Disneyland: The Backside of Happiness

Published August 23, 2005

By C. W. Oberleitner

Captain Hook, Cruella De Vil, Michael Eisner, who would you rate as Disney's all-time greatest villain? When it comes to Disneyland none of them even comes close, at least among the Magic Kingdom's Internet fan community, to the villain of choice, that professional Magic Kingdom visitor known, not too affectionately as the Annual Passholder.

Rabble Rouser

Mark Eades is probably the last person you'd ever think of as being an agitator. Handsome and younger looking than his 51 years, he has that bright sunny type of disposition that one readily associates with cast members from Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI), which is where Eades last worked for Disney.

Eades, after receiving his degree in Communications "with an emphasis on film" from California State University at Fullerton, began his career with the Mouse in the early '70s. After five years working in food service and operations at Disneyland, all the while keeping his eyes and ears open, he moved up to Burbank and took a job in the mailroom at Walt Disney Productions.

Hollywood mailrooms are well known for their ability to make talented and ambitions people well known, which is why, as Eades pointed out, "To get into the mailroom (at Disney), you had to have a Bachelor's Degree."

Eades talent and easy-going manner led him from one introduction to another around the Disney lot where he worked with folks such as up-and-coming Disney artists John Lasseter and Tim Burton. He eventually wound up in the Film Production Department of WED Enterprises, the previous incarnation of WDI, where he remained until 1993.

Eades is now a freelance writer working primarily in the field of sports programming. From time to time, however, he contributes articles to various publications and websites. It was just one such contribution that set off a raging debate among online fans of Disney theme parks.

In an article for JimHillMedia.com entitled Are annual passholders good or bad for the Disney theme parks?, Eades, referring to Disney theme park annual passholders (APs) as "Disney fanatics, (or Disney diehards) Disnoids" said,

First of all, I understand why so many people want to go to the parks. It is an escape from reality, a chance to explore one's childhood and escape the harsh reality of real life. A lot of the diehards go there an awful lot. There are websites devoted to every minutia of the parks that point out the exact times and locations that characters will show up, to pointing out the paint flaking off the wall two stories up on Main Street. All of this duly reported by the nearly daily visits of these annual passholder diehards.

Well, to those people I say this: 'Get a life! You are no longer helping Disney, you are hurting it! Why? Because you cost the company more money then you put into its coffers. Not just in real dollars, but in your economic impact.'

Annual passholders are not the end-all and be-all of Disney, but to hear them talk, they are. They are everywhere in the park, choking the fun out of it. I mean pity the poor, full paying, first-time or once-every-few-years visitor. They don't have a chance. They can't enjoy the park as there's a passholder in line in front of them and behind them talking about all the bad things at the park. Or, they explain to the infrequent visitor how to efficiently visit the park and not miss a single ride or show. Well, that might be okay, but if you follow their directions, you won't have any time just to discover things; after all, you've been told by them what to do, where to look, and what to pay attention to. Running around the park like some robot to get through every ride and show is not my cup of tea. I like to visit the park and enjoy the show.

Eades comments lit up the JHM.com discussion boards, as well as those of several other popular Disney related sites. His remarks were vociferously debated from all sides among fans and detractors of Disneyland's annual pass program.

The week before Eades column ran at JHM.com, o-meon.com had published the Disneyland edition of the Grownup Geeks Guide to Disneyland's 50^th Anniversary (How to Have a Good Time on a Busy Day at Disneyland). The guide is a compellation of suggestions on how infrequent and first-time Disneyland guests can get the most out of a visit to the Magic Kingdom. The majority of the guide's suggestions came from Disneyland annual passholders who overwhelmingly advocated that infrequent park guests take their time, relax, and soak in the magic of Disneyland.

It's the End of the World

With so much attention being focused on Disneyland's recent 50^th birthday celebration, the subject of the sins of frequent park flyers hasn't come up much lately. Increasingly, though, over the past several years, APs have become everyone's favorite scapegoat for the decline and fall of western civilization as we know it.

The idea that Disney theme park APs, especially Disneyland's, are a bunch of boorish, obnoxious people with an exaggerated sense of entitlement is not a new one. It surfaces almost anytime someone posts an account online of a close encounter with a park guest acting out in a particularly odious manner. Oddly enough, many of these stories are posted by other APs, who frequently open the discussion by saying they're not like "typical passholders."

Can loutish, bad public behavior really be ascribed to a single group of people?

