Change We parked in the Dolphin lot. The memories started to flood back. It had been years since I visited Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom. Only this time, I was not with my family. I wasn't with my parents, or even my brother. I was with two of my friends. We thought it would be a fun thing to do, go to Disney, trip the day away, see what it would feel like going as adults on our own. Not that it was cheap: the price tag really stung -- something I never had to think about when I was a starry-eyed little kid. As a teenager we stopped going to Disney World as a family. Probably because of the divorce, there was never enough time to take the family together on a fun vacation. It seemed like all we did was argue and do homework. This felt liberating, driving her on my own, just with a good friend of mine.

The monorail looked a lot spiffier. The signs were definitely new, but the system was easy to understand, as it was last time I was here. Scores of families shared the car with us -- some pasty, white, and very fat -- others slim and less embarrassingly American looking. Did Americans always look this obvious? I thought. No wonder the whole world makes fun of us. I always knew in my head that "Americans are fat," but to see it right here, right now, in this crowded little monorail car headed to the Magic Kingdom? It was shocking. The statistic is about right, I thought. About one in every three of the adult were fat (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2012). It appeared as if nearly the same number...

I glossed quickly over the annual pass programs. Scanning the list of the individual parks, I said to my friend, "Was this always here?"
Before he could answer, a woman said, no, she shouted, "Oye! Ben aca!" I turned my head to see where that obnoxious voice was coming from, and saw a family of about ten people from what seemed like five generations approaching. Then my friend answered, "What? Animal Kingdom?"

"No," I said. "What the hell is blizzard beach?"

My friend shrugged his shoulders. "OK, are we going to Epcot and Hollywood Studios?"

After some deliberation, we decided to buy three-day passes, because the cost savings vs. two individual tickets was substantial. I told my friend we should pick something we had not seen before. But today, our focus would be squarely on the Magic Kingdom. Would it still feel like the "Happiest Place on Earth?" Or would it reveal itself to be the place on earth most likely to generate the kind of fake happiness that Americans had come to expect?

As it turned out, both were true. I have never been to Denmark, mind you, where recent…