Some of the queues are pretty hot for that matter - standing inside the dome of Space Mountain listening to the shrieks as neon-lit trains plunged past you in the dark was almost as good as corkscrewing round an asteroid. Then there were the celebs: Michael Jackson, dancing like an extra in Night of the Living Dead in the 3D Captain Eo. The 360-degree Visionarium provided more shocks: Jeremy Irons taking the shilling to ham it up as HG Wells, and Gerard Depardieu as an airport luggage flunkey. This performance was particularly unconvincing, as he didn't once take a knife to anybody's Vuittons and remove their jewellery.We lasted seven hours, managing six rides and eight queues.

Entrance for an adult is currently pounds 25, and pounds 19 for a child. Otherwise, everything is gloss-paint perfect: everyone exhorts you to enjoy your meal, enjoy the ride, enjoy your day. Every fag butt, every discarded Coke container, every piece of chewing gum, is pounced upon with pooper-scoopers as theme tu nes tinkle from the flowerbeds. The cleaners, too, dress in uniform: pirate gear, gauchero ponchos, houndstooth plus-fours.

Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but the customer must never notice that it takes work.Some of the rides are great, though When you get on them. Suddenly, the sight of five-foot mice scampering everywhere is more than you can take.But it's not just the mice. Everyone who works for Disneyland is so highly trained they could be robots: the smiles are fixed, the charm is uniform. Enjoyment is compulsory.They employ roughly 12,000 staff, all checked for criminal records and tested for suitability. For such a large workforce the track record for nasty incidents is low: a cashier killed in a robbery soon after the park opened (which can hardly be blamed on the recruiting system) and last year a Pirate of the Caribbean charged with the rape of a 14- year-old German tourist. But it is also just possible that at a moment when our children are inching towards private experiment, the nightmare vision Kids presents will shock them into revulsion - or worse, make their hesitant loving fumblings seem small beer compared with the sensations aroused by brutality.