WHERE else to begin the ride to the happily-ever-afterlife but the "happiest place on Earth"?

Two weeks ago, Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean ride came to an unscheduled stop. A staff member had noticed a woman dumping a powdery substance into the waterway.

The woman claimed the substance was baby powder. Despite her reassurance, the ride was closed for 45 minutes while the area was cleaned and checked.

According to Rob Doughty, a spokesman for Disneyland Resorts, whatever had been dumped was gone, dissolved by, or sunken into, the running water.

"We don't have any evidence that anyone has ever put anything on our property," Doughty said.

And there the matter would have ended, as a minor hiccup involving one visitor among the 14.5 million a year who make the trip to Disneyland, in the far reaches of LA's southern suburbs or — as the company founded by Walt Disney unblushingly, and its employees snarkily , call it — the "happiest place on Earth".

Except that, several days later, miceage.com, one of many blogs devoted to all things Disney, reported that the Anaheim Police Department had found, or been presented with, some of the residue from the Pirates ride, identifying it as cremated human remains.

Anaheim police sergeant Rick Martinez disputed this. "I only know of one case where we've gone out to deal with that situation, and that was a ball park," he said.

Further, the website claimed, this practice had been continuing since the late 1990s, with Disneyland's Haunted Mansion a particularly popular final destination. In his book Mouse Tales: A Behind-the-Ears Look at Disneyland, author David Koenig also identified the Haunted House as a place for interments both unorthodox and illegal.

Beyond the claims and counter-claims is a larger story about the evolution of the "last big choice": 1000 degrees Celsius, or six feet under?

In California, more than half of all deceased were cremated in 2005. Across the US, the figure is 32.3%, up from 30.9% in 2004. In Canada, the 2004 figure was 56%.

If these statistics are striking, it's a reflection of a rapidly changing perception of cremation.

"Cremation was viewed as aberrant behaviour," said Professor David Sloane, director of the University of Southern California's master of planning program.

"It was very unconventional."

Reasons for the post-World War II change of views include the decision of the Catholic Church in the 1960s to decriminalise, as it were, the practice; another is economy. Cremation is generally regarded as cheaper than burial.

And there is another reason, one that reflects the transient nature of modern American society, and its endlessly shifting population of more than 300 million.

More people today are less connected to an individual cemetery, said Professor Sloane, the author of The Last Great Necessity: Cemeteries in American History.

But people do remain identified with something, from the surf, to a national park, to the church they attend, or the university that set them on life's professional path. Identification with a place is true of Disneyland and its rides too.

"We know people go into the national park, or the beach where they used to surf, and it makes sense, in a perverse way, that the ride the person loved most, or that they were particularly fascinated with Disneyland, it's more about that," Professor Sloane said.

The dispersal of their ashes, he said, is not supposed to be a public event, or even the supposed freakshow that enraged correspondents of the many blogs, newspapers and TV stations where the story was picked up, "but a last tribute to this person".

"You're not doing it at Disneyland to show off, but because they think Disneyland is a very cool place.

"They've spent every summer or every weekend there, and it's become part of their life. They see it almost as sacred ground," the professor said.