Disney primarily for the wealthy? NYT Article

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don’t get it. Disney is expensive, but at the same time, it has a low/middlebrow image and appeal. I can’t really see any truly wealthy/upper class families considering it a desirable vacation beyond maybe doing it just once.

Well, they do. Shocking as that may be to you. They have no problem dropping $12,000 for a guided tour for the day. Lots of them. And that doesn't even include the entry tickets.

I've never heard of the guided tour? What exactly does that entail?

Disney employee walks around with you and you get to go to the front of the lines of all the rides. They help plan out the things you are interested in and walk you the most direct path, etc. It’s a 7 hour minimum and starts at $900/hour and goes up from there based on date. Up to 10 people can be in your group. Tickets and food are not included.

Thank you! I've never heard of that. That's wild

You don't go to the front- you get to go in the lightning lane, which can still be a (short) wait. If you have the premier pass, it's the exact same thing minus a guide to talk to you and walk you around. I don't know why anyone would do the VIP tour unless the concern is navigating the parks. If you truly can't read a map or maybe have multiple young kids and are alone without another adult, maybe this would make sense???

Trust me. When Tom Cruise took his kid, he was not waiting in the lightning lane. LOL

I agree but that is different than the VIP tour that is available to the paying public. Anyone with the money can purchase a VIP tour (though I assume they cap the number of those offeried per day) and you will still wait in the lighting lanes with the premier pass holders or the folks who have a scheduled lightning lane at that time. My point was that I can't imagine someone would pay for that benefit when a premier pass gets you very close to that. I assume there is another level of pass that gets you to the front, but I have never seen that particular tour. We have waited in line with VIP tours, however, in the lightning lanes.

There’s a higher level than VIP that was being tested / leaked and might currently be offered to people considered VVV-VV VIPs (which I had to google what that means)

Interesting!

[Anonymous]

I could afford premier pass but would rather visit more often with regular LL multi and single pass. Plus we visit often enough it’s not stressful to us and we don’t spend that much time on our phones since we know what we are doing. We also aren’t heartbroken to skip a ride, we’ll be back. It’s a totally different mentality than “one and done” folks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I could afford premier pass but would rather visit more often with regular LL multi and single pass. Plus we visit often enough it’s not stressful to us and we don’t spend that much time on our phones since we know what we are doing. We also aren’t heartbroken to skip a ride, we’ll be back. It’s a totally different mentality than “one and done” folks.

We have done premier pass and LL multi/single and definitely will only do premier going forward. For us, the extreme level of unplugging you can do with the premier pass is worth it. We don't even know what time it is when we do the premier pass, and to me that's a true luxury! It's all relative though bc I look at the VIP tours and think that's just crazy!

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:And for those who are going to criticize: yes, I know it's an opinion piece and not an informative article. I find its points quite salient.

There's actually a lot of great info and data points in there- it's a very good example of the bifurcation of the economy. So many people here are in that upper 10% that it feels fine to us.

"in 1992 there were 88,000 households worth $20 million or more in 2022 dollars; by 2022, there were 644,000"

"Ms. Cressel figures that her seven days in Orlando cost about $8,000 for two adults and three kids — around 15 percent of what she and her daughter earn each year after taxes"

I think the basic way it works is that for those in the upper 10%, they go every year or every other year if they are big fans. If you are a huge fan and poorer, it's a once every 5 or 7 year thing.

Ms Cressel’s hassles seemed to come mostly from her scooter. But, her visit was compared to a father and daughter who spent 4 days and about $7K (before premier pass). If the Cressel family spent fewer days and invested more in the upgrades for 4 instead of 7 days, they might have had a better time. For a time the premier pass was only for hotel guests but I think it has expanded given that the family stayed off property. Full disclosure, my family used the premier pass at our last visit and it was amazing. Hardly any waits, rode everything we wanted. But we have no desire to go multiple times a year, it was a one and done or maybe in a few years we’ll go back.

The premier pass seems like a giant waste of money - we’ve been twice and have done just fine with lightening lanes. I have no doubt it is a nice luxury but I’d rather stay extra days than that.

We’ve done it both ways. We went to WDW a few years ago with LL. And then our recent trip was with Premier Pass. We all said it was beyond worht it. Don’t need to be on your phone all day, can ride up to any ride you want and ride it, don’t need to zig zag all over the park to make your time. We casually strolled through each land, rode all the rides, and moved on to the next. One park a day was more than enough for us and then we left.

I’m sure it’s a really nice luxury but the park can be done without it just fine. It’s not like the difference between lightening lane and standby. Standby would make the trip basically undoable.

