Some
families with money to burn have found a nefarious way to bypass long
lines at Walt Disney World in Florida: hire a disabled person to be part
of your family for the day.
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.”
It seems rich New Yorkers pay thousands of dollars to an Orlando area service
that rents out disabled people to accompany them to Walt Disney World in
order to jump the lines. The article says that there's a word-of-mouth
underground in New York's priciest private schools, in which parents
pass on the details of the service, which is allegedly called Dream
Tours Florida:
Passing around the rogue guide service’s phone number recently became a
shameless ritual among Manhattan’s private-school set during spring
break. The service asks who referred you before they even take your
call.
“It’s insider knowledge that very few have and share carefully,” said
social anthropologist Dr. Wednesday Martin, who caught wind of the
underground network while doing research for her upcoming book “Primates
of Park Avenue.”
“Who wants a speed pass when you can use your black-market handicapped guide to circumvent the lines all together?” she said.
“So when you’re doing it, you’re affirming that you are one of the privileged insiders who has and shares this information.”
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