Price gouge rip-off......

Today's Disneyland is a price gouge, not a magical experience

SFGATE columnist Rod Benson on how the accessible, inclusive Disneyland of his youth no longer exists

Rod Benson

The first time I went to Disneyland, I was 6 years old. As a Southern California family, we paid $29 per person for the privilege, which I remember because the commercials were on every 12 minutes. Splash Mountain had just opened and was all the rage, so my only real request was to go on that ride. I don’t remember everything about the trip, but I remember that it felt like a place I wanted to be all the time. 

Over the next decade, I would revisit Disneyland many times with my family, with a summer camp and even for my junior high graduation. As a local, I had the benefit of proximity, so a Disneyland trip was never too far out of reach. Because the Mouse House was always updating, there were new and exciting things to consume all the way through high school, which included another graduation trip. This one was the first that included California Adventure, Fast Passes and a realization that I, at 6 feet 10 inches, would never fit on Space Mountain ever again. 

I continued to visit Disneyland into my adult years because it was always a random good time, even if the “magic” of it all had long since worn off. I had tried to go to other places like Knott’s Berry Farm and immediately lamented that the park was not as clean or as well-kept as Disneyland. Despite rising prices and crowd sizes, I kept coming back to Disney — there was nothing like it. 

Enter the pandemic. When Disneyland finally reopened, there were what seemed to be strict rules about health and safety, including limits on who could attend regionally. It seemed like a good time to go, not only because it would be safe, but it would be less crowded, which is always what my aim is at Disneyland. 

So my partner and I decided to pull the trigger and book for early October. Not only would kids be back in school, but with the updated rules, we should have smooth sailing upon arrival. 

That did not turn out to be the case. First things first, we had to go online to book tickets. They do pricing now the same way an airline does it — depending on the day, you’ll pay more or you’ll pay less. It’s not cheap, regardless. We ponied up $139 — ultimately deciding to pass on multiple days and a trip to Disney California Adventure, which Disney charges you separately to enter even though it shares the same grounds as Disneyland. 

As we checked out, we were reminded over and over to “get the app.” I personally hate adding apps for apps’ sake, but fine. Added. I would need it to use Fast Pass anyway, I thought. We reserved our date — the park is limiting the number of attendees as part of its COVID-19 response — then took a breath: the magic was just days away.  

On the day of our trip, we drove down and started the day with coffee from an off-site Starbucks. It was then we realized that it was time to sign up for the new Star Wars ride, because for some reason there is no line for it. It’s an app-only sign up, and there are only two time slots to sign up during the day. 

We were just past the first sign up time of 7 a.m. We opened that sign-up tab in the app, and it said that we had to be on the grounds to sign up for the ride. Except the park didn’t open until 8 a.m., so we’d have to wait for the 1 p.m. time slot to get on. Seemed fine, albeit confusing: How does anyone get the 7 a.m. time? 

We headed into the Disneyland parking area. $25. I didn’t remember it being so pricey, and I guess I could have looked it up, but still I was unhappy. 

“Capitalism is a smooth summabitch,” I said under my breath, as I passed along my $25. 

As we walked the long walk from the garage to the entrance, we opened the app once again. There were already long lines forming at some of the rides. This didn’t really make sense, considering the reservation system limiting the number of attendees, but I didn’t think about all that. It was Fast Pass time. 

But we quickly learned that there are no more Fast Passes. It was 9 a.m. Not only were lines long (some in the 60-minute range), but there was no way to circumvent the process anymore. 

I could feel my neck doing the twitch thing, but I kept it together. THIS IS THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON MF EARTH, I thought to myself. 

Once we got in, I was immediately confused. There were people everywhere. Seriously, I haven't been to Disneyland with that many folks since 2002! What was even the point of reserving a spot? It seemed that was all a ruse. Maybe the park wasn’t at absolute maximum capacity, but there were enough people that it seemed to not matter.

 

We started with Pirates of the Caribbean because the line was short and we wanted to get into the action. To my pleasant surprise, once we walked indoors, we were asked to mask up. Mind you, a decent number of folks said yes, and then took their masks off, but I did take note of the fact that Disneyland employees did ask. 

When we came out of the ride, we were confronted with the fact that no ride had less than an hour wait, on a weekday, during the school year, with reservation-only attendance. 

I began to really look around to try and figure out who was all actually there that day. There were no Black folks — at all. 

There were some, but they were so rare that I could spend 5 or 10 minutes people-watching, actively looking, and maybe find one Black person. In fact, it wasn’t until late in the day that I saw a whole family. 

Clearly, something had happened: We were all needed elsewhere for the culture, and I had missed the memo. 

This attendance disparity was also new to me. I could swear Black folks liked Disneyland as much as anyone else. Every member of my family used to go whenever there was enough money and, while we were there, we would meet other Black families from all over the country. At that age, I never noticed exactly how many Black folks were there, but it never felt like none. Even in high school —where race became very noticeable to me as my entire school was white and Asian — I would notice all the Black people at Disneyland. 

I attributed it to the proximity to LA, but this proximity clearly doesn’t matter any longer. Maybe Disneyland has simply lost its appeal within the community because it’s expensive. Or maybe it's that besides the Avengers, Black people aren’t characters in many of the movies, and the rides — looking at you, Splash Mountain — reflect that. 