Airport, the 1968 novel by Arthur Hailey, features a universally recognized character, Marcus Rathbone. Played in the 1970 movie version of the book by the late actor Peter Turgeon, Rathbone is the embodiment of a self anointed entitled individual. He's paid, exorbitantly in his mind, for a plane ticket and by God he's going to get everything he believes that he's, well…entitled to.

Rathbone complains, long and loudly, about everything. "Stewardess, these nuts are stale!" He's the kind of guy that can actually make you wish you'd missed your flight, or at least that he had. He's not even in first class; he's flying coach. And his appearance in Airport predates Disney annual passes by nearly two decades.

The fact is we're living in a world full of people who, for whatever reason, don't seem to believe that they owe their fellowman the slightest courtesy or consideration.

In a recent survey of movie goers, Entertainment Weekly Magazine found that talking during movies and answering and talking on cell phones during movies were two of the most frequent complaints people had about going to the movies. And bad public behavior isn't just limited to theme parks and movie houses.

A former visitors' service assistant at the prestigious Getty Museum in Los Angeles left his job after just one year because, "I just couldn't stand working with the public anymore."

He told the story of a family trying to enter the galleries with sandwiches and drinks. After politely explaining that the museum, which, by the way, is free, could not risk exposing its priceless collections of artwork to food and beverages, he told the family how to find the Getty's outdoor tables and gardens. The former service assistant said, "They gave me horrible looks, became abusive, and then proceeded to unpack their sandwiches and turn the coat check counter into their own personal kitchen."

At other times, he worked at the base of the Getty's tram loading area. The trams carry visitors from the parking and drop off area at the bottom of the hill the museum sits on up to the galleries at the top of the hill. They're electric, unmanned, and feature a variety of graphic as well as audio warnings admonishing visitors to keep away from the electrified tracks. If anything does go wrong, safety mechanisms stop both trams immediately.

"One day, a middle aged man," the former visitors' service assistant said, "brought the whole system to a standstill. He had jumped off the loading platform onto the tracks to retrieve a nickel. We rushed to get him back on the platform and he resisted. He made a big stink about the whole thing. Meanwhile, people were stuck on the trams until we could override the system and get them off, and we had to bring in the bus and shuttle fleet to get the remaining visitors to and from the galleries."

Disharmonic Convergence

With public behavior in such bad shape, how did Disney APs become the whipping boy of choice for so many?

"I really don't know," said Mark Eades, who then began to concede that he might have used too broad a brush while painting APs as the quintessential Disney villain.

At Disneyland, annual passholders are a relatively new thing. The park has always been a favorite with Southern California residents, but it wasn't until sometime after the switch from the famous A thru E ticket books to a single-day admission with unlimited ride access that Disneyland managers began thinking of selling year-round passes to the Magic Kingdom.

Shortly after taking control of Disney, both Michael Eisner and Frank Wells informed investors that one of the first things they were going to do was raise theme park admission prices. When asked how high he would raise prices, Michael Eisner is said to have responded, "Until people stop buying them."

During the past five years, as Disneyland got closer and closer to celebrating its 50^th birthday, Disneyland Resort (DLR) managers began a steady series of price increases. The current cost of a single-day adult admission to Disneyland is $56. Disneyland defines an adult as anyone ten years old or older.

Prices for annual passes increased as well; however, not nearly as dramatically as single day admissions.

Four years ago, to break even on the unrestricted Premium Annual Passport you had to visit Disneyland at least five times. Today, the break-even point is six visits; and that doesn't include the fact that all four DLR passports include admission to Disney's California Adventure, or that several passports also feature discounts on meals and merchandise at selected park and resort eateries and shops. The Premium Annual Passport also includes no-charge parking, a $10/per visit savings.

The combination of excitement surrounding Disneyland's 50^th Anniversary celebration and higher single-day admission prices has lead to a huge increase in the number of annual passes sold each year at the DLR. While Disney does not release sales data, industry sources and published reports estimate the number DLR APs to be around 600,000, with the majority being the unrestricted Premium Annual Passport.

With so many people holding Annual Passports, complete with a variety of perks, in an age of entitlement where cell phone users see nothing wrong with taking calls during movies, is it any wonder that APs have garnered themselves a bad rap among Disney theme park fans?

While Strolling Through the Park One Day

APs are not entirely alone when it comes to being singled out for boorish behavior in the Magic Kingdom. There's a new group of park regulars quickly moving to the top of the list of dearly despised park guests: people with baby strollers, not all of whom, as Mark Eades pointed out, are families with small children.

