Orange Beach or Orlando?

This is where the two differ most. Orange Beach sits right on the Gulf, with fine white quartz sand, low dunes and gently shelving water that reaches 28°C to 30°C in summer. Alabama Point and the state park beaches give you room away from the condo towers. Watch the flags for rip currents.

Orlando is inland, so the sea is a day out. Cocoa Beach and New Smyrna Beach are on the Atlantic about an hour east, and the calmer Gulf water around Clearwater is nearer two hours away. Day to day, swimming means a hotel pool or a water park.

Orange Beach does one thing well: Gulf seafood. Think Royal Red shrimp, chargrilled oysters, snapper and West Indies salad, eaten at fish houses on the back bays. That makes for a few good dinners, but the main road keeps serving the same fried platters.

Orlando has more range once you leave the chains and park counters behind. Mills 50 has a strong run of Vietnamese and other Asian kitchens, and Winter Park and Audubon Park have chef-led restaurants and farmers' markets. Epcot's World Showcase is good for grazing inside the parks. Expect to drive between them.

Orange Beach has almost nothing to see in town beyond a small museum of Native American and fishing history. The forts and old quarters of the coast are all a drive away. Orlando is thin on heritage too, but it has one museum worth a special trip: the Morse Museum in Winter Park, which holds the largest Tiffany collection anywhere, including his chapel from the 1893 World's Fair. The art museums in Loch Haven Park fill out an afternoon.

Going out in Orange Beach is barefoot and seasonal. The main draws are the Flora-Bama roadhouse on the state line and a few decks around the marina and Perdido Pass. It gets loud in spring break and summer and is quiet most of the year, with no dance clubs.

Orlando gives you more choice and later nights. Downtown along Orange Avenue and Church Street fills with a student crowd at weekends, Ivanhoe Village and Mills 50 add gay bars, and Disney Springs and CityWalk have easy themed bars close to the resort hotels.

Both are flat and watery, but Orange Beach has its outdoors on the doorstep. You can kayak and paddleboard on the back bays, take a dolphin cruise from Perdido Pass, go charter fishing or dive the artificial reefs offshore, and cycle a paved trail through pine woods and wetland into Gulf State Park. Bon Secour refuge adds birding during the migrations.

Around Orlando, nature takes more driving. The choices are the clear springs at Wekiwa and Blue Spring, where manatees gather in winter, airboats on the Kissimmee headwaters, and the lagoons of Merritt Island towards the coast.

From Orange Beach there are enough outings to fill a few spare days. Pensacola has its colonial quarter, naval aviation museum and brick forts, and Mobile has antebellum streets and the battleship. You can also visit Fort Morgan and take the ferry to Dauphin Island. None of these would bring you here on its own.

Orlando's list is stronger. It is led by the Kennedy Space Center, about an hour east, where you can see the Saturn V and the shuttle Atlantis. St Augustine's Spanish fort, Tampa's Ybor City and the Dalí Museum in St Petersburg each make a full day. From either base you need a car.

Orange Beach is an easy family beach town. It has condos with kitchens and pools, shallow sandy water, dolphin boats, a Ferris wheel and mini golf, and its pace suits toddlers and early nights. Keep a close eye on children in the water because of rip currents.

Orlando is in a different league. Disney has four theme parks and two water parks, Universal suits older children and teenagers, and SeaWorld and Legoland are close by. Character breakfasts and suites with bunk rooms complete the picture. The cost is queues, heat and sheer scale, so plan in a few pool days.

Both places are built for the car, but Orange Beach is simpler. Everything sits along one coastal highway, and bikes are handy on the trails and side roads, although summer traffic slows to a crawl. Orlando spreads its parks, hotels and downtown over many miles of interstate and toll roads. Only an on-site Disney or Universal stay, using the monorail, boats and buses, lets you manage without a car.

Orange Beach sells beachwear, souvenirs and fishing gear along the main road, and for serious shopping you drive inland to the outlet mall in Foley. Orlando is a shopping destination in its own right for brand hunters. It has two premium outlet centres, the luxury labels of the Mall at Millenia, and the boutiques and galleries of Park Avenue in Winter Park. Neither offers much local craft or independent design.

Both are priced like American resorts and both need a hire car, so the real difference is where the money goes. In Orange Beach it goes on a beachfront rental in summer. Sharing a condo and cooking softens that, rates drop sharply in the off season, and the beach itself costs nothing.

In Orlando, rooms off-site along International Drive and in Kissimmee are fairly priced. The bill climbs with multi-day park tickets, express passes, parking and meals inside the parks.

Orange Beach offers touring country and rock acts at the marina amphitheatre and cover bands in the beach bars. Each November the Frank Brown songwriters' festival brings writers to the stages around the state line. There is no theatre or classical music.

Orlando fills that gap. The Dr. Phillips Center hosts touring Broadway shows and the Orlando Philharmonic, Orlando Shakespeare Theater plays in Loch Haven Park, and a long-running Fringe takes over in spring. On top of that come the polished stage shows and fireworks inside the parks.

Neither place has a spa or bathing tradition, so the calm comes from different sources. In Orange Beach it is the pace itself: empty mornings and sunsets over the back bays, best from autumn to spring away from spring break. In Orlando, rest means a resort day between park days, with full spas, lazy rivers and big pools around Lake Buena Vista, or a slower afternoon among the lakes and tree-lined streets of Winter Park.