Orlando is a tale of two cities where holiday mode and day-to-day life blend curiously together Pam Jones discovers, as she goes in search of what is real in the Florida hotspot.
I went looking for the heart of Orlando and found not a tight-fisted muscle but a more spread out version of love.
Seat-of-your-pants high-rolling and cultured sculpture in the CBD.
Graffiti art on canvas and Disney handshakes in made-to-measure kingdoms.
It was like a tale of two cities in a place with a multi-chambered heart and varying degrees of adrenaline, holidaymakers and residents curiously cohabiting in the Florida hotspot.
Part of that heart is in Main Street USA, where shiny Disney personas act out their never-ending story.
A small, brave piece beats on in the city's CBD, where the arts are rightly being embraced to bring some soul to an urban landscape.
And part of it is in the stomach-suspending DNA-helix tracks that take you to unimagined heights, a raw, jaw-dropping thrill served sunny side up, either first hand or vicariously.
''It's like there are two Orlandos,'' a shop assistant called Miranda told me as I swapped US dollars for three-for-one tops in an outlet arcade.
''The people that live and work in the CBD are holding on to the integrity of the city and guarding that tightly, and the rest of us are out in the theme parks riding the roller coasters and yelling out wahoo!''
Millions flock to Orlando's dozen or so theme parks each year to ride those roller coasters in a city on the cusp of even more thrills and spills.
The 122m Orlando Eye observation wheel has just opened in an I-Drive 360 entertainment complex that includes also a Madame Tussauds and Sea Life Orlando Aquarium, the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Hotel is getting a $125 million renovation, Walt Disney World's Downtown Disney Area is set to be transformed into Disney Springs and a new 1000-room Caribbean-inspired hotel is scheduled to open at Universal Orlando Resort next year.
Then the year after that, the world's tallest roller coaster - 174m - will be built on International Dr.
The attraction will feature the first Polercoaster, a vertical ride dubbed the Skyscraper.
It all adds up to an overdose on the senses but there's more to Orlando than theme parks.
I bought a fridge magnet that says ''Keep calm in Orlando and party on'', but Orlando's story has other chapters that paint a different side of Florida's fun capital.
Nowhere is this more visible than in the CBD, where an honourable group has led a public artworks programme in a determined bid to bring a little bit of Orlando's heart back to the city centre; now giant sculptures look over the city's pocket-sized Lake Eola, where a mix of young and old at the nearby playground reminds of the mix a city needs.
The arts were further around as I stood outside the new Dr Phillips Centre for the Performing Arts and meandered on to the Mona Lisa-decorated CityArts Factory, a hip kind of place that showcases local and international works of art.
Where is the soul of a city? For me it is always in its arts, and Orlando is putting them centre stage, with a cluster of other galleries in neighbourhoods further afield as well.
Without a car, it can be hard to get to some of these places, but a mix of taxi rides and public transport got me around. I mixed up 30-minute $US40 taxi rides and 45-minute $US2 bus trips to skip from my resort-style hotel (The Hilton Orlando, with pool and breakfast buffet to die for) to the CBD arts precinct, on to outlet shopping and the mighty Florida Mall (shopping is still visitors' No1 activity while on holiday in the US) and then back ''home'' (to my hotel).
I wondered if there was a disconnect between the tourist and resident areas of Orlando.
Why wasn't there more public transport between the two?
But things operated so well in each of the ''two Orlandos'', and there were doubtless many who inhabited both worlds.
A grinning staff member at Walt Disney World, flanked by an inter-galactic rock band and a perky Alice in Wonderland, gave a corny but nonetheless convincing reply when I asked if he liked working there.
''It's the best job in the world. Everyone who comes here is happy.''
So how real is it?
Are the theme parks cheesy, crass and commercial, or the most fun families will ever have?
A family in a tourist shuttle on the Vegas-style International Dr after a roller-coaster afternoon had exhausted smiles when I asked how their theme park day had gone.
''It's been the best time ever,'' exhaled mum as she arranged backpacks, souvenirs and children for their return trip.
''We won't ever forget it.''
Such hype can sound cliched but there was much truth in the message of Visit Orlando board chairman Peter Kacheris at the recent IPW (International Pow Wow) travel conference in Orlando.
''A family trip to one of our theme parks is a deeply emotional experience. The memories will last a lifetime.''
I knew this to be true from a three-day trip to Eurodisney in Paris years ago when my children were aged 5, 7 and 9, and I soaked up the squeals of a new generation in Orlando at Walt Disney World, SeaWorld Orlando and Universal Studios Orlando.
Minnie was magic, the Simpsons characters sensational.
At the edge of make-believe universes, I suspected for many families the trip was both a budget blowout and the best money they'd ever spend.
What constitutes real in a city that markets itself as so many different things?
It's hard to know when the fairy tales and stereotypes threaten to take over but if you look beyond the facade you'll find a lot of heart spread around this theme-park capital.
The real Orlando is quite possibly somewhere up a skyscraper-high, loop-the-loop ride, but it also exists in the bus driver who patiently lowered a ramp to allow an elderly woman on crutches to exit, and the dreadlocked 20-year-old rapping to his own beat beneath headphones on the deck of the next bus.
It is ''his and her'' families with matching pink T-shirts and Mickey ears, teenage girls in tight shorts and stilettos at the mall, swimming-suit-clad children springing around SeaWorld's water parks and tie-and-suit businessmen making inroads in the CBD.
Like any good city, Orlando is a mix, with some of its delights served to you on a plate and others a little bit harder to find.
But isn't that mix what the best journeys are all about?
Searching for Orlando's heart is a multipronged pursuit that delivers both the expected and unexpected, and a few out-of-the-ordinary heartbeats along the way.
It's a fun journey. And of course it's only when your heart skips a beat you know you're truly alive.
• Pam Jones travelled to Orlando with the assistance of IPW and New Zealand's IPW international advisory committee.
How to get there
Air New Zealand offers daily non-stop flights from Auckland to Los Angeles and San Francisco, with onward connections to Orlando on its airline partners United, Virgin America and Delta, and connections available from across the New Zealand domestic network.
