Yeah, the scalping laws vary by state, but when they do come into play, it’s the result of the pricing, and where the seller and/or buyer is located.
For instance, in my state (Florida), if you are trying to sell tickets to an event in Florida and you live in Florida you cannot recieve more than $1.00 plus face value of the tickets you’re selling.
Conversely, if you are the buyer trying to buy tickets to an event in Forida and you live in Florida, you cannot pay more than $1.00 above the face value of the tickets.
The interesting thing to note is that if you don’t live in Florida (Buyer or Seller), none of the restrictions apply to you, which is comepletely ridiculous.
So if the same laws were applied to dinner reservations here in Florida, I can’t see the sale of dinner reservations being a very profitable business.
But as far as the OP goes, no, I don’t see why it would be illegal to sell them.
Yes, I’ve met him. I’ve been on the team since '01. We try to get together a couple times per year (in WDW, of course), and we speak a couple times per week (more when I owe him something on deadline, like now ).
I think it’s safe to say that Bob and all the regular researchers are big fans of the Disney parks. It’d be hard to put in the hours necessary to write and maintain the book otherwise.
That being said, Disney’s susceptible to budget and schedule pressures like any company, and the result is occasionally the theme park equivalent of Mariah Carey’s Glitter. In those cases, we think readers would be better off with clear, direct advice, rather than having to sort through the marketing hype unaided. But in general, yeah, I think we’re fans.
$40 for a reservation at popular restaurants, made under a pseudonym. At this time there are no reservations available, but there were a few the last time I visited the site (around Valentine’s Day). I think curbed.com (where I originally found the link) sums it up best:
This won’t fully answer your question, but it might help to know that there is a company already doing this, and is still doing it even with the little bit of media attention they got when the site first launched.
As my real last name is long, complicated, and unpronounceable, I always use “Taylor” as my name when I make reservations. I’ve never been turned away or asked for ID. Maybe I’m not eating at fancy enough restaurants?
One thing I wonder is what kind of legal fraud could occur in the case where the person who “bought” the reservation really and truly-o deceives the restaurant into thinking that they are the person who originally made the reservation. iirc, the elements of fraud are:
An intentional statement.
The statement was false.
The person making the statement knew the statement was false. (or, possibly that they should have known it was false)
The person intended the victim to rely on the statement.
The victim actually relied on the statement.
The victim’s reliance on the statement was reasonable.
The victim suffered economic harm because they were tricked into giving something up that they would not otherwise have given up but for the false statement.
If any one of these is missing, then there is no fraud.
If John and Mary show up for their reservation, then the restaurant gives them their meal in exchange for paying the bill. If Bill and Ann show up instead and knowingly and intentionally identify themselves as John and Mary and receive a meal and pay the bill, then, I ask, how has the restaurant suffered economic harm that they would not otherwise have?
Sometime in the past 8 years, Disney has gone from 90 day to 180 day reservations in their system. Popular meals at busy times of year still absolutely require calling exactly 180 days out as soon as the system opens.
To the original question - there’s a Disney oriented message board that has monthly threads dedicated to transferring dining reservations. In the past, Disney would let you transfer existing reservations directly from one name to another, and these threads were used to broker deals. Disney has since eliminated that policy, so these threads are now of the “I’m going to cancel my reservation for next March at exactly 2PM today.” so others can try picking up the just cancelled reservation at 2:01.
And nowadays, meals at Cinderella’s Royal Table and a few other of the most popular reservations have to be prepaid at the time of reservation. I’m pretty sure they didn’t check our credit card or ID when we went last April, but presumably if two families showed up claiming the same reservation, they’d check ID.
Thank you for resuscitating this thread. I have often wondered about reservation brokering myself.
You described a seven point checklist for identifying fraud. Not to be rude, but do you have a cite for that? I ask because it seems like a rational checklist, and I’d like to file it away as something worthy as a cite during a future debate on the subject.
The definition will vary depending on the law of your jurisdiction, because fraud will be codified in statute or defined at the state’s common law. In most jurisdictions the statement must also be material.* For example, in South Carolina the elements of civil fraud are:
Conversely, in California there are only five elements:
*Basically, this means it must be relevant to the transaction at issue. If I sell you a car and I tell you that the sky is yellow, this is not material to the sale of the car.
One could argue that the restaurants reputation of taking all comers, not just those who have the money or connections to secure a reservation via a scalper, is harmed, and that leads to future economic harm.
I don’t know if such an argument would be legally valid (does the economic harm have to come from a single incident, or can it be the result of actions in aggregate that weaken the restaurant’s position?), but it’s presumably the sort of thinking that leads to these sorts of reservation policies in the first place. In the case of bands and scalpers, many bands have gone to great lengths to discourage scalpers without increasing ticket prices to what the market will bear, because they want to have a reputation of goodwill and to have their “true” fans experience the show, regardless of their ability to spend a lot on a concert ticket.
I think we’d all be better off if they just went to a lottery system for some tickets and sold some tickets to the highest bidder. There’s still a chance that you can get a ticket/reservation cheaply if you get lucky (and getting lucky in an explicit lottery isn’t really any different than getting lucky in being the first person to call in/get a server connection when the tickets go on sale), and people who are willing to pay market price can do so without having to enter into quasi-legal deals with scalpers. But few people involved in the distribution of reservations tend to agree with me.
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