Daytona Beach or Orlando?

Daytona Beach lives on its shore. The sand is wide, flat and firm enough to drive on along marked stretches, with the pier and boardwalk at the busy centre and quieter sand towards Ormond Beach and Ponce Inlet. The surf is real and rip currents are a hazard, so it is worth staying near the lifeguarded zones.

From Orlando the coast is a day out: about an hour to Cocoa Beach or New Smyrna Beach, and nearer two hours to the calmer Gulf water at Clearwater. Day to day, visitors there swim in hotel pools and water parks, so anyone who wants sand every morning should stay on the coast.

Orlando offers more choice. Away from the chains and park counters, Mills 50 has a strong run of Vietnamese and other Asian kitchens, and Winter Park and Audubon Park bring chef-led cooking and farmers' markets, although reaching most of it takes a drive.

Daytona is simpler. Chain restaurants line the main roads, and its best meals are fried shrimp, grouper and smoked fish dip at the old fish camps on the Halifax River and towards Ponce Inlet. Eating on a deck over the water is pleasant, but it is not a reason to come.

Neither is a sightseeing city, but Daytona has more of a story to tell. The Speedway and the land-speed records once set on the sand give the town a real identity. Climbing the Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse and seeing the Cuban art at the Museum of Arts and Sciences round out a day or two.

Orlando's finest sight is the Morse Museum's Tiffany collection in Winter Park, which includes the chapel interior from the 1893 World's Fair. Beyond that and the smaller museums of Loch Haven Park, there is little old architecture or heritage to seek out.

Going out is on a similar scale in both cities, but the character is different. In Daytona it means beach bars, tiki bars and the biker saloons of Main Street, which spill onto the street during Bike Week and Biketoberfest and are quiet the rest of the year. Orlando splits between the themed bars of Disney Springs and CityWalk, which wind down early, and a later, student-driven club scene downtown around Orange Avenue, with gay bars in Ivanhoe Village.

Both share the same flat, watery Florida and some of the same places, such as the winter manatees at Blue Spring and the birding at Merritt Island. Daytona has more of it close at hand. Canaveral National Seashore and the Mosquito Lagoon lie just south for kayaking alongside dolphins, Tomoka offers shaded trails among live oaks, and there is surf near Ponce Inlet.

From Orlando, the coast's wildlife is an hour's drive away. Closer to the city, the outdoors means Wekiwa Springs, airboat rides past alligators on the Kissimmee headwaters and long paved rail trails for cycling.

Both reach the same big names, but Daytona is closer to more of them. St Augustine is about an hour north rather than nearly two, Kennedy Space Center is a little over an hour away, and Orlando's parks work as a day out from the beach. New Smyrna and DeLand are close by for shorter trips.

Orlando's advantage is that it can reach west as well as east: Tampa's Ybor City and the Dalí Museum in St Petersburg make a full day, and lakeside Mount Dora is a gentler one. From either city you need a car.

For families, Orlando is in a class of its own. Walt Disney World's four theme parks and two water parks, Universal's film worlds for older children, SeaWorld and Legoland can fill a whole vacation, with character breakfasts and stroller rental built in. The price is heat, queues and sheer scale.

Daytona makes a good family beach week but is not built around children. It offers wide sand, boardwalk arcades and condo pools, with the parks an hour's drive away. The things to plan around are rip currents and the noise of Bike Week and spring break.

In Daytona you can walk or cycle for miles along the firm sand, and the few blocks around the boardwalk are easy on foot. Beyond the shore, hotels and sights are strung along wide roads on both sides of the river, and the buses are too infrequent to rely on, so the Speedway, the state parks and the day trips all need a car or a taxi.

Orlando is harder going. Its parks, hotel zones and downtown sit many miles apart along Interstate 4 and its toll roads, with few pavements in between. The exception is staying on-site, where Disney's monorail, boats and gondolas and Universal's water taxis let a family manage without driving.

For many international visitors, Orlando is a shopping destination in its own right. It has two large premium outlet centres, the luxury labels at the Mall at Millenia and the boutiques of Park Avenue in Winter Park. Daytona has an outlet centre and a regional mall for the basics, but the things that are particular to it are swimwear along the shore, motorcycle gear on Main Street and a few galleries on Beach Street.

Daytona is the cheaper stay. Older oceanfront motels, condo rentals and casual seafood keep costs reasonable for the United States, as long as you avoid race weeks and Bike Week.

Orlando's off-site rooms along International Drive and in Kissimmee are also fairly priced. The trip as a whole costs more, though, once you add park tickets over several days, express passes, parking and meals inside the parks.

Orlando has more to see on stage. The Dr. Phillips Center hosts touring Broadway shows and the Orlando Philharmonic, Orlando Shakespeare Theater plays in Loch Haven Park, and the spring Fringe is one of the longest-running in the country. The polished stage shows inside the resorts come on top of that.

Daytona has less on, but its winter series of visiting orchestras and soloists is a real draw. Beyond that, the Peabody Auditorium takes touring shows and the oceanfront bandshell has free concerts on summer evenings.

Neither is a place to choose for rest, though for different reasons. Daytona's calm comes from the beach town itself: early walks on firm sand and sunsets over the river, at least until engines take over in race weeks and Bike Week. Orlando has more resort spas, lazy rivers and pool days around Lake Buena Vista to recover from the parks, and Winter Park's lakes give couples a slower pace.