I’ve done it both ways but clearly the PP is better. But that said I would go back without it. It’s just a no stress, no planning, not tied to the phone, relaxing way to do it. It removes all the complaints people have about LL, but you pay through the nose for it.

I’m sure I could afford it for one trip but then I wouldn’t want to go without it! Part of my financial strategy is to avoid the hedonic treadmill …

Exactly. My kids think that Busch Gardens Williamsburg is the peak theme park experience. It’s so much cheaper and easier to get to. We also feel like we can never do Disney, or they’ll know what they’re missing.

To be fair, Busch Gardens Williamsburg is pretty great. I prefer it to Disney and can see why kids, especially little kids, would too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I could afford premier pass but would rather visit more often with regular LL multi and single pass. Plus we visit often enough it’s not stressful to us and we don’t spend that much time on our phones since we know what we are doing. We also aren’t heartbroken to skip a ride, we’ll be back. It’s a totally different mentality than “one and done” folks.

We have done premier pass and LL multi/single and definitely will only do premier going forward. For us, the extreme level of unplugging you can do with the premier pass is worth it. We don't even know what time it is when we do the premier pass, and to me that's a true luxury! It's all relative though bc I look at the VIP tours and think that's just crazy!

Same. The PP is great. Can just move from land to land doing the rides in order without any planning. Plenty of time for meals, shopping, shows, all with no stress and zig zagging across the park to make a LL return time and no staring at the phone all day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Folks were discussing this today on a new thread, which is (rightly) locked with folks routed here.

I just read the article. The big thing that struck me is that the Cressel family is LMC, if middle class at all. I don't think it makes sense to use them as an example of the "middle class" being squeezed out of Disney.

Literally dead-on national median household income, don't live in a high cost area, but please tell us how that isn't "middle".

There were three single women traveling here (mother of the kids, grandmother of the kids, and great grandmother of the kids) -- no husbands and no support, financial or otherwise, from any men to be seen. I raise this not because I think a woman needs a man, but because this is the primary face of poverty in America. Neither the mom nor the grandmother are employed full time (it appears the great grandmother is retired/unemployed, but it isn't clear), and they do not appear to have college degrees. They certainly are not working jobs that require them. We likely have a low level of education here. And of course the journalist literally went out and found someone who is obese and using a scooter to tell this story (and made sure to photograph them at every turn); if you know anything about Disney, this is the clearest LC signaling this journalist could have found, and it is also a lightning rod for hatred in the context of conversations about visits to Disney.

And then of course there is the math -- as a PP pointed out, "median" doesn't mean much here. And that "median HHI" of 80k that you came up with is taking both the grandmother and the mother's incomes together. That isn't really how HHI is tallied. You have a single woman with a HHI of 40k. And a single mother with multiple kids/dependents with a HHI of 40k -- and for a family of four (I think she has 3 kids, right?), that is above the poverty line, but barely.

So ... LMC at best.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I could afford premier pass but would rather visit more often with regular LL multi and single pass. Plus we visit often enough it’s not stressful to us and we don’t spend that much time on our phones since we know what we are doing. We also aren’t heartbroken to skip a ride, we’ll be back. It’s a totally different mentality than “one and done” folks.

We have done premier pass and LL multi/single and definitely will only do premier going forward. For us, the extreme level of unplugging you can do with the premier pass is worth it. We don't even know what time it is when we do the premier pass, and to me that's a true luxury! It's all relative though bc I look at the VIP tours and think that's just crazy!

Same. The PP is great. Can just move from land to land doing the rides in order without any planning. Plenty of time for meals, shopping, shows, all with no stress and zig zagging across the park to make a LL return time and no staring at the phone all day.

It’s $300-450pp per day. So for a family of four that’s $1200 minimum per day. That’s probably close to what I spend per day on the rest of the trip (maybe not quite) so it’s not worth it to me to essentially double the cost of the trip. I’d rather go twice as often.

[Anonymous]

The Cressells should have done 4 days. No need to go to Disney World for 7 days, there are not 7 parks -- this is where the biggest part of their budgeting went wrong. If they had done only 4 days they would have saved hundreds and hundreds, and would not have had to budget anywhere near so tightly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Cressells should have done 4 days. No need to go to Disney World for 7 days, there are not 7 parks -- this is where the biggest part of their budgeting went wrong. If they had done only 4 days they would have saved hundreds and hundreds, and would not have had to budget anywhere near so tightly.

You need more time in the parks when you can’t spend hundreds per person to skip the two-hour lines.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Folks were discussing this today on a new thread, which is (rightly) locked with folks routed here.

