All was peaceful at Disney World. Children were laughing, princesses were frolicking, and everywhere we looked, dreams were coming true.

After hiking many miles in the Magic Kingdom, we decided to slow it down a bit and sauntered on over to Toontown, where we toured the house of Mickey Mouse.

Mickey lives in a modest single-story cottage just down the street from Goofy, Donald and Minnie.

He is a happy bachelor with a unique sense of style and well-defined rules. Most notably, guests may view, but absolutely not enter, his bedroom or living room, located near the entryway.

While standing a safe and appropriate distance behind the velvet rope marking mouse territory, gazing at Mickey’s bedroom decorated with collectible art from his childhood, I stopped wondering how his massive ears fit on his smallish pillow and allowed myself to become lost in the world Walt created, a time and place of carefree innocence, a world far away from tales of oil spills and ticket fraud.

And then the alarm sounded. Blasted, really. A loud, sweeping “WOOOOP! WOOOOP! WOOOOP!” blared through the entry hall, stopping everyone in their tracks.

Everyone that is, except for the little boy happily sitting on Mickey’s sofa in the roped-off living room trying to figure out how to eat the fake popcorn on his coffee table.

Security alarms triggered, I gathered my kids and waited off to the side for the Mousekateer SWAT team to charge in. This was going to be good, and I did not want to miss it. Zack, Cody and all three wizards of Waverly Place would storm the house decked out in bulletproof mouse ears and grab the pint-sized perpetrator, banishing him to It’s a Small World, where he would spend his formative years learning about boundaries through repetitive song.

But as the siren continued to sound, no one made a move, including the boy’s parents. In fact, it wasn’t until my husband asked me rather loudly from across the entry hall, “Where the hell are this kid’s parents?” that the boy’s mother, who was standing inches away from my unwitting husband, finally turned toward Mickey’s living room just in time to see her son rearrange a bookshelf.

Without any force, the boy joined the rest of civilization on the right side of the velvet rope, and his mother carried him out with a look on her face with which I am all too familiar.

While I wanted to tell her it was OK, no one was judging her, that I have carried my own children away from restrooms, parks, even the Continental Divide, and assure her that no one here was going to reconsider parenthood based on her child’s reckless behavior (unlike the unfortunate — and I am certain still childless — couple seated behind us once on a three-hour flight back in our toddler days), all I could do was smile, grateful my fairy godmother had granted my wish that, for once, it wasn’t one of mine.