Anonymous wrote:I could not support this level of privilege.

Think of how many other children could have the experience of their lives with the funds you will use instead to pamper your personal family.

I'm thinking of how many other worthwhile experiences you could be having with family for $10k a day rather than squandering it on a cartoon theme-park.

Anonymous wrote:I could not support this level of privilege.

Think of how many other children could have the experience of their lives with the funds you will use instead to pamper your personal family.

Virtue, she signaled.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who wants to go on 15+ rides straight? Bleh

Yeah, our kids get tired and it loses its "magic" if you just rush from one to the other. We do the passes in the app, and have never waited more than 10 minutes for a ride. As soon as you "scan in" to the Lightning Lane for one ride, I get on the app and book our next ride. Now, it helps a lot that our kids don't like roller coasters which tend to be the most popular. If our next lighting lane reservation starts in an hour, we just mosey around and get popcorn/ice cream, or slip into some of the attractions that never have lines, like Hall of Presidents.

We also book lunch/dinner in advance (you can book 60 days out if staying at a Disney hotel). I guess the lightnign pass costs us $50/person/day on top of the regular tickets, which we get as part of a package because we stay at a Disney hotel. So it's a little bit more, but our experience is pretty good too. We could afford the VIP, but we enjoy our more leisurely pace instead of running from ride to ride. But.. that's also how we are in general as a family.

I’m the one that posted that has done it a bunch of times. Our kids are teens and are ride junkies — not just disney, we go to lots of different parks. They read up on the ride design, IP issues, etc. That’s what makes it worth it for us. I wouldn’t do it with little kids unless you really have just endless money to burn. When the kids were little we used to like a slow day where we’d stop for a long while at one of the playgrounds (RIP honey I shrunk the kids playground and the Winnie the Pooh playground) or spend forever at that little petting zoo. At this point, we’ve been to the parks so many times that we don’t really need that leisurely walk around time anymore. Although we usually do a second day that is more leisurely at one park — like AK where you can walk around, ride the safari once or twice, see the show, have a nice meal. Or last year we did Epcot at Christmas and got the meal reservations that got us seats for the Christmas show and wandered around to see the decorations and such. We’ve done the late night event at HS twice and I love that as well—again, for older kids, not little ones.

Anonymous wrote:Who wants to go on 15+ rides straight? Bleh

Sounds good to us. We aren't interested in shows or meeting princesses. Ride the rides, shop in the stores, eat some food, skip the parades. The rides are the best part.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We also got a lot of dirt on the guide's prior celebrity clients. Apparently, Mariah was the worst, but he loved Brittany.

This simply did not happen.

It did! We were with another family who had used the same tour guide a bunch of times so I think that he was comfortable with us.

I think that was really unusual. Oh my experience, they wil homewever dish about internal disney dirty laundry. Like we got a lot of information on roll out issues with various rides, which rides the employees all complain about, back story on why some things were delayed or cancelled, etc. maybe that’s all stuff that is common knowledge for the people who do thinks like go to the disney conventions and follow the blogs but I found it all really interesting.

I am very very surprised by PP’s story about them taking grabbing other folks from the line to join tjem. My understanding is that is strictly prohibited. They are, however, trained to respond helpfully and politely to any guest that asks for assistance. (Which can be a little irritating when you’re rushing to get somewhere and someone stops them to ask for directions to the bathrooom……). And our guide has jumped in more than once to help with expediting a line where the ride workers seemed a little over their heads.

Anonymous wrote:Who wants to go on 15+ rides straight? Bleh

Yeah, our kids get tired and it loses its "magic" if you just rush from one to the other. We do the passes in the app, and have never waited more than 10 minutes for a ride. As soon as you "scan in" to the Lightning Lane for one ride, I get on the app and book our next ride. Now, it helps a lot that our kids don't like roller coasters which tend to be the most popular. If our next lighting lane reservation starts in an hour, we just mosey around and get popcorn/ice cream, or slip into some of the attractions that never have lines, like Hall of Presidents.

We also book lunch/dinner in advance (you can book 60 days out if staying at a Disney hotel). I guess the lightnign pass costs us $50/person/day on top of the regular tickets, which we get as part of a package because we stay at a Disney hotel. So it's a little bit more, but our experience is pretty good too. We could afford the VIP, but we enjoy our more leisurely pace instead of running from ride to ride. But.. that's also how we are in general as a family.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We also got a lot of dirt on the guide's prior celebrity clients. Apparently, Mariah was the worst, but he loved Brittany.

This simply did not happen.

Not PP but I’m inclined to believe it. Our safari guide (white SA) loved bragging about the A list celebs they guided.

The Disney VIP guides are consummate professionals. This is not a celebrity homes tour in LA. They would be fired for what pp is saying.

Please. I’m guessing you’ve never been on a VIP tour or if you have, got one of the few oldies still left.

Most of the guides are in their 20s and are working hard for that 20% tip so they’ll say what they think you want to hear. Their base pay is only $20/hour. Tips is where some of them hit 6 figures.

I do not pay a tip anywhere near 20% when I do this. I am paying $3000-5000 for a one day service, plus park tickets. Disney can find ample resources to pay the guides from this fee. I tip $200.

That is way below normal for tip. Like way below normal. We tip more like $800.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We also got a lot of dirt on the guide's prior celebrity clients. Apparently, Mariah was the worst, but he loved Brittany.

This simply did not happen.

Not PP but I’m inclined to believe it. Our safari guide (white SA) loved bragging about the A list celebs they guided.

The Disney VIP guides are consummate professionals. This is not a celebrity homes tour in LA. They would be fired for what pp is saying.

IME they wil hint at stuff or tell you names of who they’ve had, but won’t generally give dirt. But it may be that PP’s guide was on his way to quitting anyway and didn’t care. I know they had a lot of turnover with guides at the pandemic and I think some of the post pandemic hires were just not as good. Pre pandemic, the vetting and application system was absolutely insane.

Anonymous wrote:I could not support this level of privilege.

Think of how many other children could have the experience of their lives with the funds you will use instead to pamper your personal family.

Well lots of people on this board spend money to send their kids to private school or give them expensive lessons or pay for expensive travel sports or spend thousands of dollars on jewelry or Botox or purses or whatever. Most people have some splurge items and then make decisions about how to spend the rest of their money. We donate way more than 10x what we spend on disney every year. Also, compared to say an African safari or trip to the Maldives, this has a lot less environmental impact.
Most of us don’t lead perfect lives of asceticism so everyone decides where they are gojng to “waste” their money.

Who wants to go on 15+ rides straight? Bleh

Just buy the premier pass instead.

We did one recently and (sadly) it really is a life changing way to do WDW. We had the most amazing guide. It was just our family (4 of us) and you see so many cool behind the scenes things. It is not just cutting the lines. If you’re a Disney nerd at all, the behind the scenes is the coolest parts.

The tour was gifted to us by someone in Club 33. It would have cost around $7500 for the day. That’s a lot of money for one day but if you can afford it, it really is awesome.

Anonymous wrote:I could not support this level of privilege.

Think of how many other children could have the experience of their lives with the funds you will use instead to pamper your personal family.

What exactly are you doing with your vacation dollars?

Anonymous wrote:I could not support this level of privilege.

Think of how many other children could have the experience of their lives with the funds you will use instead to pamper your personal family.

This is small potatoes it's not going to fund the experience of a lifetime for many children.

I could not support this level of privilege.

Think of how many other children could have the experience of their lives with the funds you will use instead to pamper your personal family.