By Mark O’Neill

I went to Disney World today – well not the real Disney World.  Rather I went to the online digital version, courtesy of Google Earth. Not as good as the real thing obviously but it’s as near as I’m ever going to get to it. The Google Earth version doesn’t give you the chance to sit on Mickey Mouse’s knee (although I am rather partial to Minnie myself).

The online version of Disney World comes courtesy of the latest version of Google Earth and I have to admit it’s not bad. It didn’t have me jumping up and down for joy but then again I’m not five years old either. The graphics were pretty good and smooth and by clicking on Mickey’s ears, you could go to different areas of the park. But the big downside was that Google Earth was chewing up huge amounts of my RAM (300MB +) which meant I had to shut down everything else to keep it going. I seriously hope that this was a temporary glitch, otherwise this visit will be a one-off!

So if you’re interested in taking a visit to Google Earth’s Disney World yourself, just download the latest version of Google Earth (or if you already have the app installed, go to Help >Check For Updates Online to get the latest version. Then when you have the program up and running, type in the search box “Disney World” and watch the earth spin round to the United States. Note that there is no KML file to click on at the moment. The only way there is by typing in “Disney World” in the GE search engine.

Now when you finally arrive there, you’ll see this :

Basically there are lots of Disney World destinations in that area. You need to click on the yellow Mickey ears where it says “Walt Disney World in 3D”.

When you click on those ears, that then brings up a yellow box with 5 possible destinations with which to choose from :

I just clicked around and explored each one. Goodbye to the rest of my day!

Being Disney, I was expecting a lot of interaction, animation and so on, but there didn’t seem to be any of that. No characters, nothing. No Minnie to wave to. Just the buildings which were well designed and lifelike as you can see below :

Which is all well and good but who wants to walk through a ghost town? Is it not possible to have some static characters standing there, making it look as if the place is populated? Nothing fancy. Just some one-dimensional cardboard cutout-type figures at the very least, something to fill up the empty space. But this looks like Walmart has just announced a 50% off sale with fifteen minutes to go until closing time.

Guess I should see if Disneyland Paris is any better in Google Earth. Maybe MadeMoiselle Minnie is waiting for me there. Oooh Minnie dear…..?