and famous from politics and sports. Combo tickets are available for this museum, The Wheel at ICON Park, and SEA LIFE Orlando Aquarium.

You can travel at 45 mph on this 450-foot-tall swing, said to be the tallest in the world, which also rotates 360 degrees. It's as terrifying as it sounds, so this ride is not for either the faint of heart or small children. Ticket packages for ICON Park attractions are available.

A 10-foot-square section of the Berlin Wall, a pain-and-torture chamber, two African fertility statues that women swear have helped them conceive—these and almost 200 other oddities (shrunken heads included) speak for themselves in this museum-cum-attraction in the heart of tourist territory on International Drive. The building itself is designed to appear as if it's sliding into one of Florida's notorious sinkholes. Give yourself an hour or two to soak up the weirdness, but remember: this is a looking, not touching, experience; it might drive antsy youngsters—and their parents—crazy. Buy tickets online ahead of time for discounts.

The oldest operating, biggest, and perhaps most controversial marine-mammal park in the country has been anchoring the Orlando Disney–alternative theme-park business since 1964. Much has been made of the company's handling of animals, and they've been in "rebuild and repair" mode for several years after attendance and stock prices plummeted.

SeaWorld still features dolphins and orcas, but thrill rides and literal spills are now the order of the day, with more swirling, looping, and splashing than just about anywhere. The Kraken Unleashed coaster soars to 150 feet while riders dangle their feet from the floorless track. The Manta and the Mako skim tantalizingly close to the water, with Mako reaching speeds of up to 73 mph. Other offerings include Infinity Falls River Rapids, with the world's tallest river-raft drop, and the 400-foot Sky Tower, with bird’s-eye views of the park. Ice Breaker, a launch coaster, features a 93-foot-tall spike with a 100-degree angle. Pipeline: The Surf Coaster is the first of its kind—you ride standing up going 110 feet in the air at speeds of up to 60 mph!

The Sesame Street area of the park includes meet and greets with neighborhood favorites and kid-friendly rides like Big Bird's Twirl N' Whirl and interactive play areas. Little ones will love dancing along to the Sesame Street Party Parade offered most days and during peak seasons held numerous times each day.

Animal attractions here now focus more on education than performance. Shark Encounter leads you through one of the world’s largest underwater viewing tunnels, and Stingray Lagoon offers encounters with both stingrays and mantas. You can visit the ice-filled home of Puck the penguin in Antarctica: Empire of the Penguin and observe sea lions, walruses, and otters at Pacific Point Preserve, which doubles as a sea-lion rehabilitation facility. Helping injured marine animals is also the focus of the Manatee Rehabilitation Area and the Pelican Preserve, which offer up-close views of rescue operations.

The building seems to be sinking into the ground—at a precarious angle and upside down. Many people stop to take pictures in front of the topsy-turvy facade, complete with upended palm trees and broken sidewalks. Inside, the upside-down theme continues only as far as the lobby. After that it's a playground of 100 interactive experiences—some incorporating virtual reality, others educational (similar to those at a science museum), and still others pure entertainment. You can experience an earthquake or a hurricane, land a space shuttle using simulator controls, make giant bubbles in the Bubble Lab, play laser tag in the enormous arena and arcade, design and ride your own roller coaster, lie on a bed of real nails, and play baseball with a virtual Major League batter.