Even the name has a curious quality to it. The acronymic, experimental prototype community of tomorrow; that odd detachment of language suggesting mission control in some futuristic, James Bond-style global domination story. At the same time, EPCOT claims to demonstrate the historic essences of a dozen or more countries, with a Tower of Babel-like effrontery and hubris which might almost be described as Shakespearean (although Shakespeare doesn't feature, as far as I can recall).

I'll throw my cards upon the table. My first impression of EPCOT at dusk on a warm Florida evening was simply entrancing. I am not ashamed to say so yet the words do seem to have a faint shrug about them. I had probably not felt quite like that, not experienced that sort of wonderment since I was a small child and I lay on the sand, gazing at the sky as the sun set over Blackpool beach. I felt myself drawn towards dreamy, crimson and vermilion pathways; seduced by the other world of magic that I knew was going on up in those kingdom-shaped clouds.

This vision seemed real to me then and I must have remembered it because I wanted to feel like that again. Does this make me especially gullible? Doesn't even the self-styled, cynical-but-sophisticated grown-up, the sort who breakfasts on anomie, long to have their guard dissolved by a glimpse of faerie otherness?

For the child and the adult, there must be places where we like to imagine it is simply not possible to be afraid; impossible to be ill, disadvantaged, rejected, poor or disappointed. On the night we first saw EPCOT, we were hurrying to find our friends and the sweet anticipation of that worked on the imagination and the senses so that the whole place was imbued with a particular quality of 'where we'll meet'. And there WAS something slightly sinister about some of the whispering grottoes which we passed but these only added to the fairytale atmosphere. And the thought lingered, as darkness deepened and lights from flaming braziers and distant pavilions danced on the lakes, that I was safe; that nothing bad would happen to me there, that night.

When we visited MGM Studios, the mood was rather different. Fun fair atmosphere. A more formal pastiche; pastel coloured evocations of Hollywood film sets, themselves redolent of the New World architecture of Southern California.

As we were leaving, a group of actors were performing in the street, presenting the teller of the best joke in Hollywood competition, circa 1930's. A delightfully bossy woman presided ruthlessly over motley characters: film director, cop, Calamity-Jane figure, mature dame and Roman Holiday.