In order to ready ourselves for the day in as calm a manner as possible, we decided on the (reasonably priced) in room breakfast – just your basic bacon and eggs and coffee but I was a nice way to plan out our day and try and get as much out of the experience as possible. We decided to skip Animal Kingdom and concentrate on the quintessential Magic Kingdom and Epcot, which I had wanted to see since I was a little girl, dreaming of travelling and seeing all the cultures of the world and exploring space. Epcot appealed to be back then and something about its kitschy Star Trek imagining of the future still appeals.

First stop though was the Magic Kingdom. I had experienced a small version of it in Hong Kong but had missed out on the ride I had been hanging out for since my grandma bought me back a book about Disneyland when I was five. It’s a small world. The ride was closed when I visited Hong Kong Disneyland in 2012. And whether Dan liked I or not, we were going. There was a lengthy line-an hour wait. Although Disney would call that 65 minutes. It is never an hour and a quarter it’s 75 minutes. I actually saw some attractions with a 145 minute wait. The line gave us time to plan the rest of our day – to book for dinner and book in our three fast passes for Magic Kingdom later in the day.

The concept of It’s a Small World was my favourite part of the Disney book my Grandma brought me from a trip in the 70s (I also got a Minnie mouse Doll) but it was the book and the idea of all the worlds cultures (packaged up for a six year old) that held my imagination. I remember singing the songs as a child and when we got our first set of encyclopedias when I was 12. I invented my own school project, going through each volume and noting the key details of every country in the world and drawing their flag. I also spent a lot of time going through the sides from my Mum’s trip around the (mostly European and North American) world in 1963.

And the ride lived up to my expectations – reliving my childhood in a cacophony of colour and mostly two dimensional animatronics, capturing world culture in an ultra, simplified and kitsch laden way yet still leaving the central message of unity in diversity – it’s a small world after all – ringing in your ears (and in Dan’s with my terrible singing for the next hour or so). You get loaded in a boat that floats its way through the different continents with animatronic Spanish dancers, traditionally dressed Latvians and Japanese geishas all looking just a little bit like babushka dolls. It is blindingly colourful and has the song playing the whole way. When we rounded the Australian exhibit, it was all about the fauna – kangaroo, koala. And a traditional indigenous person with a boomerang standing behind a dingo.

The Magic Kingdom is a lot to take in. It has the most rides (although most are suited to the little ones) and there are many, many more kids than the other parks. People were also starting to line up for the character parade and it was getting chaotic with kids full of sugar awaiting their chance to see Mickey Mouse (or probably more likely Ella from Frozen). Our next stop was back to Hollywood Studios to see if we could get a dinner reservation for the SciFi drive in theatre. We couldn’t. We decided it was a great time to escape to the relative calm of Epcot. We caught the ferry. It turned out we probably could have walked the last part much faster than the ferry. When we arrived at Epcot, it was an altogether different vibe to the other two parks we had visited. It was calm – Half of it was another version of the cultures of the world concept, although this time with food and twee attempts at re-creation of landmarks and cultural icons, surrounding a lake. This included Canadian wood huts where you could sample wood smoked salmon, a German beer hall, complete with miniature train next door, a Chinese garden and temple with acrobats and a version of several Venetian landmarks (it wasn’t enough that the US already did this in a casino?). The lake around which all this transpired was joined to the imagined future of the 60s and 70s. The sort of curved modernist concrete walkways over the lake with the monorail and the recognisable Epcot golf ball structure could have been straight out of Star Trek or the paradise of Logan’s Run. You could imagine cadets in Star Trek uniforms emerging from the buildings. [A New Hope – Blink 182 – One of the lesser played tracks from Dude Ranch, this little ditty about a schoolboy crush on Princess Leia is one of my faves. And not just because I have a Star Wars obsessed better half.]

