This is just the word kind of exploitation - both in using money to get around the rules, and in taking advantage of the handicapped. If I were a park visitor and I came across someone using this schtick to get their little trust fund baby to the front of the line, I’d raise such a stink that they’d either have to buy me off or ban me for life.
Let me know when someone posts about this happening at Dsneyland. Kaylasmom’s rehab counselor has been getting on her about finding a job so she can close her case…
Also, she’s really been hankering to have lunch at Carnation Cafe, ever since our last visit (closed for refurbishing on that visit).
At $130 an hour, I’m having a hard time mustering any sympathy for the disabled people being exploited here. I took my best friend’s brother to the Magic Kingdom once (he has cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair) and didn’t pay him anything.
It’s such a fucked up attitude to have in front of your kids, though. I don’t think the handicapped guides are being exploited exactly, although it’s certainly a rather fucked up job. But what are these parents teaching their children??!
It’s cool to hang out with the less fortunate?
I’ve been with my daughter to several theme parks. She is in a wheelchair. We’ve always cut lines. That is pretty handy.
Now I’m just hoping she doesn’t see this thread and demand that I start paying her $150 an hour to take to the next one.
I don’t think you can say they are exploited when their paid $130 an hour.
The part of this that’s skeevy is that they are having the disabled person pretend they are a family member. If the rich people doing this loudly proclaimed that they were paying some random disabled person big bucks just so their family could skip lines I seriously doubt Disney would allow that.
It’s the sense that the wealthy are once again using their money to bypass what is otherwise a common fact of life. Obviously, there are many ways to do so (being part of a first class status for an airline, even just being able to afford a higher quality of food), but this one seems so (I’m not sure it’s the right word) petty that it stirs ire in some folks.
Being the child of wealthy parents in Manhattan is a toxic environment for cultivating normal social values. The sense of entitlement can be debilitating. The children start to measure a person’s worth (including their parents) by their net value. They start to measure their friends by the net value of their friend’s parents. IOW, their values are probably already fucked up.
On the other hand, Disney really needs to do something about the long lines.
As long as the disabled person is actually getting the money I say, good for them.
How about if I pretend to be disabled, as well as pretending to be a family member of some rich douche-bag, and I score some of that filthy lucre? Good for me too?
Family means a lot to me. However unless the person I was pretending with was truly disgusting, for $1000 bucks a day pure cash, I think I could live with the lie. Heck, if I was disabled teenager living near Disney world, this would be my summer job. I would be at the park quite often smiling ear to ear as I showed all my visiting “cousins” the sights.
Sounds like a plus for the disabled though. Getting paid to go on the rides at Disneyland. But then, I know the secret for riding rides without lines. It only works for an hour a day, but you’ll never wait more than a minute or two for a ride and you don’t cut in front of anyone to do it.
Why do they have to pay someone at all? Just rent a wheelchair and say that your actual family member is disabled. It’s not like they are going to make you prove it. Shit, Disneyland rents wheelchairs on site.
The last couple times I’ve went, I’m pretty sure I saw folks abusing this, in that they would rotate who had to sit in the chair. You’d see one person get up, then a different person would sit in it, then the whole group would go to the front of the line. What a great scam that seems so utterly wrong and despicable.
I feel like the whole secret is, “just get the hell up early.”
Exactly. The park opens an hour before opening time, but you’re limited to Main street. Just be at the end of Main street when the park officially opens and there will be no line on the first three or four rides you visit.
The solution is to, when observed, make the 1%er qualify for the line jump themselves. If this means breaking their legs, so be it.
It is in fact about the lying. If there was “nothing wrong” with paying disabled people to allow others to skip ahead in line with them, then these people would be announcing what they are doing. Of course, they aren’t doing that at all. They are pretending like these disabled folks are part of the family. That’s lying, and that’s why it’s wrong.
You don’t even need to rent the wheelchair. There are other ways to scam ones way out of Disney lines.
Rumor is Disney is trying to figure out a way to accommodate handicapped people without making it worthwhile for people to fake it. Personally, I think they should make handicapped people wait just as long as the regular line (or at least some significant fraction).