… I come across this news item.
Some wealthy Manhattan moms have figured out a way to cut the long lines at Disney World — by hiring disabled people to pose as family members so they and their kids can jump to the front, The Post has learned.
The “black-market Disney guides” run $130 an hour, or $1,040 for an eight-hour day.
“My daughter waited one minute to get on ‘It’s a Small World’ — the other kids had to wait 2 1/2 hours,” crowed one mom, who hired a disabled guide through Dream Tours Florida.“You can’t go to Disney without a tour concierge,” she sniffed. “This is how the 1 percent does Disney.”
The woman said she hired a Dream Tours guide to escort her, her husband and their 1-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter through the park in a motorized scooter with a “handicapped” sign on it. The group was sent straight to an auxiliary entrance at the front of each attraction.
Disney allows each guest who needs a wheelchair or motorized scooter to bring up to six guests to a “more convenient entrance.”
The tumbrils can’t come soon enough.
Good thing god doesn’t heal the disabled or the rich might have to do their own waiting in line.
The fact that people can do this without shame make me almost think that they should no longer be considered ‘human.’ It’s clear that wealthy people, by and large, simply think that everything exists for their convenience, including other human beings, who have value only in terms of what they offer the upper classes.
Somehow questioning that these people have a right to think of the rest of us as disposable garbage is forbidden, but the idea that wealthy people have no obligation to think of everybody else as nothing but garbage seems to be above criticism. Worst is that I know people who are only moderately well to do who think that way.
Come on, just knee-cap your family members and you, too, can enjoy this privilege!
I have a rather pleasing fantasy of a world where, say, the fifty richest people are executed every year.
The fun is watching them trying desperately to be the fifty-first richest person.
On the plus side, the disabled person relieved them of some of their cash. Maybe they need to unionize and start to charge a hell of a lot more, like pay for their medical care for a year.
First thing I thought was “way under-priced.”
Second thing I thought was “pretty soon everyone will do it”.
Third thing I thought was “who in the world wants to go to Disney anyway”.
Fourth thing I thought was “why can’t ‘regular’ families volunteer to take handicapped kids to the park. Win-win.”
Don’t give Disney any ideas -- next they’ll have frequent-flier lanes and ultra-complicated plans that allow 20% of the people in line to jump the other 75% (while 5% go completely around the lines) Disney First Class(tm) coming soon!
In a sense, though, Disney is the very epitome of democratic: it sucks equally no matter who you are.
Hey, $130/hour ain’t chopped liver.
see? you can’t tax the rich. they are the job creators,.
Wait, I’m confused.
…you thought the 1% couldn’t sink any lower?
At Six Flags in Massachusetts (and maybe others), they offer extra-cost options that allow those willing to pay to jump to the head of the line. It was fairly expensive, but on a really crowded day, it would literally save hours of waiting.
I’m disabled. Okay, I could totally use the money… but gaming the system like that? No. I have better standards than that.
This is one more example of entitled asshats trampling all over the disabled to take advantage of the (mostly federally mandated via the ADA) “perks” we get.
Yeah, we get the “good” parking spots, the accessible stalls in the loo, and some serious elevator privileges, but in the face of the ableism we’re stomped down with every. single. day., it doesn’t even begin to look like a “good deal”, and it sure as shit ain’t “special rights” — it’s an attempt to level (literally, in some cases!) the “playing field” and allowing us to fully participate in society, you know, like real people!
whatever, at freethoughtblogs tonight, I discovered why uber social justice warriors have no need for dialogue with people they disagree with.
so while the disney stuff seems like same old same old classware insensitivity, I think the real danger for progressivism is the strategy endorsed by the ftbullies.
As I saw pointed out elsewhere: Do you think they would act differently if this was about being rescued from a sinking ship or from a burning building?
They are the types who engage in “transplant tourism”, buying organs in third world countries and dictatorships, especially from China, where political prisoners are killed on spec for organ sales. They see the poor as dispasable, as existing only for the convenience and benefit of the rich.
If Disney World now introduced $x00 VIP tickets that let people queue jump, would it be accused of taking away the livelihoods of these disabled guides?
/@
My skepticism just clicked in. Mostly because the amount of Welfare (?) a handicapped person gets and the amount of reasonable work they can get and can earn money from before the welfare gets cut back mean that the hourly rate being paid to a handicapped person to go to Disney is way too high. Most handicapped would work for a reasonable wage if there were jobs and they were able. $130/hour? Who are you hiring, Steven Hawking? Or is the rate resultant of the agency cost.
I use a scooter when I go to Disney. I have arthritis and a plethora of years. I truly appreciate the que-jumping and always feel guilty when they allow (nay encourage!) it. If the going rate to hire the handicapped is $130/hour, I have to admit that I rather approve.
1. The handicapped can use a source of income. Jobs are rare to non-existant.
2. It would thoroughly help the economy.
Ugh, this irritates me so much as an Englishman for whom queing is not just a way to organise people but very close to being a state religion. Queues are the great levellers, everyone gets seen regardless of race, gender, or wealth. When abroad in countries where the queue isn’t as ubiquitous I find myself desperately wishing for it more than any other staple of British life. Done properly a queue should be polite enough to make way for others with pressing needs i.e. disabled people for whom standing in a long line may prove debilitating.
Using wealth to cock a snook at the institution of queing is just wrong. Taking advantage of disabled people is just plain ugly.
Interesting. The story is about Dream Tours Florida which seems to be about organizing tours for special needs children and adults to Disney World and other destinations. It doesn’t look fly-by-night -- though it’s the internet, who knows? There’s extensive photo galleries, detailed instructions and forms, and so on. Then you get down to an item in the nav bar called “VIP Tours”. It goes to a page that says only
Keeping in Line (queue discipline in the Mother Country™) is still practiced where I live in the small-town midwestern US. Of course people with pressing needs--or only one or two items in a supermarket line--tend to get let in ahead of the line. About the cities I can’t say--but as to continental Europe …