We mistakenly thought the rides at Epcot would have quite short lines. After having subjected Dan to the cutest ride at Magic Kingdom, my mission was to visit the so bad it’s good cult classic, Spaceship Earth – a ride through the history of communication (with old school animatronics that haven’t been updated in quite some time). Luckily for Dan, the ride had broken down. After a walk through half the countries of the world (or at least the ones that made it to Disney’s rendition), we headed for the space flight ride. There was a less scary option with a shorter wait time – we chose that. It worked much like the Star Wars ride (and we should have gone with the scarier version – the less scary one was a little lame). We looked at the Test track, which depending on the descriptions is either just a vehicle simulator or an opportunity to design a car and then test it, but the wait was about 175 minutes. If it was the design option, I’m bummed we missed out otherwise not sure why the wait needed to be 175 minutes. Spaceship Earth was still broken so we went for a leisurely stroll around through the ‘world cultures’ surrounding the lake and then headed for our German Bier Hall dinner.

We entered expecting a tavern. We forgot this was Disney. What we actually found was a village with a painted sky and taverns painted around the edges. It was community seating, like in a beer hall, and an all you can eat buffet. It was all pretty good and had all the favourites – fried potatoes, German sausages, schnitzel, red cabbage. Washed down with a stein of beer it was just what the doctor ordered. By the time we were done, Spaceship Earth was operational again. I convinced Dan that we had enough time to get through the line before we had to head back to Magic Kingdom to use our fast passes. We waited for what seemed like an eternity and then we finally got in Spaceship Earth puts you in a coaster carriage that spirals up inside the golf ball and then back down, along the way telling the story of communication from the invention of paper to computers and then sort of tries to predict the future at the end, including a survey that then draws a cartoon of you with details about your life in this reimagined future. Sadly, this isn’t an interactive Disney experience where you can buy/ have sent the output. It should be.

We bade farewell to Epcot and steadied ourselves for the onslaught that is the Magic Kingdom at night. We finally got to catch the monorail which was a fun experience although we didn’t get to ride it through Epcot, which would have been cool. Here is where our fast passes started to pay off. First up was the quintessential Fantasyland ride – the Mad Hatter teacups. Not exceptional as a ride but the imagery of the brightly coloured tea cups that you could spin around was cool. And spin we did. Dan isn’t really one for rides, so it was fun to enjoy this with him. The other Disney experiences we had were really either a single rider experience or a journey through animatronics. This one provided some interactivity between us as we spun around. From there it was over to Tomorrowland – my favourite Magic Kingdom land. We had a bit of time until our space mountain fast pass window so just wandered around for a while through the convenient slew of gift shops. Or should I say hobbled. We had walked quite a long way and our feet were pretty sore by now.

We entered space mountain as soon as our fast pass window opened – a roller coaster completely in the dark, space mountain is exhilarating because of the curves and drops that you can’t see coming. You don’t go upside down, which in my view is a plus. And Dan really enjoyed it, which was another big plus. Afterwards, we decided to take the elevated train through Tomorrowland. It didn’t have a line and was a good way to sit down for 10 minutes. It isn’t immediately obvious but it goes through a number of the experiences, including Space mountain so it was great to hear the other people screaming, and get a glimpse of the ride from a different perspective.

After that it was time to stakeout a spot to see the nightly fireworks show above the Disney castle (modelled on the stupid (Neufwatschen) castle in Germany). The fireworks show was pure Disney and reminded me of my childhood watching the opening and closing credits to a wonderful World of Disney, featuring an animated version, with Tinkerbell. Here Tinkerbelle also appeared on a zipline from the castle to Main Street, above everyone’s heads. From here it was our last fast pass experience. Th Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Expecting something thrilling, we were bitterly disappointed after discovering that it was yet another boat ride through animatronics. They did cast an eerily accurate animatronic version of Johnny Depp who pops up quite often throughout the ride. We probably had time to just squeeze in one more ride but by this stage we were over Disney.

The only reason spending more time here would have been good, would be so we could have some quiet time between assaults on the park. We do want to come back but only so we can visit the new Star Wars part of the park after it opens. Some of the stuff they were constructing (like a new transport system that looked like it was designed to connect Star Wars to Epcot) looked intriguing.

Farewell Disney – Not sure you qualify as the happiest place on earth, but we did have some fun moments here reliving our childhood (Well my childhood and Dan’s ongoing fascination with Star Wars). Can’t really understand the Americans who vacation here every year though. [Weapon of Choice – Fatboy Slim. I remember the first time I heard Fat Boy Slim – like most, it was Rockefeller Skank, a tune that I was sure I would tire of after a few listens but 20 years later.]

US states – 4, t-shirts – 7, fridge magnets – 6