I would say that my favorite part was carving out my own little corner of Disneyness... That's what the user rooms and the items for them really allowed me to do in making my virtual Disney "home" and assorted rides. It was like imprinting my psyche onto Disney itself, building up my own reflection in an officially sanctioned way. My network of user rooms became my private Disneyland.
It was also a fantastic Disney fix. My peak for playing was in 2005 and 2006 between my two trips to Disneyland... After my first trip was emotionally mixed, VMK served as a catharsis that eventually provoked my second trip. I will admit that the second trip was so good that even after having done all the quests and things, I never played it quite as avidly thereafter. I didn't need VMK for quite the same thing after that.
However, it still worked wonders when I wanted a quick fix and to interact with these quite wonderful virtual environments. My favorites were the "Captain's Quest" rooms in Tomorrowland based on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the castle and the "Jungle Cruise" rooms in Adventureland. Music was an important part too... I loved the melancholy twang of the twilight Frontierland hub and dock, as well as the loop in main street and town square. My favorite game was Haunted Mansion, Fireworks before they "remixed" it, and I had a soft little spot for Jungle Cruise even though they never remixed it to giving out decent credits.
Following from that, and from a more detached perspective, it was fascinating to see how they translated in-park things to VMK. I almost wanted to make a website that charted all of the visual references, like posting photos of the real castle in Disneyland Paris next to screen captures of the castle in VMK so people could see what the latter was based on.
VMK was also a great point of keeping me and my "Disney friends" from across the USA connected. We met on another Disney message board and hung out together in person on my second trip to Disneyland, but e-mailing back and forth about VMK and meeting in-game also helped to keep us on each other's radar. Now I have to see if I can get them on the same server as I am for PotC Online, and otherwise hope that we can sustain discussion without the constant source of reference!
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