The Best Things to Do in Avalon Park: A Food Hall, a Lake and a Town Built for Lingering

November 14, 2026 Staff Reports

Loop Avalon Lake, graze the Marketplace, catch a Town Park festival and ride sixteen miles of trails — the best things to do in Avalon Park, sequenced into a day.

3 minute read

Avalon Park does not have attractions in the Orlando sense — no gates, no queues, no parking tram. What it has is a town, and the things to do here are the things a good town lets you do: walk a lake, eat across eleven kitchens without moving tables, ride a trail network that actually connects places, and show up when the whole community pours into its park for a festival. Sequenced well, that is a full and genuinely pleasant day.

Walk the lake, read the town

Start with the loop around Avalon Lake, the man-made lake at downtown’s center, fronted by mixed-use buildings and the town fountain. A shorter circuit of about four-tenths of a mile circles Founders Square and the lake; the walk is the fastest way to absorb what makes this place different — apartments over shops, porches facing sidewalks, a downtown scaled to people rather than parking lots. The Clock Tower, raised in 2000 before most of the town existed, still anchors the view. Read the history as you walk with our Avalon Park guide.

Graze the Marketplace

The Marketplace at Avalon Park is the day’s gravitational center: a food hall with eleven vendors, the Bowigens brewery taproom, a wine boutique and a general store at 3801 Avalon Park East Boulevard, with seating for more than 200 inside and out. It is lunch, dinner, drinks and shopping in one stop, and its weekly events and entertainment give even a plan-free afternoon a program. Budget at least one meal here; most visitors give it two.

Ride or run the trails

Around sixteen miles of off-street trails run beside Avalon Park’s main roads and through its neighborhoods, linking parks, schools, restaurants and shopping — an unusually complete network for a Florida suburb, and the community’s real recreation backbone. The longer town-center loop runs about a mile and a quarter around the boulevard’s two legs. Bring bikes if you have them; the trails reward a full circuit out to the village parks and back. Our trails and parks guide maps the system in detail.

Time it to Town Park

Town Park, at 3651 Avalon Park East Boulevard, hosts the community’s calendar: large quarterly festivals, monthly movie nights, artisan markets and seasonal celebrations. If your visit can flex, flex it to a festival — that is when the town performs itself. Families should also detour to Tanja King Park for its playground, splash pad and courts. However you assemble the day, end it the local way: dinner downtown, a Bowigens pour, and one last lap of the lake. The Avalon Park hub tracks new openings and events, and the Orlando Top Spots Map orients the whole visit.

With kids, and without

Families get the fullest version of the town: Tanja King Park’s playground and splash pad, story time at the Marketplace, movie nights in Town Park and a trail system safe enough for a child’s first real bike ride to somewhere — to breakfast, to the lake, to a friend’s village. Bring a picnic blanket even on a non-festival day; the lawns around Founders Square and Town Park invite it, and the Marketplace general store makes an easy provisions stop. Adults without kids should aim for the evening edition: a Bowigens flight, dinner at one of the lakefront rooms, and the downtown at its lamplit best. Either way, the governing principle is the same — this is a place to linger in, not to check off, and an unhurried half-day will teach you more about it than a windshield tour ever could.

Best for: families wanting a low-cost, low-stress day out; cyclists; and Orlando visitors curious about the city beyond the attractions corridor.

Filed under Avalon Park · East Orlando · Family · Things to Do

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