Disney World Is Catering To Its Wealthy Guests, And Everyone Else is Paying the Price

It’s happened to all of us while on vacation at Walt Disney World. You get in line for your favorite ride at, say, Magic Kingdom. The wait time is only 20 minutes, but then the line stops moving. Before you know it, your 20-minute wait has become 35-40 minutes.

What happened? The ride is clearly still operating as other guests are coming and going. So, why did the standby line suddenly crawl to a stop?

Related: Disney World Pricing Is Going To Start Keeping Some Families Away

It only takes a few moments to realize that the standby line isn’t moving, but the Lightning Lane is continually moving. The once-democratized process of waiting in line has been replaced by a system that allows wealthy guests to avoid waiting while the rest of us stand in line.

And it’s not the only way that Disney World has created different experiences for wealthy guests and those guests without means.

After COVID, Disney eliminated the old fast pass system, which was free, and allowed all guests to have the opportunity to skip the lines. The old system was replaced with Disney Genie+ Lightning Lanes, which comes at a price. Genie+ costs a family of four more than $100 a day and only increases during Disney World’s busiest seasons.

But beyond just Disney Genie+ and Lightning Lanes, Walt Disney World has created several experiences that allow guests to skip the lines or have the parks available with limited capacity, all for a price.

Related: ‘I’m Not Some Criminal’ Disney World Refuses to Let Select Guests In

Before COVID, all Disney World Resort guests were allowed to enter the parks during extended hours. Now, Disney World has a 30-minute early entry time for resort guests, but the extended after-hours are only for Deluxe Resort guests.

Disney World also offers paid after-hours events that offer up the park at a reduced capacity. But those events usually cost more than $500 for a family of four.

And for the ultra-wealthy, Disney World offers a private tour guide for the parks, charging at least $700 an hour. This high-priced experience allows the wealthy to skip lines and move around backstage and not have to interact with the general public.

CNN, which doesn’t typically cover Disney Park stories, recently wrote about this new way of doing theme parks for the wealthy. CNN wrote:

There are downsides to this business model. The gulf between the haves and the have-nots has widened in recent decades, and dividing consumers based on means and how much they can pay to skip a line may create more hostility and resentment…And skipping the line raises concerns about fairness and service quality for people who don’t want or have the means to pay extra fees…In the best-case scenario, businesses can use the funds from line jumpers to improve service for everybody else…But that’s rarely the case. By removing the wealthiest or highest-paying customers from a line, there’s little incentive to advocate for better service for the rest.

Walt Disney World isn’t the only theme park across the United States that offers these perks for a wealthy guest. But when Walt Disney opened his parks, he wanted a place for everyone, not just the rich.

With The Walt Disney Company announcing that Disney Parks made billions last quarter, they have no incentive to change their policies to accommodate lower-income families. And as the prices of a Disney vacation continue to grow, more families will be priced out of a trip to Central Florida.

So, Disney fans will have to decide if the cost is worth the experience, and so far, the answer is yes.

What do you think about Disney World’s two-tiered system? Let us know in the comments for a chance to be featured in a Disney Fanatic article!