The most profoundly depressing piece of journalism I engaged with last week wasn’t about war, public health or the rise of authoritarianism. It was about Disney World — or, rather, what Disney World says about how our culture has split in two, one for the shrinking middle class, the other for the rich.
Daniel Currell and photographer Paola Chapdelaine put together an opinion piece for The New York Times (gift link) that told the story of Scarlett Cressel, a 60-year-old disabled school-bus driver from Virginia who saved for years so that she and her family could visit the resort.
What they encountered was a two-tier system that Disney and other corporations have been embracing for many years, and that has been accelerating since the COVID pandemic began to ease. You have to pay massive fees to avoid standing in line for top attractions. You have to stay at an expensive Disney hotel or other Disney-owned accommodations even to get access to the best deals.
Cressel and her family couldn’t afford any of that. Essentially Disney has morphed into a playground for the wealthy, with the masses left to press their faces up against the window to see what’s going on inside. Currell writes:
For most of the park’s history, Disney was priced to welcome people across the income spectrum, embracing the motto “Everyone is a V.I.P.” In doing so, it created a shared American culture by providing the same experience to every guest. The family that pulled up in a new Cadillac stood in the same lines, ate the same food and rode the same rides as the family that arrived in a used Chevy. Back then, America’s large and thriving middle class was the focus of most companies’ efforts and firmly in the driver’s seat.
That middle class has so eroded in size and in purchasing power — and the wealth of our top earners has so exploded — that America’s most important market today is its affluent. As more companies tailor their offerings to the top, the experiences we once shared are increasingly differentiated by how much we have.
Cressel is a perpetually optimistic sort. By the end of the piece, she pronounces herself pleased with her trip, despite the restrictions and indignities she encountered, and is already planning her next visit.
What really drove home the inequities that Disney now encourages, though, was the very different experience of Shawn Conahan, an affluent tech executive from California who took his 13-year-old daughter to Disney World, paying hundreds of extra dollars to skip lines and get into attractions that ordinary people might not have even been able to access.
I found myself feeling surprisingly emotional, not resenting the easy access that Conahan and his daughter enjoyed (“the best day ever,” she said) but, rather, resenting how the Disney experience has deteriorated from what it used to be. I’ll close with a couple of personal anecdotes.
When our two kids were younger, we were able to visit Disney World three times. We couldn’t afford it, but my in-laws belonged to a Disney vacation club, and we were able to stay for free at a time-share that was not only lovely but that gave us access to some of the perks that Conahan and his daughter were able to enjoy and that Cressel couldn’t. This was in the late 1990s and early ’00s, so the disparity wasn’t as great as it is today. Still, our kids were incredibly lucky to be able to enjoy that kind of access.
Then, two years ago, my now-adult daughter and I visited Graceland. She’d always been a huge Elvis Presley fan, and she’d saved for several years in order to be able to pay her way. For the Graceland tour, I encouraged her to pay for premium access, figuring this would be her one and only trip. I’m glad we did. Among other things, we were able to get into a special museum where Elvis’ sequined jackets and boots were kept. She was smitten, and it didn’t seem unfair to pay more in order to get more.
While we were walking the grounds, though, several other tourists saw us and joined our group. Our guide sternly told them to leave because we had paid extra for our tour and they were part of the unwashed masses. I was embarrassed and appalled.
But this is where we are at in 2025. Increasingly, folks in the shrinking middle class are being shut out of experiences that we once took for granted as part of our common culture. It’s no wonder that we’ve become so angry and resentful. You might even say that it’s one of the ingredients that has helped fuel the rise of authoritarianism.
