Building fictional worlds has been the preoccupation of media creators for a very long time. As Marie Laure-Ryan (2008) points out, “the ability to create a world—or more precisely the ability to inspire the mental representation of a world—is the primary condition for any text to be considered a narrative.” Media texts do not merely forge stories or characters; they build worlds in the service of forging characters and stories. But that does not explain how imaginary worlds are actually built, particularly in historical contexts far removed from the technological convergences and innovations of the present media environment. What is it that holds storyworlds together across countless texts and media? And how do we know this?

Arguably the most famous imaginary world of the mid-20th century—the fantasy land of Walt Disney's cartoon creations—is not typically discussed as a “world” at all. We readily think of Mickey Mouse and his girlfriend Minnie, of Pluto and of Donald Duck, and indeed of the relationships between them, but what of the fictional world that surrounds these characters? Disney may be synonymous with those characters—colloquially known as the “Mouse House”—but let us not forget that, in the 1950s, Walt Disney quite literally built an imaginary world that its audience could enter: the magical Disneyland theme park.