Rolling To The Front

If you have ever been to an amusement park in your life you know that you spend most of the day standing in line. The waits to get on ride which are only going to last 10 minutes can take well over an hour, especially if you go during a busy season, like school vacation week. In the last couple of year various theme parks have come up with programs to combat this, such as making ride reservations for specific times or a system which will allow you to put your name in at the most popular ride and then walk around to less-crowded attractions, like the beeper system at restaurant. Still, none of those things get you to the front of the line faster, they just mean you don't have to stand around for quite as long. (Don't let the parks for you into thinking these concepts are for you, though. These ideas are for their benefit because the less time you spend standing around the more time you have to spend money on crap.) Apparently, the only way to totally cut the line is to have a disabled person with you. Now, this seems totally fair to me - any person fighting a disability clearly has a hard life and would gladly trade places with you if given the option, so it feels like the least society can do for them is let them cut the line at a stupid amusement park. But today I read a truly disturbing story which claims that some entitled families have begun hiring disabled people to guide them around Disney World and using those people to cut the lines for rides.

Yes, apparently there is a woman who has been confined to a wheelchair and for a few hundred dollars she claims you as a member of her party, toting you around the park for the afternoon and allowing you to walk right passed the lines of people either too poor to afford her or too much of a normal, well-adjusted human being to think of such a scam. (Let's be honest, the disabled can be sociopaths as well.) You know every stereotype society has of the entitled rich family who thinks they are far too good to mingle with the rest of humanity just because their grandfather made money back in the 1920s and they haven't had to work a day in their life? This is the kind of story which does nothing but reinforce those stereotypes. The people interviewed for this story (and of course the families which took advantage of it are going to talk about it without shame because the only think rich people like more than their money is being able to flaunt it to the world while talking about themselves) even try to justify it by saying things like they are doing this woman a favor because she wouldn't normally be able to work. While it does take two to tango and it is not like anyone is forcing these people to rent themselves out for line-cutting purposes, that doesn't change the fact that if these people weren't so wrapped up in themselves she wouldn't have any customers. It's nothing more than trying to justify bad behavior.

Look, I love walking passed a long line of people and being able to tell the person working the door that "I'm on the list" as much as the next guy, but I find the very concept of this practice really bizarre. I'm not sure if it is because someone out there is twisting what would normally be a sweet idea and making a profit from it or if the fact that her customers don't see why what they are doing is wrong that I find more unnerving. I know the idea is that when life gives you lemons you make lemonade however I don't think then turning around and selling the lemonade to the 1% is what the people who came up with that saying had in mind. On a personal level this doesn't impact me in the slightest because I have no desire to go to Disney World anytime soon. (I actually hate amusement parks and wouldn't go to Disney if someone else was footing the bill.) However, it makes me fear for the kids of these parents, who are being taught at a very young age that if you have enough money than the normal rules don't apply to you. These are absolutely going to be the people who guide us into the next great financial disaster in 20 years. I mean, if you are willing to skirt the rules just to go on the teacup ride than where is it going to end?

Now, Disney has said they will look into this and vowed to stop the practice. I'm sure they would like to ban this woman from the park, but kicking out a woman in a wheelchair is going to be some really bad PR (though maybe not in this case because helping rich people get even further ahead isn't going to win you any popularity contests). The bigger issue is that I think it would be nearly impossible to enforce, because someone else will just pick up the business and how would you know which people are actually friends of the disabled person and which people are their customers? Of course, seeing as how this is Disney as long as they keep pumping out irresistible kids movies they can pretty much do what they want. It is not like they have a great reputation among adults to destroy, because we know that the reality is probably more along the lines that they will look at how much money this woman made per family and begin marketing line-skipping passes on their own because as we know they have no shame as long as it makes them money and the last thing they want at the Happiest Place on Earth is for anyone to be making a profit but them. In some ways they are exactly like the people who were buying their way to the front of the line, so maybe they deserve each other and it is fitting they this is happening at Disney World. I guess it is a small world after all.