Disney hates poor people

I had a couple of friends post this on FB and it made my eyes roll hard. So so hard. Ugh.

Anyway, I realize I missed the first wave of the conversation, but consider me a parkhopper4lyfe.

I guess I can see not needing it if you're a first timer. If you're a first timer you're likely trying to hit as much of the parks as possible in the time you have, and travel time between parks during the day is probably better used elsewhere.

That being said, I haven't been a first timer at WDW since I was around three years old, and for me, the park hopper is absolutely essential. More than essential. To me one of the great pleasures of the WDW experience is the ability to do, let's say, MK during the day, and then trek over to EPCOT for dinner and drinks and fireworks at night. Or head over to the Studios for dinner and Fantasmic, and Star Tours power riding. Or whatever.

I dunno, maybe it seems silly typing it out but that kind of flexibility is worth a lot to me. Man do I love it.

Regulus said:

...Or better yet, try to keep your food budget at a minimum. In January of 2009 I visited EPCOT, and carried a Twenty Dollar Bill in my Wallet. For lunch I had a bowl of chili and a soda at one of the Future World Stands and a combo meal at the outdoor stand at the Mexican pavilion where I purchased one taco, one enchilada and tostada with rice and refried beans and a soda. That evening, when I left the park I had 45 cents in my pocket.

I think that can work for one person. But for a family with kids, as assumed in the first example by Jeff, it is going to be difficult to hold to the $20/person/day. But even if you do hold to it, at that rate the cost is $400, which is not far off from the $600 that the example used for the dining plan. If you can manage to not buy the kids a cotton candy or a snow cone or candy then good for you. But that is not going to work in our family and I suspect it would not fly very far in most families.

We never do park hoppers. There's plenty to do at each park even in the slow season and even if you spend multiple days at each park. I don't do stuff on the super-cheap, but I just can't justify that cost. It adds $64 per ticket. For our family of four staying 5 days, it's a $51 per day upcharge. The food at Epcot is good, but not whatever-it-costs-plus-$51 good.

Yes.

I was starting to think I was missing something.

I can see it making sense if you're just there for a day or two and want to hit all the things you want to hit. But the second you get into a 'real' vacation of 4 or 5 days or more. You can do a park a day and be just fine.

I wonder how many people pay for the park hopper and then get to WDW and never use it? To me it always seemed like one of those upcharges that people that don't know better buy into. That family taking a once or twice in a lifetime vacation - they want to ensure it's great and they can do everything they want and the Park Hopper practically sells itself in that sense. Then they get there and the kids are having fun here or there and the hassle of lugging the family park-to-park throughout the day doesn't seem worth it.

Seems like an option that particularly suited for the type of visiting the people on these forums would do.

I never really thought about it, but Park Hopper stats would be pretty interesting to look at. (I'm such a dork)

I think it just depends on your use case. On my adult trips, just the two of us, we hopped the crap out of our trips. I get why you wouldn't want/need it with two kids, I just never went in those circumstances.

matt. said:
To me one of the great pleasures of the WDW experience is the ability to do, let's say, MK during the day, and then trek over to EPCOT for dinner and drinks and fireworks at night. Or head over to the Studios for dinner and Fantasmic, and Star Tours power riding. Or whatever.

Nailed it! Precisely why I always get the park hopper option. For my particular WDW vacation habits, it's worth the extra expense to have the "ability" to park hop if we choose to do so. Do we park hop every day? No. But having the piece of mind that we have the flexibility and ability to do so, on the fly is worth the relatively small up charge.

Like Jeff said earlier, regardless where our day starts, I seem to tend to end up at Epcot most nights for drinks and maybe a good meal for dinner. Illuminations is a can't miss. The park hopper just opens up the flexibility for this to happen.

Back to the original topic of the thread. I'll echo some of the comments with respect to how "expensive" a WDW vacation is.

I truly believe that a WDW vacation is within reach for many income groups and all this crap that only the rich can afford a disney vacation is way overblown.

Perhaps I've lost touch. But I refuse to believe that most families can't scrap together a few thousand bucks over some period of time to spend a week in Central Florida.

Yes, it may require saving for a bit. Yes, maybe you blow up the Visa card and have to pay it off. Yes, it may require staying at a value resort or off property. Yes, it may require visiting during the "off sesson". Yes, you may have to drive instead of flying. But with some saavy and strategic decisions, a disney vacation is within reach to way more people than this article (and many others) implies.

Lord Gonchar said:

I wonder how many people pay for the park hopper and then get to WDW and never use it? That family taking a once or twice in a lifetime vacation - they want to ensure it's great and they can do everything they want and the Park Hopper practically sells itself in that sense.

