OSCEOLA COUNTY, Fla. – Disney's influence on Central Florida is clear to see, 50 years after the opening of Walt Disney World.

Gary Stone sees that influence every day in the town of Celebration in Osceola County. Places like Market Street remind him of Celebration's next door neighbor, Disney World.

“You get that feeling when you walk into the Magic Kingdom and you see that town as you're walking into the castle, you have all those stores, well when you walk down this way, or you go back and forth, it's the same thing,” Stone said.

He and his family moved to Celebration from Virginia in 1999.

“We drove into Celebration by mistake literally and we fell in love with it,” he said.

The Walt Disney Company built Celebration. In 1990, Disney's Community Development team hired its first member, Charles Adams.

“There is no doubt the Disney halo was in effect with our planning,” Adams said.

Back in the 1960s, Walt Disney had the idea of a community of tomorrow where you could live, work and play. He called it Epcot.

Of course, we know that's not what Epcot came to be. But Disney leadership in the 1990s wanted a community to be built on the southern most 10,000 acres of Disney World's property.

“I think there was a part of it that was trying to live up to the legacy that Walt Disney originally acquired what was know as the Florida Project," Adams said. "From day 1, he wanted to create a community of tomorrow.”

Disney pushed for the town to have the latest technology, but also a small town feel.

“Celebration is a good case study for new urbanism," Adams said. "At the time when we launched Celebration, that term was not really commonly known."

At a time when cars and suburbs were at their peak of popularity, Disney's embrace of new urbanism, or places where you can walk to work or school, became a benchmark community for architects and planners from across the country to study.

“We were resurrecting a lot of good, old ideas and reintroducing them into a new community," Adams said.

Celebration's walkable neighborhoods, with a central hub, inspired Baldwin Park and The Villages' town squares, among others.

“When I left in 2005, almost 2006, it was I always want to come back,” Stone said.

Stone and his family moved to New Mexico in the 2000s.

It wouldn't be until last year that Stone decided to move back. He and his wife adopted four children, and one needed special attention.

“It's actually been a success, we're going in the right direction," Stone said. "(My son) loves the school, he loves the community, lots of friends, which is why we came back and why I've always loved Celebration, that community.”

Disney no longer owns Celebration, but for Stone, it doesn't matter. It's still the town Disney built.

“It's got that same downtown atmosphere that Walt Disney designed for Magic Kingdom, and I think it fits it perfectly," he said.