PJM Lifestyle
Black-Market Disney Tour Guides: How the Uber-Rich Avoid Long Lines
How much would you pay to avoid lines like this?
I’ve vacationed at Walt Disney World literally all my life, and I can assure you of one thing: waiting in line is part of the experience. It’s often inevitable that you’ll have to wait in at least one long line during your trip. In my younger days, when there were fewer parks and attraction options, we waited in line for hours for nearly everything. The growth of the entire Walt Disney World property has led to shorter lines altogether.
Over the past few years, Disney has taken care to add interactive theming, games, and activities to many of the queues for the most popular attractions. They have also gone to great lengths to help guests avoid some of the longest lines. The FastPass system, introduced in 1999, allows guests to essentially make a reservation to ride certain attractions, bypassing the worst of the lines. This year, the company will introduce new RFID technology called MyMagic+ that promises to “take guests’ experiences to the next level.” Disney even offers specials during off-peak seasons to funnel some of the crowds to different times of the year.
Seasoned Disney travelers find their own ways to stay away from the crowds. Some families leave the parks during the most crowded times of the day and return to their resort to rest. Others ride the most popular attractions during parades and fireworks shows. My family goes in the fall rather than in spring or summer, and we meticulously research which days are more likely to be crowded than others.
And then certain people go to more nefarious measures to avoid long lines at attractions. The New York Post caught wind of a trend among Manhattan’s uber-wealthy: hiring handicapped adults to travel with them, giving the family access to the front of the line:
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.”
New Transformers The Ride 3D at Universal Studios Looks Like Fun
The Transformers ride builds on the success of the park’s King Kong attraction, making good use of 3-D and flight simulator technologies that rapidly immerse passengers into a compelling and easy-to-understand story line. Just after boarding the 12-seat passenger car, we’re told to protect the AllSpark, a bright and sparkly substance that is apparently very important to gigantic robots. Naturally, the chief bad robot, Megatron, wants it and makes clear he’s willing to kill all humans to get it.
And off we go. As it turns, spins, bucks and dives through the streets and skyscrapers of Chicago, the ride conveys a thrilling sense of movement and travel that is superior to other attractions in its class – namely, Universal’s The Simpsons and Disney’s Star Tours and Indiana Jones Adventure. The ride is intense – in-your-face objects, dramatic falls, robot-on-robot violence and being sucked into a grinding vortex; it’s like being in a video game (or being a parent).
You feel the wind, heat and water and smell the smoke. So, if your kid isn’t comfortable with the previously mentioned attractions, this one is probably not for them yet.