VacationSelector

Orlando or Washington DC?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Orlando
40
match

Wins on good for families and year-round weather with your weighting.

Washington DC
✓ Best match
52
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

OrlandoWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Washington DC leads by 18 points.18
OrlandoWashington DC
Score018
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km11
Coast distance68 km34 km
Water distance34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 29 points.29
OrlandoWashington DC
Score4877
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3651,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2136
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 47 points.47
OrlandoWashington DC
Score855
Museums within 10 km1183
Museums within 2 km of centre255
Share of museums within 2 km %1866
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 20 points.20
OrlandoWashington DC
Score4161
Drinking venues within 4 km3441,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre216593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6358
Nightclubs within 4 km3954
Nature & day trips. Orlando leads by 2 points.2
OrlandoWashington DC
Score4442
Protected land share 50 km %1510
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %10094
Park area within 2 km52 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Orlando leads by 51 points.51
OrlandoWashington DC
Score8938
Theme park ground ha 30 km8,853
Theme parks within 30 km201
Zoo aquarium 15 km2
Park area within 2 km52 hectares96 hectares
Scoring variantfamilyScoreThemeGroundLed
Declared2026-08-25
Registerseed/editorial-overrides.json
Tourist attractions within 2 km7
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 60 points.60
OrlandoWashington DC
Score1676
Notable places within 2 km10305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Orlando and Washington DC are level on 43.
OrlandoWashington DC
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Orlando leads by 12 points.12
OrlandoWashington DC
Score7462
Monthly daytime high22.1 °C to 33.3 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall46 mm to 203 mm65 mm to 108 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Orlando
22
24
26
29
31
33
33
33
32
29
26
23
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Orlando
No coastline within reach
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Orlando
63
52
77
66
101
203
189
195
160
88
46
63
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Orlando
11
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
12
11
10
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Orlando: 1991-2020 normals, Orlando Airport (14.2 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromOrlandoWashington DC
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 25 m
€158-197
MCO · 14 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
2 h 40 m
no fares
MCO · 14 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
4 h 50 m
no fares
MCO · 14 km
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
1 h 25 m
€32-127
MCO · 14 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
BostonBOS, PSM
2 h 45 m
€176-244
MCO · 14 km
1 h 25 m
€162-173
DCA · 5 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 35 m
€157-165
MCO · 14 km
1 h 50 m
€199-215
DCA · 5 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 50 m
€483-548
1 stop
MCO · 14 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
San SalvadorSAL, ILS
2 h 50 m
no fares
MCO · 14 km
4 h 15 m
€548-564
IAD · 37 km
TokyoHND, NRT
14 h 25 m
no fares
MCO · 14 km
13 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
15 h 20 m
no fares
MCO · 14 km
14 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-08 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureOrlandoWashington DC
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation34 m72 m
Main airportOrlando International Airport (MCO)14 km from centre169 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureOrlandoWashington DC
City population334,854689,545
People per km²1,0863,896
Museums within 10 km1199
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre3082
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Orlando or Washington DC somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.