Marceline trumped by wicked roundabout

Walt Disney World recently completed a contest to find its first twin community. Evidently they didn't want to look toward Linn County and Disney's boyhood town of Marceline, but rather in the UK. Now twinned with the Magic Kingdom and potential site of Disney's utopian EPCOT: the magic roundabout and still-depressed town centre of Swindon in eastern Wiltshire.

Swindon's entry, submitted by a 20-year-old bank employee, beat out 24 other entries to win the honour from the Florida resort. She, along with her nephew and niece, will travel to Florida to unveil the plaque declaring the twinned status between the 28,000-acre complex and Swindon. So what drew the Mouse to Wiltshire?

In addition to the complex-yet-safer Magic Roundabout (drivers-eye view from the Swindon Advertiser) it appears as though the Seven Dwarfs would like to work for the many industries situated in Swindon, including the hub of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Western Main Line from London to Bristol and car factories for Renault and Honda. Meanwhile, anyone from the Mickey Mouse Club who wants to become a Hare Krishna would feel right at home in the UK's largest concentration of practitioners. And being on the M4 between London and Wales, Lightning McQueen can use the fabled roundabouts to mount a challenge to Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton when the British Grand Prix returns to Silverstone, roughly a 90-minute drive northeast to the edge of Northamptonshire.

Here's to hoping that MoDOT, just days after their divergent diamond won praise from Popular Science magazine in their Best of What's New year-in-review, doesn't find reason to put in a magic roundabout of their own in Linn County, or suggest Florida do the same outside Downtown Disney. I sense such a roundabout would confuse the heck out of drivers guiding buses to the next Bell Game.