Hanging n' Banging said:

Precisely why I always get the park hopper option. For my particular WDW vacation habits, it's worth the extra expense to have the "ability" to park hop if we choose to do so. Do we park hop every day? No. But having the piece of mind that we have the flexibility and ability to do so, on the fly is worth the relatively small up charge.

Well, there's my answer.

I suspect your logic is not uncommon. "Even if we don't really use it, we can if we want/need to."

That's something Disney is very good at selling - piece of mind. (Which is one of my arguments for why heavily pre-booking would be accepted...but, you know)

Hanging n' Banging said:

But I refuse to believe that most families can't scrap together a few thousand bucks over some period of time to spend a week in Central Florida.

This might be my favorite vaguity ever posted on CoasterBuzz.

You're right though. Given some period of time most people could probably gather the money for a WDW vacation.

"If we start saving when sally is born, maybe we can take her to Disney World when she's twelve!"

Seriously though, I wonder what the cheapest a family could do Disney for is? Like an average family of four spending 4 or 5 days while cutting every corner, squeezing every nickel, stretching every dollar. At at what point do you suggest someone doesn't spend a certain amount for something like a vacation. Is it a percentage of income and hard dollar amount? How much do you forego in other areas to save or spend on a vacation? Do you have savings? Debt?

The variables are far too numerous to make vague generalization about who can afford what.

Then again, Vater sort of summed it up a scant 4 posts into the topic:

Vater said:

Someone could have an identical salary as mine but might be able to afford a much more (or less) expensive Disney vacation experience than I, based on a crapload of different factors, like family size, location, cost of living, other stuff we spend (or don't spend) our money on, etc.

Suggesting any family can afford a trip to WDW under the right circumstances is just as silly as the article suggesting they can't.

Hanging n' Banging said

Perhaps I've lost touch. But I refuse to believe that most families can't scrap together a few thousand bucks over some period of time to spend a week in Central Florida.

Yes, it may require saving for a bit. Yes, maybe you blow up the Visa card and have to pay it off. Yes, it may require staying at a value resort or off property. Yes, it may require visiting during the "off sesson". Yes, you may have to drive instead of flying. But with some saavy and strategic decisions, a disney vacation is within reach to way more people than this article (and many others) implies.

I think for a lot of American families your " strategic decisions " probably involve not having a phone or not having a reliable motor vehicle. Sure, it can be done, but not by anyone with remotely reasonable priorities.

Well culturally, isn't that our biggest problem? People were all about blaming the banks and the feds in the housing crash, but people seemed unwilling to accept that they bought more house than they could afford. I could buy a 5,000 sq. ft. house, and "afford" it, but I wouldn't be saving very much money in that scenario, and I would be nervous in the event that I could no longer make enough money to cover it. Why is it so hard for people to resist buying the biggest McMansion possible? Ditto for cars, which seems even more insane given the rate of depreciation, and the fact that the functional gains from a $15k car to a $50k car are relatively negligible.

kpjb said:

We never do park hoppers.

Lord Gonchar said:

That family taking a once or twice in a lifetime vacation - they want to ensure it's great and they can do everything they want and the Park Hopper practically sells itself in that sense. Then they get there and the kids are having fun here or there and the hassle of lugging the family park-to-park throughout the day doesn't seem worth it.

Yeah, this was me. So glad I asked. Considering our budget, the fact we've never been, and our two non-foodie kids who would be more than happy eating chicken tenders on any given day, I think the answer for us is obvious.

So, thanks everyone for your input.

You'll be happy to know that the chicken nuggets sold around the property are not terrible. :)

Even if they were, my kids probably wouldn't notice, or care.

Vater said:

Yeah, this was me. So glad I asked. Considering our budget, the fact we've never been, and our two non-foodie kids who would be more than happy eating chicken tenders on any given day, I think the answer for us is obvious.

If you come back wishing you had gotten the park hopper, I'm not taking responsibility.

Let's be fair here:

1) Disney does NOT hate poor people.

2) Disney (probably? no, definitely) DOES find them less-than-profitable, and with gates burgeoning with overflow crowds, people with more disposable income are *defiantly* better revenue-producers.

Defiantly?

I couldn't tell if that was irony or not.

The misspelling of definitely just never gets old (for me at least).

I think it's mostly laziness, exacerbated by a reliance on spell-checkers...

It's definitely a autocorrect issue.

Every time you see it, someone tried to spell it "Definately" and it got corrected to "Defiantly"

Autocorrect technology would probably be better off correcting to "Definitely" instead of "Defiantly" - my guess is they'd have right more often than not.

Speaking of autocorrect, it won't be long until 'ducking' is a swear word.