Rich families hiring tour guides with disabilities so they can skip long lines at Disney World
By Mary Beth Quirk, Consemerist
Do you know who deserves to skip lines at amusement parks? People with disabilities. Do you know who probably doesn’t deserve to skip lines at amusement parks? People who just can’t stand the thought of waiting with the rest of us peons but who don’t want to pay for VIP guides or fast passes. Unfortunately, one report says the latter has recruited the former so wealthy parents and their children can cut to the front of lines at Disney World.
The New York Post spoke to a social anthropologist who claims to have discovered a scheme that makes us feel icky inside: Wealthy Manhattan moms and dads who hire disabled people to act like family members, so they and their children can cut to the front of the line.
These so-called “black-market Disney guides” use the amusement park’s policy of allowing handicapped guests to bring up to six guests to a “more convenient entrance.” The price for such a service runs $130 an hour or $1,040 for an eight-hour day at the park. Compare that to Disney’s VIP guided tours, which go from $315 to $380 per hour.
It’s reportedly organized by a tour company out of Florida, and is apparently all the rage among the one percenters.
“My daughter waited one minute to get on ‘It’s a Small World’ — the other kids had to wait 2 1/2 hours,” one customer reportedly said. “You can’t go to Disney without a tour concierge. This is how the 1 percent does Disney.”
That woman claims she, her husband and two young children hired a guide to escort her through the park, using the guide’s motorized scooter with a “handicapped” sign on it. They say they went straight to the front at each and every attraction.
Not just anyone can get this service, as the company reportedly asks for a referral when you call. So if your name isn’t on the upper echelon’s roll call, forget it, you’re back in the line with us common folk. Heaven forbid.
Disney didn’t respond to the Post‘s requests for comment, and the man who runs the tour company denies that his girlfriend, named by the woman in the report as her family’s guide, uses her disability to bypass lines. Instead, he says she has an auto-immune disorder and acknowledged that she uses a scooter on the job.
Rich Manhattan moms hire handicapped tour guides so kids can cut lines at Disney World [New York Post]
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