For most of the year, Bill Frederick Park at Turkey Lake is 183 acres of trails, a fishing pier, picnic pavilions and disc golf. It sits behind a gatehouse at 3401 South Hiawassee Road in southwest Orlando. The disc golf is spread across two courses, the Original and the T-2. Over the next five weeks it works more like an event venue that rotates between tenants. Paddlers from across North America take the lake first. Then a sold-out disc golf field takes the wooded courses. Last comes a Saturday built around the Children's Farm and the nature trails, and that is the one day the city waives the gate fee.
Each event takes over a different part of the park. So a neighbor planning a dog walk or a quiet loop needs to know more than whether something is happening. The useful question is which part of the park is spoken for that weekend.
The Calendar, by Part of the Park
| Date | Event | Part of the park in use | Admission as listed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fri., Oct. 16 | Dragon boat practice sessions, 3 to 6 p.m. | Turkey Lake | Practice only |
| Sat., Oct. 17 | 18th Annual Orlando International Dragon Boat Festival | Turkey Lake and festival grounds | Free festival admission |
| Sat., Oct. 17 | Conservation Corner, "Mysterious Monsters," 2 to 3 p.m. | Naturalist program | Free program |
| Oct. 16 to 18 | Disc golf courses closed for the festival | Both disc golf courses | Courses closed |
| Sat. and Sun., Oct. 24 to 25 | 2026 Orlando Open disc golf tournament | Original and T-2 courses | Field is full |
| Sat., Oct. 31 | Conservation Corner, "Mysterious Monsters," 2 to 3 p.m. | Naturalist program | Free program |
| Sat., Nov. 14 | Nature in November, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. | Farm, trails, hayride routes | $5 daily car fee waived |
Two weekends overlap. On October 17, the naturalist program runs during the afternoon of race day. The dragon boat festival also shuts the disc golf courses for three days, so the disc golf crowd loses its home ground one weekend before its own tournament.
October 17: The Lake Belongs to the Paddlers
GWN Dragon Boat bills the Orlando International Dragon Boat Festival as one of the largest dragon boat events in Florida. It pitches the festival to crews as a late-season regatta and one of the last MLDB stops of the year. Because it comes so late in the season, most of the teams on Turkey Lake that Saturday are visitors extending their racing calendar. Few are local clubs.
The event listing on Eventbrite gives public hours of 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Racing starts at 9 a.m. and runs through the day, and admission is free. Races are 500 meters. Divisions include Mixed, Women's, Open, Paradragons and Senior 55+, and if time allows, a 2,000-meter pursuit for the top Mixed crews closes the day. GWN said the heat-by-heat schedule would be posted Monday, October 12. Anyone hoping to catch a particular division will find the timing there.
Away from the water, the festival grounds have the Asia Trend Cultural Expo with live performances and exhibits, a Food Truck Bazaar with international menus, a Health and Wellness Village and a beer garden. The festival's listed charity is the Orlando Community & Youth Trust, and donations go to Dueling Dragons of Orlando. According to the Orlando Community & Youth Trust, Dueling Dragons uses dragon boating to build long-term mentoring relationships between Orlando law enforcement and young people.
The festival has been part of the park's fall for more than a decade. A paddling club's race history lists the event at Downtown Disney on October 19, 2013, then at Turkey Lake on October 18, 2014.
On the same afternoon, the city's free Conservation Corner program, "Mysterious Monsters," runs from 2 to 3 p.m. It returns on Halloween at the same hour.
October 24 and 25: The Woods Belong to a Full Field
The disc golf courses reopen after the dragon boats and then host the 2026 Orlando Open the following weekend. It is a PDGA-sanctioned B-tier event hosted by Orlando Disc Golf, with Brennan Loynd as tournament director. As of October 7, the PDGA event page showed 150 registered players. The tournament's registration page showed the field above its 144-player cap, with 12 more on a waitlist.
That field covers both of the park's courses. According to the tournament page, play runs on the Original course and the T-2 course across five layouts:
- OG Blue
- OG White
- T2 Blue to Mach
- T2 Blue to Veteran
- T2 Red to Veteran
The format is three rounds of 18 holes, with two on Saturday and the final round on Sunday. Divisions run from open professional through age-group amateur brackets up to 70-plus. Posted entry fees were $70 for pro divisions and $55 for amateurs.
The Orlando Open has a long history at this park, though the exact count is unclear. The PDGA's records include a 2008 Orlando Open played October 25 and 26 of that year. Orlando Disc Golf's program for the May 2015 tournament called it the 14th Annual Orlando Open. The city's closure list also shows the courses were already reserved September 5 to 7 for an Orlando Disc Golf Tournament. For regular players, that makes three weekends since Labor Day when the courses were spoken for.
November 14: The Farm and the Gate Open Up
The first two events bring in outside competitors. Nature in November is the one built around the park itself. The city lists live music, hayrides, guided nature hikes and farm tours, with environmental and agricultural professionals from around Central Florida on hand to talk about wildlife, farming and conservation. On this date, the city's listing says daily admission is waived. On an ordinary day, the park charges $5 per car, or $2 for a driver alone.
The farm tours go to the park's Children's Farm, a city-run animal area that a city park manual describes as observation-only, with no feeding. The event has run for at least two years before this one. It was held November 9, 2024, when Save the Manatee Club set up a table about manatees and habitat protection, and again on November 8, 2025.
The timing works around the park's own schedule. On November 1, park hours shift from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. down to 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and they stay there through March. Nature in November ends at 3 p.m., which leaves two hours of shortened-season daylight for a walk on the trails or a stop at the fishing pier before the gate closes. The day also lands two weeks after the Taste of Dr. Phillips at Dellagio on November 1, so the neighborhood's November has two community Saturdays on the calendar.
The One Piece Not on the Calendar
One part of the park sits out the entire fall. The city's page for Turkey Lake Pool says the pool is "closed until further notice." The last schedule still posted is for weekend open swim, noon to 5 p.m., through September 27, 2025. The city's FY2026 budget included $500,000 for a "Turkey Lake Pool Pump Room Renovation." That fiscal year ran October 1, 2025 through September 30, 2026. The city has not posted a reopening date or a construction schedule. Until it does, the pool's return is a funded line item and nothing more definite.
The rest of the park stays open throughout: the cabins and campsites, the pavilions and the trails. For a quiet visit, the weekdays between October 19 and November 13 are the stretch with nothing booked on the city's posted calendars.
At Elite Sport Network, our advisors follow the details of daily life around Dr. Phillips closely, down to which weekend the lake is booked. If you'd like that same attention on a move, a second home or a quiet search nearby, book a private consultation.
