There’s a comparison fail I bet you thought was really clever?
Eh, for a family of 4 buying genie everyday is adding hundreds to the vacation bill. I have bought it, but not for every day and never lightening lane.
I don’t agree, but then, I also travel in a huge group of extended family members so I’m sure that makes a difference when we’re looking for large group reservations. For us, we could do what we wanted by utilizing Early Mornings In Fantasyland + FastPass+. Genie+ has been an HUGE downgrade. Others mileage no doubt varies though.
A VIP tour doesn’t. So yes, at that level, I think you can talk class differences. $20-30 for a kinda crappy system that gives you a chance to make ride reservations? Meh. Not exactly Skid Row vs. Easy Street in terms of relative difference.
When we used Genie+ everything decent was full by midday anyways so everyone was on equal footing by afternoon (unless they’d made an afternoon reservation in the morning but been in lines much of the morning.) That’s been several months ago though so maybe things have changed.
Not sure that is a good example, but I know that I always felt a little smug because the massive amount of money I was saving just to sleep always made me smile and still does. If individuals decide that spending that much is important to their ego, then by all means do it. There isn't any possible way that I could care less. I used those locations as rest stops, exactly the same thing for a lot less. My enjoyment was the park(s). That might have been because I couldn't afford it, but mainly because it made me feel smarter.
In my limited experience using G+, I would say the experience varies some from day to day, and park to park. In HS, absolutely. Half the G+ passes offered are useless or nearly useless. To some extent that's also true of AK and Epcot. By mid-day, it is time to stack passes in MK.
I would venture to say the differences you mention are highly visible in some places, and less visible in other locations.
Let me ask though is that a new phenomenon?? My family absolutely could not afford to fly from NYC to Disneyland when I was younger (lol i pre-date wdw) and our first trip to wdw was really a side road trip from visiting grandma in Charleston SC . Now I totally believe that the rate of increase on costs is way beyond real world, but there seems to be this narrative here that Disney was cheap and anybody who wanted to go, could do so.
I think the key words in the article title are "feels" and "now." The perks that have been either eliminated or put behind a paywall are no longer available to people who cannot afford to pay the extra cost. And it's wrong.
Yeah, all the other countries in the world don't have this problem. If only America were like them, we wouldn't have these problems.
I didn't mean to infer that America was the only country with these issues. The author seems somehow "shocked" as if this is some anomaly.
Yes, the article is about DL, I doubted a bit where to share it. But the guest experience at both coasts suffers similarly from the same aggressive monetisation of both resorts.
I wonder Empress how much this truly affects (lol or is it effects) guest experiences. I mean the basic problem is overcrowding, no doubt about it but today's travelers and visitors are pretty savvy. pretty much all types of travel are now segregate according to money spent.
