Three days in Florida. Turn the nephews loose on Disney World. Golf — for the first time this season — on a PGA course. Immersed in corporate wonder of Walt Disney Incorporated.

And we survived. Better than that even; it turned out to be fun.

The Wife and I arrived late on Wednesday, well after my folks and the Florida family had gone to bed. We enjoyed a $20 round of drinks — the shock of the price was offset at the mild surprise of finding that there was alcohol to be had at the Animal Kingdom Lodge at 11 p.m. OK. We’re good so far. Even better — there were giraffes eating their dinner right outside our room’s balcony. Wow.

The next jolt was also expected: an early wake-up so we could get to the Magic Kingdom by 8 a.m. on an early entry day for resort guests. As jarring as that was, the early entry thing was totally the right way to go. We were able to get over to some of the most popular rides — Space Mountain and the Buzz Lightyear shoot ’em up thing — quickly and get in multiple trips. And we learned early that, as per Kewyson’s advice, Fastpass — an advance ticket that allows you to come back to a popular ride at a later time and jump into a special, much shorter line — was absolutely the way to go. It got me a second trip on Space Mountain, with my sister who had to wait with two of her kids while the rest of us went through the first time, and it saved us a ton of time on a couple of rides that afternoon.

With the exception of Space Mountain, that first day was largely governed by the whims of the boys, ages 7 and 5, and what they wanted to see and do. They were content to bop around through several rides, check out all the lands and the cool stuff hidden throughout, and the grownups — and their almost 2-year-old sister — followed along. By the afternoon, though, it was hot and really freaking crowded; so we picked a good spot to watch the 3 p.m. parade and headed back to the hotel for swimming and cocktails at the end of the day.

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A side note about Thursday. I rejoyced when we saw that the line for “It’s a Small World” was too long to endure when we were passing by. That is the single most goddamn irritating song in the history of music, and I wasn’t looking forward to getting it stuck inside my skull for six months or so.

So when we passed that attraction by, I thought I was home free. And I almost made it. But when I called the shuttle service Saturday night to check on our departure time for the Orlando airport, I was initially put on hold … and guess what the freaking hold music was …

Yep. It’s a good thing I wasn’t armed.

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The Wife and I, along with my father and brother-in-law, got to check out a different park on Friday morning. While Mom, my sister and the kids went through Animal Kingdom, we played golf at the Palm course, one of the primary things my father wanted to do in observation of his 70th birthday. BIL lives in Clearwater, which means he plays golf year-round; on top of that, he’s actually good. My dad had played a few times in Columbus already and spent some time at driving ranges as well.

Niether The Wife nor I had so much as touched a club until I was packing them in the travel bags the day we left. This could have been really ugly.

But actually, it wasn’t. The course was tough but fair, and gorgeous besides. And although I was expecting not to break 120, I was pretty pleased with my 114, which was just two strokes behind my dad’s score. That was a great day, and it finished with another short trip to the pool followed by Legoland and dinner at Downtown Disney in the evening.

We had another early admission day Saturday at Disney-MGM, and again that, combined with the magic of Fastpass, made for a nice, low-hassle day. A bunch of us hit the Tower of Terror first, an amazing experience, but before we did we picked up Fastpasses for my father and me at the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster that we were able to use right away. A couple of quick scores before the park got too busy.

The cool thing about MGM, from a kid’s perspective, was that the Disney characters were everywhere, which made getting pictures with the various mice, ducks, dogs and bears was much easier that it would have been at the Magic Kingdom. In fact, we found this out totally accidentially; the 7-year-old wanted to go over to check out the huge wizard hat at the center of the park and I volunteered to take them over there. While we were standing underneath, there was a sudden explosion of music and announcers and recorded applause and then we were standing right next to Mickey as he walked out to a meet-and-greet point. I grabbed the boys and jumped in line while the various parents and grandparent ran over with cameras. They had time to meet the head mouse, Donald and Daisy and, later in the morning, Pooh and Tigger, who easily qualify as the favorites of the Crappy house.

And then the coolest thing happened. We had picked up Fastpasses for the Star Wars flight simulation, and headed back over there for the ride. Once seated, a guy in a special outfit — definitely not one of the Star Wars-esque unis the folks who were managing the ride were wearing — strolled in and handed each one of us a super Fastpass laminate, one that could be used at any time, for six different attractions, that day.

The ride was cool, and the pass was great — it got us back for second rides on several things and saved us a bunch of time and hassle. We wrapped up the day at the park by taking in a car-and-motorcycle stunt show — squealing tires, roaring engines, fire, exlposions and other generally loud stuff, perfect for the boys — and headed back to the hotel for an excellent grownup dinner at Jiku the night befor we all packed up and headed home on Sunday.

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I was curious to see what my adult impression of Disney World would be compared with the memories of my last visit, which was something around age 12 — or like 28 years ago. I am significantly more cynical now than I was at 12, and I was half-expecting an endless corporate horrow show in the four days we were there.

While that stuff is there if you look for it, the overall experience was actually very good. It helped that I was viewing the parks largely through the eyes of my nephews, but the things I was looking forward to were even better than expected. The grownup rides were great, our dinner — after working out a botched reservation — was fantastic, the hotel was nice and well-run.

Hm. Maybe the beer selection could have been better, but that didn’t even matter much, since my sister had filled a cooler with IPAs from her local beer store to keep The Wife and me happy.

I almost wish I had a rant in me here, but I don’t. I’m still plenty skeptical about the mouse — and The Wife still has plenty of concerns about how much Central Florida land has been gobbled up by the company — but the Disney folks do know how to make a vacation enjoyable.

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I’ve got a ton more to catch up on — music, beer, my new glasses, the Browns’ potential draft picks — but I’m out of time for the moment. Until the next time, remember:

“It’s a world of laughter/A world or tears/It’s a world of hopes/It’s a world of fears/There’s so much that we share/That it’s time we’re aware/It’s a small world after all…”