Yeah I guess it depends on who those abusing the system actually are, and how many of them there are. I think everyone has their intuitions but without actual data there’s no way of knowing. (Fwiw my guess is that people who are outright abusing the system, fully knowing that they are lying, are pretty limited.
It's amazing what people can justify, though.
"Well, my kid HATES waiting in lines, and when they get overtired they get super bratty about it...once in awhile they do throw a tantrum...I mean, I'm just saving the other people in line from having to deal with it by saying it's a
need...not a want to wait somewhere where we can all sit down and relax. Besides, Suzy Q said she did it when she went, because to heck with Disney - I'm paying $8 grand to be here for a week, who's it hurting?"
I do think it's a lot more common than you might realize.
Think about the massive increase in retail theft due to self-checkouts. It's not because suddenly a huge percentage of people became kleptos or lost their morals entirely. It's because it became very easy for some to casually justify - it makes me think of one of the early episodes of the Roseanne reboot, when she is at the grocery store self-checkout and her granddaughter says "you forgot to scan that bacon" and the joke was "well, a pound of bacon is the starting wage for checking out my own groceries..."
The people who used to put things under their clothes to steal, or would just walk out with a cart full of unpaid for groceries, didn't make that massive increase (in this context, although organized retail theft is a much different matter but that's a whole different topic). Self-checkout at most retail stores didn't really enable that any more than it did before.
The massive increase across the board directly due to self-checkout was the casual people who were actually paying for the majority of their groceries, but giving themselves a little bonus - "that was on sale last week, it's twice the price now...oops, if they ask, I'll say it was an accident I forgot to scan it" or "the store across the street has this half price, so I'm going to hold them together and only scan one...". People who wouldn't normally think of actually physically stealing something and just walking out of the store, or going through the regular checkout without paying for something.
The easier you make something to game, the more people find it acceptable to get around the system. It's the same thing here - because Disney legally can't ask the questions that a HIPPA-compliant third party can, you are able to
bend the truth here to get a benefit, without outright breaking it. You and I might see that moral line crossed in both instances, and hopefully, the majority do - but we can name countless things at WDW that people have been willing to exploit because they feel entitled, and I do think a lot more folks are willing to casually justify things that "don't hurt anyone else" than we might want to believe.
Notice how defensive they became when I blew a hole in their silly arguments and paranoia.
Either comply with the new rules don't go. It really isn't that hard to understand.
