We love going to Downtown Disney when we are on holiday in Florida. Its an enormous shopping, entertaining and dining complex that is totally free to enter, plus it has free car parking and its also the place where you can find the free Disney transportation buses that takes you to all the Disney hotels. Whilst its free to shop and park at Downtown Disney - be warned that the car parks are enormous so its a good idea to make a note of the area you parked in. The parking lots are from A up to Q.
 
It is split into 3 areas: Marketplace, Pleasure Island and WestSide. 
 
The Marketplace area has many cafes & restaurants including McDonalds, Fulton’s Crab House, Earl of Sandwich, Rainforest Cafe plus my personal favourite: Ghirardelli’s Ice Cream and Chocolate shop where you can get free samples daily. Goofys Candy Co sells lots of sweets plus its one of the few places in Disney that you can get a cup of hot tea and its cheap as well - it only cost about 50p for a cup. There are plenty of Disney shops at Marketplace including World of Disney, Team Mickey and Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique where you can get Princess Makeovers - I’ve seen the results from these makeovers and the little girls look absolutely gorgeous - just like tiny princesses. Pooh corner is my sons favourite shop (even though he’s 15 now) he bought a lovely big Winnie The Pooh teddy when we visited in Sept. There is a Pin Trading station that is the largest one in all the Disney Resorts and is located in the middle of Marketplace.
 
There are lots of non-Disney shops though and Basin is a shop that sells home made soaps and bath salts etc. They have some lovely products and I can’t resist going in without coming out with a bag full of soaps. They sell them in slices and they even have Mickey Mouse ones which would look lovely in our vacation villas. The Lego Imagination Centre is a great place to take small children because they get to play on the outdoor park, play with Lego or have their photo taken with one of the many large Lego models on display. One of them is a team of husky dogs pulling a sledge, another is a snoring Lego man on a bench that you can sit next to.
 
Pleasure Island was a separate section that you had to pay to enter and is where a lot of nightclubs were - these all closed in Sept 2008 to make way for more family friendly entertainment and shops. Raglan Road, an Irish pub and restaurant is still open though and in Oct 2008, T-Rex, a dinosaur themed restaurant opened at Pleasure Island next to McDonalds. Fuego Cigar shop, Orlando Harley Davidson and Curl: a surf shop, are other shops open at Pleasure Island. 
 
Over at West Side, this is where DisneyQuest is located plus the Virgin Megastore, Planet Hollywood, House of Blues, La Nouba by Cirque du Soleil and a 24 screen AMC cinema. There are many other shops and restaurants that I have not mentioned. If you are flying Virgin, you can check your luggage in here for a small fee on your last day which saves lugging the cases around all day - they have an area at the back of the Megastore where they issue your boarding cards etc.
 
You can get a free water taxi from West Side that takes you over to the Rainforest Cafe at Marketplace or vice versa, This saves you walking from one end to the other because it is quite a long way. These water taxis also take you to Disney’s Port Orleans, Old Key West and Saratoga Springs resorts. Its well worth going having a look around the hotels if you only ever stop in vacation villas.