Disney hates poor people: NYT Opinion Edition

Hey now, they still do the fishing trips!

More seriously: It's just the entire ambiance of the place, plus lots of little corners that are lovely for taking a breather. All of that packaged in a plot of land that large enough such that once you are inside of it, the outside world more or less does not exist. DLR just can't pull that off, with the possible exception of a stay based at the Grand Cal.

I understand why is Super Fans still want to go to WDW but I’m again saying the average family that is only going once. No matter where you go you get Peter Pan, Mickey, Castle, fireworks, Dumbo, Pirates, Mansion, Star Wars, Mountains. That’s what those people expect from a Disney Vacation and both resorts deliver it. I’m not sure why my fellow midwesterners fail to ever look west.

Most one-and-done visitors don't even know what is where, and are going to pick based on what they hear in their social circle and/or what is advertised in their local markets.

That's Florida.

As I think about it, there is another reason why we tended to be WDW more than DLR--my kids did not do the three hour change well, and flying back from CA burns more or less an entire day because of it.

hambone:

Nowadays for a lot of folks, “going to Florida” = “going to Disney World.”

Well that’s what’s changed. Disney and now universal have far more to keep you on property than ever before.

Right, but that's also one of the things that makes "going to Disney World" a poor proxy for the pressures facing the middle class.

Brian Noble:

But, I'm not sure the problem is "expectations have changed" so much as "what one can afford as 'middle-income' has changed."

Yeah, you convinced me of that, but I think to your point, if it is status related, that is about expectations. I'm too close to it to see either way, admittedly, and my non-hesitation to renew the passes doesn't help. But I have to say that I'm also surprised at the number of decidedly "middle class" people I meet on Disney cruises, which easily reach $350/person/night, and usually more. (Interestingly, that's less than Kevin's quote above, at $390/person/night.) Even the woman in the op-ed with the ECV doesn't strike me as "wealthy," but she still made the trip happen on $80k of salary combined with her daughter. So is it just speculation on the part of opinion writers that the middle class can't go to WDW anymore? They can't all be 1%'ers because of math.

TheMillenniumRider:
The economy, as measured by the various reports and metrics is doing better. But that isn't exactly the case, dig into the average person and they are probably worse off.

But which is it? It can't be both. Maybe you're right, but it isn't what the data says.

Cool, more people are working, but that doesn't mean they are better off or happier for it.

I can assure you that no amount of income guarantees either one. Perhaps that's the biggest disconnect of all.

Money doesn't buy happiness, but it does enable it. We can get into a whole slew of debating on that, but having enough to cover the basics and the what if's takes a mountain of stress out of the day to day. Need to fix the car, fix the house, unexpected expense, vet bill, whatever, and it's just not a concern. That is what the living wage enables.

I know what the data says, and the data can be manipulated, and framed differently, and has a lot of holes that can be poked in it, as I mentioned in the post above, the data is just a very small piece of a very complex situation, and the data simply doesn't represent all the nuance that covers the economic situation that is this country. With the current morons in charge, the data may not even be accurate much longer to further complicate matters.

"Mo money, mo problems." -The Notorious B.I.G.

Money can't buy me a non-****ty family or lower my triglycerides. It can't make me a better parent. I've been poor, and it ranks pretty low on my lifetime list of things I've been stressed about. What it did help me with was the ability to live with constraints and find ways to work around them. 'Living wage" doesn't mean anything to me. The wage I had was the wage I lived on.

...and framed differently, and has a lot of holes that can be poked in it...

By all means, poke and reframe. I believe what I can see. Discrediting authority is a tactic that I'm familiar with, as to your point, the current morons are pretty good at it. But just as "they" can claim that climate change is a hoax and elections are rigged, so can anyone say the economy is bad and the middle class can't afford Disney.

Interesting reporting from the Wall Street Journal about a new poll seeking input on our perspective of today's economy. WSJNORCJuly2025.pdf

Some stark takeaways for me. Given the current conditions in America, I believe I will be able to improve my standard of living? 46% of respondents disagree, 27% agree, and 27% are neutral. And, perhaps more telling, 78% of respondents do not believe that life in our children's generation will be better than our own. I believe it was said that these are the most pessimistic numbers in years.

Both of my 18+ year old children have told me that they don't think it is likely that they will have children. I know the economy is driving that for my son, who has said he might stay in college as long as possible. But, these two both grew up facing years of active killer drills in schools and missed formative years during the pandemic.

Now, they also both love Disney, and after I pondered what I just wrote I suspect the fantasy world of Disney and the escapism it allows is a big reason why we've been so many times. Also, because I'm just a kid at heart who's love of Disney stops just short of dressing up to go to the parks. ;-)

What if the question focuses on Disney doesn’t own/operate enough park facilities to have the capacity to provide for the demand in order to hold pricing down as volume increases? What if Disney decided to buy a park, say a Kings Dominion or Fiesta Texas, and built out the park to be a complete Disney experience in a “Disney California Adventure” or “Disney Studios” type of alternative experience, reserving Anaheim/Orlando for the legacy “castle park” experience? Would the general public appreciate and support a regional Disney experience? I would say yes and I don’t think it would negatively impact the legacy parks.

Disney isn’t going to buy a park and retheme. Too costly, doesn’t allow them the control of the area around it and no connecting lands for hotels. If there is ever another resort in the US I predict it will be in the hill country outside Austin, TX. TX is halfway between FL and CA, been growing, and has the best weather left for year long operations (not including HI.). That said it’s not happening for a long time.

wahoo skipper:

Both of my 18+ year old children have told me that they don't think it is unlikely that they will have children.

Both of mine (in their mid-20s) have told me the same thing: they are leaning to no. That is now, and things may change, but I can't imagine having said that in my mid-20s. It was never even a question for me.

