Amusement Parks, Magic Kingdom
Fodor's Review:
Visiting Walt Disney World and not stopping for this tribute to terminal cuteness -- why, the idea is practically un-American. The attraction is essentially a boat ride through several candy-color lands, each representing a continent and each crammed with musical moppets, all madly singing. Disney raided the remains of the 1964-65 New York World's Fair for sets, and then appropriated the theme song of international brotherhood and friendship for its own. Some claim that it's the revenge of the audio-animatrons, as 450 simplistic dolls differentiated mostly by their national dress -- Dutch babies in clogs, Spanish flamenco dancers, German oompah bands, Russians playing balalaikas, sari-wrapped Indians waving temple bells, Tower of London guards in scarlet beefeater uniforms, Swiss yodelers and goatherds, Japanese kite fliers, Middle East snake charmers, and young French cancan dancers, to name just a few -- parade past, smiling away and wagging their heads in time to the song. But somehow, by the time you reach the end of the ride, you're grinning and wagging, too, with the one-verse theme song indelibly impressed in your brain. Now all together: "It's a world of laughter, a world of tears. It's a world of hope and a world of fears. ."
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