Who Will Rid Me of this Turbulent Mouse?

In case you don't do so already, I strongly recommend keeping an up-to-date mental list of things and places to avoid.

I have found this to be a very useful technique because, without such a list immediately to hand, or mind, one can easily be swept by circumstances into a situation in which one realises too late why it was that the thing in question was on the list which one has failed to keep to hand, or mind. I hope that's clear so far.

By way of illustration, the top three things on my list, in no particular order, are currently:

(i) hospitals, or any other facility in which medical things are likely to happen;
(ii) nightclubs, or other similar venues in which I am likely to feel insufficiently young and/or trendy (increasingly both);
(iii) theme parks, and any similar attractions at which having "fun" is mandatory.

Well, with the exception of a brief accidental appearance at a trendy downtown Manhattan nightclub - which didn't really count because I left at 9:30, having remembered why I hate nightclubs so much - I had done pretty well at avoiding those places on my list whilst in the US. Until last week.

Last week, I finally caved in to pressure from the rest of the family that we couldn't reasonably live in the US for any period without trying the quintessential American holiday/vacation experience - ie spending a few days at Walt Disney World in Florida. I gave in strictly on the basis, you understand, that this was a one-off experience and it would be best to get it over with (like having your wisdom teeth taken out or getting a vasectomy - see (i) above).

Well, I learned a lot last week, including about my tolerance to take-away pizza. But a more interesting thing I learned is that WDW covers roughly the same area as Rhode Island. That's right - the property owned by WD in Florida is as large as the smallest of the USA's fifty states.

I also discovered that most of the attractions at WDW are constructed from one of two key Disney components - plastic and cheese. Occasionally these two elements occur together, although usually only in the fast-food outlets.

To be fair, most of the attractions are well presented and we found something enjoyable in most of the several theme parks. Having said that, I wouldn't recommend the "Magic Blingdom" - I don't know about you, but watching people drive around in BMWs showing off their jewellery is not my idea of a good day out.

But, being serious for a moment, if I may - consider this. WDW is the largest theme park in the world. It is located in the sunniest and most visited state of the richest country in the world. Each year it welcomes hundreds of thousands of well-heeled visitors, most of whom are Americans, but who also come from every corner of the world. Relatively few of them are people from the north of England wearing football shirts.

This being the case, WDW is in an enormously powerful position in terms of advertising and endorsements. Whoever Disney decides to get in to bed with, so to speak, is going to do very nicely. From my recent highly scientific survey, I can tell you that the two leading organisations benefitting from a conspicuous on-site presence at WDW are Coca-Cola and McDonald's. This is hardly a surprise, particularly to anyone who has tried to eat the food, but it shows a distinct lack of imagination.

Supposing someone high up at Disney decided to do something creative and daring. Supposing they decided, for example, to endorse fairly-traded coffee. Supposing WDW decreed that only fairly-traded coffee was going to be sold across its enormous estate of hotels and theme parks, and supposing it advertised to its hundreds of thousands of visitors what is was doing and why. I can't begin to put any numbers on it, but it's safe to say that the impact on the economic fortunes of independent farmers in South and Central America would be significant.

Is anything along these lines likely to happen soon? Not a mouse in hell's chance.