"Lots of folks use strollers as shopping carts," Eades pointed out. "But most of them are used by families."

Whether it's due to the high cost, or scarcity of, qualified baby sitters, it seems more families than ever are bringing more infants and toddlers than ever to the DLR. So much so that the situation has given rise to a favorite joke among Disneyland cast members (CMs) and park regulars alike. It goes something like this:

A matronly woman and her companion were sitting on a bench taking in the view of Disneyland's Main Street when a mother and father with two screaming kids in two separate strollers stop in front of them and begin to scream at the kids to stop screaming. After several ear splitting minutes, the family moves on, and the matronly woman turns to her companion and says, "this is no place to bring children."

Disneyland has approximately 1,500 strollers available to rent, and on busy days it often feels to park guests as if ten times that number are brought into the park from the outside. The shear volume of parked strollers causes bottlenecks at various locations throughout the park. According to past Disneyland guest relations CMs, each day more than a few guests march into Disneyland's City Hall, which functions as the park's guest relations office, to complain that parked strollers either are creating traffic hazards or that they've been responsible for tripping guests and causing falls.

It's not just the volume of strollers that people complain about either. Parents with strollers are increasingly falling victim to a creeping sense of entitlement. Complaints about parents with strollers caring less about common courtesy and safety are on the rise.

Last month, before they ever even set foot on the grounds of the DLR, several park guests got into a heated discussion while riding the escalator down from the fifth floor of the Mickey and Friends parking structure.

A couple with a front-to-rear tandem stroller held up guests waiting to board the escalator down to the tram plaza as they maneuvered, with some difficulty, the stroller containing their two small children onto the moving stairway. They were joined by a friend who commented to the wife, "They should make these things (the escalators) bigger so it would be easier to get (strollers) onto them."

"That's why they're banned," said a man standing immediately behind the woman who had just made the comment about the need for wider escalators.

"I didn't know that," the woman said. "Why didn't they tell us?"

"It's on the signs on either side of the escalators," the man continued. "Along with the universal ban symbols on either side of the boarding area."

"I missed that," the woman said sheepishly.

"Pay no attention to him," said the mother of two as she struggled to keep the back end of her tandem rig in place while her husband supported the front end, some four feet or more above the step he was standing on.

"He's being facetious," continued the mother, her voice rising in indignation of the type people caught in the act of doing something wrong often use. "He should be minding his own business."

As the mechanical stairway continued its downward trek, the man who first spoke up, now resentful of being put down by the woman with the stroller, said, "Forcing these things (strollers) onto the escalators is a danger to you and your children."

"Mind your own [expletive deleted] business," the mom with the stroller snapped.

"It's also a hazard for the people in front of you," continued the man, undaunted by the mother's outburst. "If this thing comes to a sudden stop, that thing (the stroller) can go flying off into the people in front of you."

The woman holding the rear of the stroller began cursing the man. This caught the attention of her husband who was still steadying the front of the stroller containing his children, which was balanced on the escalator only by its two rear wheels.

The husband came to his wife's aid and began making threatening remarks to the man who had pointed out that he and his wife had ignored the signs banning strollers from the parking structure's escalators. The three traded a barrage of uncivil remarks for the remainder of the journey down to the tram plaza.

At the bottom of the stairs, the angry husband and wife once again held up traffic as they struggled to wrest control of their children's transport. As soon as he could free himself from balancing the front end of the stroller, the husband took off after the man he and his wife had been trading insults with.

We had to wait less than two minutes at the base of the Mickey and Friends parking structure to take pictures of parents juggling kids and strollers on and off the escalators. This photo is just one of nearly a dozen we were able to take in less than ten minutes.

Unless otherwise noted, all images copyright obe-mediaone.

If it were not for being met by a friend on the ground in the tram plaza, the irate husband might have caught up with the man. Instead, the friend counseled the angry father of two to forget about it and let things go.

I caught up with the man who had pointed out that this couple had violated resort rules by bringing a stroller on the escalator.

"Look," he said, still somewhat agitated by the experience, "I sympathize with these people. There's only one elevator for a garage that holds nearly 10,000 cars, and it takes a long time to get down to the trams, but I've seen these escalators come to a stop. It's all you can do to hang on when you're riding by yourself. There's no way you could control one of those things (strollers) if the stairs come to a sudden stop."

I asked this man, who asked not to be identified, how he happened to witness a sudden parking structure escalator stop. He said, "I come here all the time. I'm an annual passholder."

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