That was where we started, going over a drawbridge where finally kids seemed as prevalent as grown-ups, and ($4.25 for fifteen attractions) (never a prosaic “ride”!) into the domains of Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Snow White and especially Mr. Toad and his very wild ride (well, even Disney couldn’t deny that was a ride).

In Adventureland, a jungle river cruise offered ersatz hippos and real foliage, while in Tomorrowland I jammed into a mini-sportscar with my son at Autotopia’s freeway before trading them in for pack mules in Frontierland. As a parent who could afford it, and a single dad anxious to show up his ex-wife, I was prepared to endure any indignity, up to a cumulative fifty bucks.

The hand-holding had only lasted through the squeeze of Main Street, but Sam’s giddy reaction to everything but the long lines was almost as good. And in those lines we took advantage of ice cream and other treats from sunny vendors in straw hats and striped shirts who called themselves hosts, addressing us as “guests,” not customers.

On the sky ride, as we sat aloft in a bucket, a wide-eyed Sam asked, “You ever see anything like this in the whole world?”

And I realized something had been tugging at me from the moment we emerged from that tunnel—Disneyland was unique and yet seemed somehow familiar. Not because of any kind of county fair nostalgia, but it stirred memories of the Century of Progress exposition in ’33 and ’34. That I hadn’t made the connection at once seems stupid in retrospect, but the Chicago World’s Fair had been futuristic whereas everything in Walt’s world spoke either of the past or of fantasy—even Tomorrowland had Jules Verne’s Nautilus sub in it, and that dated back to the 1800’s.

But the size, the scope, the audaciousness of it all, took me back twenty-five years, to where my business had begun—when my late uncle had hired me at my fledgling one-man agency to handle the pickpocket problem at the fair. They’d had a ride like this, too, in a “rocket” car between tall towers. On the other hand, Disney didn’t have Sally Rand. But sexy little Tinkerbell was based on Marilyn Monroe, they say, so maybe he did at that.…

And Donald Duck’s daddy also had Annette from the Mickey Mouse Club, autographing near an old-fashioned bandshell in a mouse-eared cap and white short-sleeve turtleneck with her name on it, as if any identification were necessary. Watching this little Italian dish asking Sam his name was the first time I ever saw my son blush.

“There’s something about her, Pop,” he said, walking away, staring at the 8x10 image and glistening signature. “Just can’t put my finger on it.”

“Someday you’ll try,” I said.

Looking back at that long, terrible, wonderful day, two things really stand out, and I’m not talking about Miss Funicello. The first is Sam and me lining up along the dock by the Mark Twain Sternwheel Riverboat while Zorro—Guy Williams himself, not some nameless stunt man—engaged in a fierce sword fight on an upper deck. When the evil commandant finally leapt from the boat into the drink to flee Zorro’s rapier blade, that small hand slipped into mine again.