No, no, no.
Every world connected somehow. It was having the Disney villains aware of the Keyblade and of the PoH and of the Keyholes that really made the difference. It made you feel like you were a part of something bigger. The Disney worlds had a PURPOSE--to seal the keyhole, to find Riku and Kairi and the King, and to stop Maleficent's gang.
Ok, maybe the worlds were better connected than I said, but I was mainly pointing out that there was obviously more main storyline to the some of the worlds in KH1 than just sealing the keyholes, stopping Maleficent's gang, and the PoH's storyline. Btw.. speaking of which, most of KH2's storyline seemed to lack much of a push to stop Maleficent's gang, since it pretty much was only Pete and Maleficent, with Pete influencing/ trying to influence the various villians to do stuff that would help out his and Maleficent's intentions imo.. and with the exception of Demyx (Coliseum) and Xaldin (Beast's Castle) the Organization didn't really seem to have much to do with the worlds until the second/ third visits.
Honestly though, I feel that the Pete thing was just a lame attempt to try and connect the worlds of KH2 better (than the gate thing), despite the fact that pretty much all of Maleficent's former cohorts were either working on their own now or dead/ missing. (Nice job, Nojima)
Too bad I bet Watanabe probably would of done much better.
Finally.. imo.. most of (if not all of) KH1's worlds felt a lot harder to substitute than KH2's. Obviously, there's soemthing wrong with that.