WDW is a national, actually continental, level draw
Global - most of my grade school class went there (Euro Disney was still a bit too new, and so didn't cut the mustard) as a big treat holiday - I remember having three years only having one week somewhere within 100 miles of home (rather than going to France for two weeks) in order to save up to go to WDW.
And my brother is currently there as a big treat 30th birthday present to himself (and while he wants to do Universal, Sea World and Busch Gardens, and would have got Cape Canaveral in if he could, it's specifically Disney he's gone to - though I know he'd enjoy the other stuff more). For some reason (despite it requiring mum to veto 7 year old him and 11 year old me refusing to go on the ride when we went there in '97), he's been on
Its A Small World - that hellish dystopia celebrating diversity that only goes skin deep as they all parrot the same ideological line over and over in a really annoying way like they have no taste or personality or anything. Now my brother hates tradition and really hates tweeness, so he was probably inoculating himself for the day against further such stuff by giving himself a worst-case-scenario as it was the first thing he did.
I enjoyed riding Splash Mountain because it's probably about the only way Disney acknowledges Song of the South these days.
That's your takeaway from Splash Mountain - it was good because it references a non-PC film?
I enjoyed riding Splash Mountain as, other than Space Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, it's the only big ride in the Magic Kingdom - and it's a good one (struggling to remember back 22 years to other ones - IASW for its horror, and the one where they blow air at you and shake your seat in the dark like a vicious alien is in the room with you is all I remember).
The
Song of the South theming adds little, other than critter animatronics to make the experience more annoying (which is the Magic Kingdom tradition!) and take about 11 minutes to do 2600'. Loggers' Leap (RIP) at Thorpe Park was a better log flume, even though it was far cheaper-looking, because it cared more about substance than style - 2' higher drop (though half the top speed due to putting an airtime bump on the big drop) and only taking about 3 minutes to do 1709' as it knows what a log flume is about is a big drop and getting you wet, not floating around for a long time.
I think I found EPCOT more interesting than the Magic Kingdom even though the Test Track broke down right before I got to ride it
EPCOT was the park I preferred. I think we did two full days there, which we didn't manage in the Magic Kingdom - I guess we could have ridden the better rides more than once, but really we got sick of the Magic Kingdom. Some stuff was great, other stuff was fine in small doses, but quite a lot was boring, and you couldn't get away with a small dose as the Disney is poured down your throat there.
Anyway, back to EPCOT - a bit too much walking, not a fan of the UK just being a 'pub', and a small garden with certain characters, and that's it. But the big disappointment was that they'd been advertising Test Track quite a bit on the TV while I was there and got me hyped and I couldn't go on it (it didn't have a soft opening until December '98, and I was there in the summer '97) - it looked better than it.
MGM Studios (now Disney's Hollywood Studios) was good - the shows were fun. Universal did it better I think (both LA and Orlando iterations), but MGM was more enjoyable than Magic Kingdom and the Tower of Terror was my favourite ride at Disney. Islands of Adventure (OK, I did that aged 17, not 11) is the Orlando area park I enjoyed the most though perhaps as it cared more about the rides than the theming.