Daniel Currell, a management consultant, has a fascinating and depressing op-ed up at the New York Times site [gift link!] about how Disney’s theme parks have become virtually unaffordable for the average American, indeed even the average middle class American. He writes in part,

…We all judge our well-being against something, typically our past and our peers. Through either of those lenses, the Disney parks — and many similar institutions of American culture — may offer a piece of the puzzle. Compared with the past, a Disney trip is more expensive, to be sure, but perhaps more important, it feels much more expensive, because at every turn one is being invited to level up and spend more. Thanks to social media, we can now see the experiences that divide us. Go to Instagram and search for #Club33, the invitation-only clubs hidden within Disney properties. What you see there will not make you feel a kinship with your fellow man, unless you are one of the very few invited in. America’s 20th century was a fortunate moment when we could rely on companies like Disney to deliver rich and unifying elements of our culture. Walt Disney hoped that his audience would have “no racial, national, political, religious or social differences”; he wanted to appeal to everyone, in no small part because appealing to everyone was profitable. It was a time when big institutions were trusted, and the culture they created was shared by nearly all Americans…The market, and increasingly the culture, is dominated by the affluent. And technology is enabling companies to see these previously invisible class divides and act on them. Based on what we earn, we see different ads, stand in different lines, eat different food, stay in different hotels, watch the parade from different sections and on and on. What’s profitable today is not unification. It’s segmentation.

The article explains that a trip to Disneyland or Walt Disney World is now likely to cost a family of four a base cost of $700 on ride tickets alone, plus admission costs. The families who can afford it pay roughly $90 to get front-of-the-line access to a single premier ride, otherwise a less affluent family wait up to an hour waiting to get on. It follows the travails of one middle class family on the dream trip to Disney World it had saved up for over several years. Seven days in Orlando cost about $8,000 for two adults and three children, not counting travel and lodging at an off-site hotel. That was 15% of what the family earned year after taxes, and it was still an inferior experience to what the “elite” could pay for.

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