I just read the article. The big thing that struck me is that the Cressel family is LMC, if middle class at all. I don't think it makes sense to use them as an example of the "middle class" being squeezed out of Disney.

Literally dead-on national median household income, don't live in a high cost area, but please tell us how that isn't "middle".

The elephant in the room is that “median income” no longer means middle class. Through many bad policy choices, we’ve gone back to having a pyramid style income distribution where the majority of people are just degrees of poor.

Yet, we live in bigger houses, have more appliances and electronic devices, eat more abundantly, have more entertainment options, live longer, attend college at higher rates, etc. Sorry, but your impressions don't match the data.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I could afford premier pass but would rather visit more often with regular LL multi and single pass. Plus we visit often enough it’s not stressful to us and we don’t spend that much time on our phones since we know what we are doing. We also aren’t heartbroken to skip a ride, we’ll be back. It’s a totally different mentality than “one and done” folks.

We have done premier pass and LL multi/single and definitely will only do premier going forward. For us, the extreme level of unplugging you can do with the premier pass is worth it. We don't even know what time it is when we do the premier pass, and to me that's a true luxury! It's all relative though bc I look at the VIP tours and think that's just crazy!

Same. The PP is great. Can just move from land to land doing the rides in order without any planning. Plenty of time for meals, shopping, shows, all with no stress and zig zagging across the park to make a LL return time and no staring at the phone all day.

It’s $300-450pp per day. So for a family of four that’s $1200 minimum per day. That’s probably close to what I spend per day on the rest of the trip (maybe not quite) so it’s not worth it to me to essentially double the cost of the trip. I’d rather go twice as often.

To each their own. We’re a family of 5 and are willing to pay it. We don’t want to go twice as often since we take other trips too and the kids ony have so much vacation time.

[Anonymous]

With premier pass, do you need to schedule the time of each ride? Or do you just go at the time you feel like in the moment? Thanks

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:With premier pass, do you need to schedule the time of each ride? Or do you just go at the time you feel like in the moment? Thanks

You don’t have to schedule. But you are limited to once per ride. You still have to wait in the lightning lane.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I could afford premier pass but would rather visit more often with regular LL multi and single pass. Plus we visit often enough it’s not stressful to us and we don’t spend that much time on our phones since we know what we are doing. We also aren’t heartbroken to skip a ride, we’ll be back. It’s a totally different mentality than “one and done” folks.

We have done premier pass and LL multi/single and definitely will only do premier going forward. For us, the extreme level of unplugging you can do with the premier pass is worth it. We don't even know what time it is when we do the premier pass, and to me that's a true luxury! It's all relative though bc I look at the VIP tours and think that's just crazy!

Same. The PP is great. Can just move from land to land doing the rides in order without any planning. Plenty of time for meals, shopping, shows, all with no stress and zig zagging across the park to make a LL return time and no staring at the phone all day.

It’s $300-450pp per day. So for a family of four that’s $1200 minimum per day. That’s probably close to what I spend per day on the rest of the trip (maybe not quite) so it’s not worth it to me to essentially double the cost of the trip. I’d rather go twice as often.

To each their own. We’re a family of 5 and are willing to pay it. We don’t want to go twice as often since we take other trips too and the kids ony have so much vacation time.

+1. For us, it just didn't feel like a vacation when we had to schedule the lightning lanes. We just prefer to wander. I can see how some people would make other choices!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some of the issues for Disney
-annual passes for FL residents are cheap and there are some very heavy users who live locally.
-DAS passes were using lightning lanes and it wasn't just the disabled person, it was their entire party. Obviously it wasn't every DAS person, but there were some heavy users who rode 20 rides + a day. It caused an increase in ride times for everyone.

We are pretty wealthy and would love to go multiple times a year, staying at premium resorts, but I can't convince DH to return. His #1 beef is with how crowded it is. Even though you're paying $$$, you get an insanely crowded park with obnoxious wait times. 60-90 minutes for my 3 year old to ride Ariel during the lowest month of the year, during a week day? It's so unenjoyable because of the wait times. And we also spent most of the day on our phones trying to book lightning lanes. It wasn't like this before with Fast pass.

We observed all of the same issues, wait times jumping up due to huge groups of 20+ DAS arriving, often without any physical disabilities. Constantly have to look on the phone for your next ride. With fast pass we could book a low key ride the kids liked several times, but last time it was all just one time. We had paid, but used it all up within a few hours, so for the rest of the day it was useless. It was just way too crowded. The parks and passes are too cheap for Florida residents, so they use them to just go to a restaurant one night, etc.