With my first wife, we just kind of never considered it, but with my second, we talked about it even before we were married. And the clock was ticking, and she was 40 when he was born, which is pretty late. It's the hardest thing that I've ever had to do, and while I love my kid, there's no question that life without a kid would have been way easier.

But that decision and sentiment have literally nothing to do with society or optimism or anything. I suppose I'm in the last generation that may have considered children just a typical cycle of life, though we questioned a lot of institutions in our youth (and largely conformed as grownups, I'm afraid). The problem now, as I see it, is that many of the institutions and norms that served most people are irrationally discredited, and critical thinking is thrown out the window. It's no secret where that comes from, because as I said, the sentiment doesn't match the data. I'm financially optimistic because I've been socking away a ton in the last decade, but I'm culturally pessimistic because I see so many freedoms eroding. Remember when "they" said that Obama was going to declare martial law and put everyone in concentration camps? That's literally happening now, and it ain't Obama. The percentage of people actually concerned may not be enough to stop it, and that's not a great feeling. Americans are measurably less free than they were a decade ago.

Headline of the WSJ article relating to the WSJ-NORC poll noted above (which article is behind a paywall) was Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains. Another WSJ article written in last week or so that is relevant to discussion here (also behind a paywall) is The Middle-Class Vibe Has Shifted from Secure to Squeezed.

Declining fertility rates are significant issue for the world to address. Little confidence given current political environment and human nature in general (kicking cans down road tends to be more appealing) much will be done. And the Scandinavian countries (which I think many view as standard in terms of social support) have fertility rates below the US so what can be done isn't clear. My kids both talk about having kids. Son recently got married so he is closer. He is at this point actively planning for kids. There is a certain leap of faith involved with having kids. From what I have observed, two engineers can sometimes struggle with that. We shall see.

Touchdown:

If there is ever another resort in the US I predict it will be in the hill country outside Austin, TX. TX is halfway between FL and CA, been growing, and has the best weather left for year long operations (not including HI.).

I don't disagree that Texas is probably the best, but people not from here sleep on the unpredictability and the extremes of Texas weather, even in the hill country. Austin has had a summer with 90 days above 100 and another with 45 straight above 100. That's predictable, but it is absoutely brutal. Businesses other than waterparks that depend on people being outdoors suffer. I'm in the Dallas area which is a little furhter north and we have wild variations in winter weather in recent years. In the last five years, we had a Christmas Day with highs in the 90's. In that same 5 year stretch, we had a day leading up to Christmas that had a low around 10 with a high below freezing (I remember it distincly because I was without heat over a weekend). This summer has not been as awful as some in recent memory, but it has been plagued with extreme humidity and rain (everyone knows what happened on July 4th). I'm not saying it's not possible and I know that the other Disney resorts deal with their own weather challenges. I just don't think the predictability exists in Texas.

I understand Texas weather is unpredictable, it’s just the best choice of what’s left of the US. Paris gets snow regularly and seems to do fine, I would anticipate a lot of things being indoors in Texas to combat that. I also would anticipate that castle park having no cloned rides from the other two US parks.

My children's inclination to not have children has everything to do with pessimism about our future. My kids were 20 minutes from the Parkland shootings and had connections to victims. My admin assistant's son was at the middle school next door and witnessed kids from the high school running for their lives. My son was a couple hundred yards (and inside) from the FSU shooting last spring.

Both of my children have friends and relatives being harmed by the current decisions to roll back protections for the LGTBQ+ community and they are extremely capable of understanding what the future holds if all this gerrymandering is allowed to occur. They both watched our capitol being attacked on January 6th and they've witnessed the attempt to make people believe it never happened. Today they are reading stories about vaccinations not being mandated in schools in Florida any longer. They are watching the CDC being dismantled, the Fed being undermined, and they are generally watching the nation's "best" leaders and the media shrugging their shoulders about it all.

Yeah, I really want grandkids, but I don't know that I blame them.

GoBucks89:

Declining fertility rates are significant issue for the world to address.

In the short term, one way to address it is through increased immigration, but that depends on people being comfortable having brown people near them.

In the long term, an economic system that didn't depend on constantly growing populations would help.

Historically, the solution to decreased fertility rates has been immigration. Right now though, there is an anti-immigration push (not only in the US but in other parts of Western world as well). But even if that were to change, fertility rates are declining pretty much everywhere. Even in the countries where brown people are from.

Its not a matter of having an economy that depends on growing populations. Its one that can withstand decreasing populations. Populations become older. Older people don't spend as much as younger people. And social safety nets (such social security and medicare) struggle with increasing percentages of people getting benefits compared to those paying in to support the programs. Look at Japan.

FWIW, "no going to bring kids into a world as horrible as this" isn't a thought new to this generation of young people. "This time its different." That has been said too by other generations. Decline in fertility rates started long before the current generation was born or whatever evils exist in the world today making them say no to children.

Interesting - I did not realize the global fertility rate had declined as much as it has. From Wikipedia:

From antiquity to the beginning of the industrial revolution, around the year 1800, total fertility rates of 4.5 to 7.5 were common around the world. After this TFR declined only slightly and up until the 1960s the global average TFR was still 5. Since then, global average TFR has dropped steadily to less than half that number, 2.3 births per woman in 2023.

The United Nations predicts that global fertility will continue to decline for the remainder of this century and reach a below-replacement level of 1.8 by 2100, and that world population will peak in 2084.

That said, the problems of populations growing older and social safety nets struggling as fertility rates decline are why I think new economic systems are needed. I have no idea what they might be! But figuring that out seems like a better plan than depending on ever-increasing populations.

(I'm well aware that I may be a crank.)