I do think it is sort of sad. This article made me feel a bit melancholy. Weirdly, a lot of the people I know who go to Disney are not my richest friends. I'm sad that this will be harder for them.

This will certainly make me less likely to go, not that I had any plans to. $100 a day per person feels like a waste to me. $700 a night can get me a very nice hotel room in a real castle.

Perhaps once as a day trip if we happen to be staying in Paris, but yeah, the cost does not seem worth it to me. If I'm going to blow insane amounts of money there are so many better ways to blow it! Europapark is only 55 Euros, and just as fun...

But that's me. Disney isn't as important to me. It is important to some people. And I do feel sad it's less affordable to them.

Hmm, turns out Eurodisney is 64 Euros. Yeah, I guess that's OK. But still... for a day trip, once in a while.

The trouble with Disney is there's this sweet spot with kids. They need to be young enough to appreciate the magic, but old enough to not be too exhausted by noon to continue. That's what we found with a 2 and 6 year old... they were too little. But now that they're 6 and 10 my eldest is likely to think it cheesy.

". . . it's probably going to be harder for many to go to the park."

Harder than when it was closed?

"Disney is designing a more expensive park experience."

So now a family of four will have to take out a second mortgage and sell a kidney?

Some where down the road, a child will ask their parents how Disney went broke and got taken over by vulture capitalists who sold off the valuable assets and torched the rest.

"Slowly, then suddenly."

I hear Disney has become more complicated unless you're pretty tech savvy. I hear from families who have gone recently that The Thing is now to have reservations for rides, various tiers of fast-passes, all of which is tied to an online account and a wristband? And this all comes at a price -- you have a certain number of "free" fast pass/reservations per day pass... some popular rides are paid only, if you want a fast pass. You have to schedule all in advance.

Pre-pandemic, a friend of mine showed me her complicated spreadsheet for her family's trip to Disney (with ride reservations, etc.).

Or maybe my friends are nuts, and it's possible to still have the OG Disney experience of just getting in line for stuff. I haven't been in more than a decade. I do remember the interminably long lines in the scorching Florida sun as a kid, which were an excellent lesson in patience -- and in prioritizing which experiences were worth it. I also get why parents would rather skip all that, though.

all of which is tied to an online account and a wristband?

I've heard about the wristband. Which also is a tracking device, if that wasn't obvious.

> it's possible to still have the
> OG Disney experience of just getting
> in line for stuff.

In the 80's and 90's living in Florida & then L.A., family with young children would come to visit specifically for the visits to Disney-World/Land as the highlight of the trip. I'd buy the tickets and pretend not to be grumpy, and they had a wonderful time WAITING IN LINE, for (cumulatively) HOURS to get on rides which appear nowhere in my memory. They'd already paid the money. Still, they patiently waited for hours. Walt was a genius— Without the church, Americans will select new ludicrous ceremonies, and will pay to participate.

In the mid-90's there were a few weeks of work at their cable channels. There were a lot of guys there — graphics producers, artists and techs — who you'd have assumed at first meeting were gay… Hardly a surprise in Hollywood. But you'd get to know them and learn that they were happily heterosexual, with growing, loving families etc. They knew more about commercial cartoon animation than you'd have thought possible. You'd show them a single frame and they'd say something like "Yeah, that's probably from the Umpertof production house in Germany, 1985 to 1987, and made with the Eckstein process… You can tell because the shadow from the shoe is a mess."

They weren't making the money they deserved, but they LOVED working for Disney.

I went to a wedding reception in DL once, held in his once-private rooms near Pirate Island or whatever. The bride was a strikingly pretty blond, delicate, slender & blue-eyed, radiant in her wedding dress. The rest of us were escorted right to the chambers, but she had to be brought in through tunnels, because customers would have thought she was Princess Whomever from the movie. But it was cool when it was over, because after all the drinking and dancing, they walked us through the empty park to the front gate. I've shut down a good number of dive bars… AND DISNEYLAND.

Out of curiosity, is this worse than using the "calm down" words?

https://twitter.com/Holden114/status/1370390273184915456

Mattel is launching a new Eleanor Roosevelt Barbie doll. Probably because Eleanor was a hot sorority babe with a freakishly proportioned anatomy, I suppose.

Looking forward to the inevitable reaction and Mattel's subsequent launch of the Andrea Dworkin Barbie doll.

Mattel be trollin', yo.

They can't read analog watches, Roman Numerals, cursive writing, and now have no idea how much is in a dozen.

https://twitter.com/ByramWorld/status/1370425245773991938

> Eleanor Roosevelt Barbie

Goggles, history records that the woman herself was in fact fecund, but isn't that kind of what you'd have imagine for her genitalia?

> and now have no idea how much
> is in a dozen.

But Six!! They know what they feeeeel....!

Isn't that ENOUGH???!?!??!

!?!??!

Tokyo Disney Land and Disney Sea are surprisingly affordable. Not my thing, but the son and daughter in law enjoy it. The really nice hotels nearby with shuttles to the parks, are also no more than around a hundred bucks a night. Some of the really fancy ones are pricy but those are more status signaling than actually better in any discernible way.

Excellent! My girls would love a Grandma barbie for their games.

I had a Barbie or two when I was a kid. What I really wanted was a G.I. Joe. His kit was way cooler.

None of the boys I knew had the Barbie-sized GI Joes, just the smaller ones.

NicoleK, the Frugal Zealot, Amy Dacyczyn, once wrote an atypical article on Disneyworld, I think it was. She pointed out that it's not just stamina that kids need. That is, kids need to be over seven. Otherwise, parents should ask themselves if they really want to spend all that money on something the kid likely won't REMEMBER, years later,

(Though I kind of doubt that would have happened with me, had I gone. I can still remember a few details of a visit to the Virgin Islands when I was six. Obviously, that was far tamer than any Disney visit would be.)

There's a lot of stuff worth doing with kids even if they won't remember, as part of their development and all, but I agree Disneyland isn't one of them.

✔ NicoleK at March 13, 2021 8:56 PM

" His kit was way cooler. "

Yep. My favorite was the deep-sea diver rig.

I always thought they missed out by not offering a Vote With Your Feet / Flee To Canada draft dodger outfit. Same army jacket, but with peace symbol patches. Also a hippie wig and hairband that you could remove when he gets caught at the border and shipped off to prison and/or Vietnam.

> the deep-sea diver rig

The orange suit. I loved that.

If you told me that back then I'd grow up to do enough diving in exotic location to think it was time for a new hobby, I'd have called the authorities to have you institutionalized.

Also, my Cali neoprene was better-insulating than GIJ's cheap rubber costume.

OTOH, I never placed submarine explosives beneath enemy docks at night, or any of the other crazy shit Joe used to do. The Sixties were a different time.