We moved on and slowly made our way through Indiana Jones (my personal favorite) and Splash Mountain on our way north through the park. There was no Fast Pass, so the waits were long, but some people were still skipping the line. It was like the club when someone just has the right look, so the bouncer lets them right in. 

I checked back into the app. There was no mention of this as something to purchase. So I guess Disneyland must have some sort of secret VIP now. Fantastic. 

It was now about noon, when we happened to walk past that new Star Wars ride. We had an hour before we could sign up again, so the options were to get lunch in that area, or ride the other Star Wars 3-D ride (Smugglers Run). The line for the nearby restaurant was longer than a ride, but a sign said we could order on the app. 

Great! We opened it up and we had to select a time slot for arrival. It was over an hour and a half in the future. 

I could now understand why the line was so damn long. If you didn’t order lunch at breakfast, there was no point in using the app to eat at lunch. At this point, I’m certain I was just muttering hate speech about the app as we walked about, lamenting its necessity and utility. I may have even angrily shaken my fist at the sky, showing my age. 

The line for the 3-D ride was 50 minutes long. A walk to another area would be 15 minutes, at least, so we decided to get on the 3-D ride while we waited for the 1 p.m. sign-up window. At about 12:50 p.m., we started to get wary; the wait for the ride would make signing up for the other ride impossible if the timing didn’t work out. 

We were on the park Wi-Fi refreshing the page over and over, hoping that the app would allow us to sign up maybe a bit early. We were now right in the next group to head in and take our seats, when the page opened. We were asked to walk forward, and boom, the Wi-Fi signal dropped. We screamed at the phone, trying to get it to connect but there was no connection in these hallways. 

We did the stupid ride — I hate 3-D rides —  and when we got out at 1:03 p.m., the signal was back, but the ride sign-up was closed. It had filled out in seconds. 

We felt so defeated. I began to get actually angry. Why the hell is this ride app-only? While standing in front of Smugglers Run, some VIP fools with their tour guide just walked right in. Why was Disneyland feeling like the club? 

We were also still so hungry. We walked back to Frontierland for lunch, but the line was an hour long, so we did the app thing (sigh). Our window to order would be between 2:00 and 2:30. So we just sat in our collective sadness for an hour, while waiting to pay $50 for a couple of burgers and fries. 

Between then and closing time, we made it to four more rides. The Buzz Lightyear ride, It’s a Small World, the Haunted Mansion and the Matterhorn. A guy in line for Matterhorn was lamenting that liberals changed the name of Columbus Day. OK, my guy. A woman, upon hearing me engage this man, asked if I could even fit on the ride. OK, my gal. It’s a Small World, which I haven’t been on since I was a child, was way more racist than I remembered. It’s got a decent message considering it was built in the 1960s, but that message also is that Asian people only live in Asia, Black people are only in Africa, and Mexican folks love a good hat dance.

On the way home, I did the math. We spent about $450 for a day at the park for two people. No California Adventure. No line skipping. Just sitting around waiting for the privilege of giving Walt more money. 

I’m not going to sit around saying it was a miserable day, but for the first time in my life, Disneyland felt more like a price gouge than a magical experience. I looked up why Fast Pass no longer exists and never really got an answer, other than it’s coming back in a pay-to-play option. That VIP stuff will also be part of the new experience going forward. I don’t know how much the new Fast Pass will cost, but it will make lines longer and probably be expensive, leaving people with no real choice. 

I wish I could ask someone personally if Disney is broke. What is this world where costs are on top of costs on top of costs? Why are both parks not on one ticket? Why the hell is the place fully packed during COVID and why does it feel like 90% of the attendees are from other states with no restrictions? 

Honestly, none of it makes sense. 

All of that is enough for me to take a break from Disneyland. Maybe that’s why Black people aren’t going anymore. We can’t justify that kind of spending. Maybe we’ll be back at Knott’s? 

And none of that even takes into account how frustrating the app is. The app might be what’s most wrong with that place now. Sure, you can get wait times for rides you’re not nearby. But that could also be easily solved with monitors showing all wait times placed throughout the park. 

So besides the wait times, what did the app actually help with? In my opinion, nothing. The lines to order food, at least for lunch, are higher than I’ve ever seen; people waiting in line are only being served by one or two counters, and the rest are servicing app folks. The app folks, because they can order from any corner of the park, make the good restaurants take longer as well, due to increased demand. The stupid reservation system for the Star Wars ride reminded me more of the SNKRS app than a goddamn Disney one. There is no more Fast Pass, so it had no utility there. Yet, Disneyland made sure to remind us at every stage of checkout to get the damn app. 

There has to be some other reason Disney wants people on this app so badly — hyper-capitalism? data collection? — because it didn’t enhance my experience at all. It only took away from it. 

But that doesn't feel satisfying to me. Why does one need a community college-level course on how to just get by at Disneyland without ending up upset? How many degrees in Disneyology does it take to book a lunch?

It sucks because they know that families will pay because, frankly, they want to give their kids the same joy they had when they first attended. But where is the heart behind the corporation? Disney makes so much money off one Avengers movie, they could make the park free.

So why just take so much from people who don’t have much? Why make it so expensive that minorities just avoid the place altogether? Why upcharge for things that should be normal? Why go loose on the COVID protocols just to ensure the park is full? Why operate like an airline that makes the economy seats smaller to encourage business-class purchases? 

This isn’t Delta. It’s Disneyland, which now might be the most capitalistic place on Earth.