– How the 1% Does Disney World (Liberty Blitzkrieg, May 20, 2013):
Plane tickets to Orlando? Check. Sunscreen? Check. Dad’s cholesterol medicine? Check. A disabled person to help the family cut the lines at all the rides at Disney World? Checkmate.
After all, how pathetically pedestrian would it be to have to wait on long lines with the unwashed 99% just to ride in the tea cups for a couple of minutes. No thanks. For those that wonder how the 1%, (actually more like the 0.01%) in Manhattan do Disney World, look no further. For a mere $130 an hour you can purchase a disabled person to help you jump ahead of your monetary challenged neighbors on rides throughout the park.
From the New York Post:
Some wealthy Manhattan moms have figured out a way to cut the long lines at Disney World — by hiring disabled people to pose as family members so they and their kids can jump to the front, The Post has learned.
The “black-market Disney guides” run $130 an hour, or $1,040 for an eight-hour day.
The woman said she hired a Dream Tours guide to escort her, her husband and their 1-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter through the park in a motorized scooter with a “handicapped” sign on it. The group was sent straight to an auxiliary entrance at the front of each attraction.
Disney allows each guest who needs a wheelchair or motorized scooter to bring up to six guests to a “more convenient entrance.”
The Florida entertainment mecca warns that there “may be a waiting period before boarding.” But the consensus among upper-crust moms who have used the illicit handicap tactic is that the trick is well worth the cost.
Not only is their “black-market tour guide” more efficient than Disney World’s VIP Tours, it’s cheaper, too.
Disney Tours offers a VIP guide and fast passes for $310 to $380 per hour.
Not only do these folks want to cut the lines, but they want to get the best deal possible while doing it! Classy.
Passing around the rogue guide service’s phone number recently became a shameless ritual among Manhattan’s private-school set during spring break. The service asks who referred you before they even take your call.
“It’s insider knowledge that very few have and share carefully,” said social anthropologist Dr. Wednesday Martin, who caught wind of the underground network while doing research for her upcoming book “Primates of Park Avenue.”
This seems like a good time to reread my 2010 article, Goodbye Disneyland, which is the first article I wrote after resigning from Bernstein that went viral on the web.
Full article here.
In Liberty,
Mike