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Rich families hire disabled people to beat queues at Disney

B

Brookes

Giga Poster
RICH families are paying disabled people to pose as relatives so they can jump the queues at Disney World, it has been revealed.

One "black market" tour guide has been exposed allegedly hiring herself out for £680 a day to parents who don't want their kids to wait for the rides.

The Florida theme park allows visitors who need a wheelchair or mobility scooter to take up to six family members with them to the front of the queue.

The system is now being abused by those with enough money to pay, it is claimed.

Tour guide Jacie Christiano, who has an auto-immune disorder, is raking in cash by pretending to be part of rich clients' families, according to the New York Post.

Her phone number is reportedly being passed round wealthy Manhattan mums planning a Disney World trip with their pampered kids.

One mother who claimed she hired Jacie told the newspaper: “My daughter waited one minute to get on It’s a Small World — the other kids had to wait two-and-a-half hours.

“You can’t go to Disney without a tour concierge. This is how the one percent does Disney.”

She claimed she hired the disabled guide through Dream Tours Florida, which charges $130 (£85) an hour, or $1,040 (£680) for an eight-hour day.

The woman said she paid the guide to escort her, her husband and their one-year-old son and five-year-old daughter through the park in a motorised scooter with a “handicapped” sign on it.

The group was sent straight to an auxiliary entrance at the front of each attraction.

Grateful mums say the service is faster and better value than Disney's official VIP service, with "fast passes" costing up to £250 an hour.

The Post reported how passing round the rogue guide's number has become a "shameless ritual" among mums of private-school kids in Manhattan.

The company asks people who referred them before they will take the call.

Social anthropologist Dr Wednesday Martin, who has investigated the network, said: “It’s insider knowledge that very few have and share carefully.

“Who wants a speed pass when you can use your black-market handicapped guide to circumvent the lines altogether?

“So when you’re doing it, you’re affirming that you are one of the privileged insiders who has and shares this information.”

Ryan Clement runs Dream Tours Florida with his girlfriend Jacie.

He said she has an auto-immune disorder and that she uses a scooter on the job but denied she uses her disability to bypass queues.

Disney did not answer the newspaper's requests for comment.
Click to expand...

Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... z2TIoTIzVw
 
Re: Rich families hire disabled people to beat queues at Dis

What can you say really.

Some people just take the piss and its not fair on people that do need the service and people in the main queue.

Problem is how the hell can Disney prove that people are doing this
 
Re: Rich families hire disabled people to beat queues at Dis

Who could honestly be asked to pay that much and go to that much trouble to skip a queue. I mean, do those people have no conscious?
 
Re: Rich families hire disabled people to beat queues at Dis

It’s a Small World never has a queue of ""two-and-a-half hours" maybe... 30 minutes
 
Re: Rich families hire disabled people to beat queues at Dis

Let's put this in perspective.

Yes, it's morally questionable, but realistically it's a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of guests who can
a. willingly pay someone $1000 and
b. get the "insider information" and the contacts for the agency doing it in the first place.

You're not going to get more than one family doing this on any given day. It's much more likely to be fewer than a couple of times a month at most, given that it's a word-of-mouth system among the super wealthy. It will have absolutely no bearing on the waiting times of legitimately disabled guests or people waiting in the regular queue.

Yes, it might give people ideas, but guess what - those ideas have been floating around in a different form for decades, which is why parks require proof of disability these days. I remember a group of teenage lads hiring a wheelchair in Flamingoland and just skipping rides since there was no wristband or proof system back then. At the end of the day, they just returned the wheelchair and the "disabled" friend they had originally wheeled in from the car park just got up and walked away. It was a horrible thing to do perhaps, but we actually almost admired the audacity of it.

I'm not condoning it, but just being level-headed about the whole thing.
 
Re: Rich families hire disabled people to beat queues at Dis

This is amazing <3 Best of all is the disabled person making a shed load of money. Props to the entrepreneurial cripples. :--D
 
Re: Rich families hire disabled people to beat queues at Dis

That is AMAZING.

I love the audacity of it, and I love the way they're making money off it.

It's not ruining anyone's day, and it's a way of someone making loads of money off the real Housewives. So why not?
 
Re: Rich families hire disabled people to beat queues at Dis

If people are that stupid to pay it, why not? I mean why would you pay a grand for 8 hours, that's just such a waste of money.

Idiots doing idiotic things. Good for those who are capitalizing on it.
 
Re: Rich families hire disabled people to beat queues at Dis

I agree with Ben and Ed.

I hate the way the rich are despised and vilified because they use their money to gain an advantage.

I don't see what's wrong tbh. Disabled person make a few quid and gets a day out, rich person is slightly less rich and little Tarquin and Prudence goes to Disney without having to queue.

I've managed to skip queues at theme parks before by knowing somebody who is "disabled".
 
Re: Rich families hire disabled people to beat queues at Dis

And this is why the disabled virtual queuing pass makes sense.

Sent from my HTC Wildfire S A510e using Tapatalk 2
 
Re: Rich families hire disabled people to beat queues at Dis

It's the tour guides making the money though, the disabled person is probably just getting a free day out.
 
Re: Rich families hire disabled people to beat queues at Dis

^ Have another look at the article. It's the SAME person who goes along as a "guide". She wouldn't be doing it for the "day out" if it's a regular thing. Bitch is making serious bank.

Good on her.
 
Re: Rich families hire disabled people to beat queues at Dis

Yeah looks like I mis read that the 1st time.
 
Re: Rich families hire disabled people to beat queues at Dis

Yeah, I think it's pretty fab, but OUTRAGE and all that :lol:

Don't have a problem with it as long as nobody complains if they get caught and banned or whatever, but it's not like Disney would want that kind of bad press and **** storm.

Joey said:
And this is why the disabled virtual queuing pass makes sense.
Click to expand...

Absolutely agreed too. If Disney don't have it, then tough on them, they're allowing people to abuse the system. The Six Flags fast pass system works in pretty much an identical way, Disney could offer it as a free service to disabled guests and stop this, if they wanted to. As Gavin say though, it probably is such a tiny problem that it doesn't even start to register on the Disney "must note" scale.
 
Re: Rich families hire disabled people to beat queues at Dis

I shouldn't laugh, but that's HILARIOUS. The family clearly have NO morals.
 
Re: Rich families hire disabled people to beat queues at Dis

No but they have LOTS OF MONEY. Which is all that matters in the world.
 
Re: Rich families hire disabled people to beat queues at Dis

Well, nice entrepreneurship of the disabled woman, though. If life gives you lemons and all that...

Though, I suspect the ride ops would get to know her eventually. I can't see this work in the long run. But by that time, she would have made a nice sum.
 
Re: Rich families hire disabled people to beat queues at Dis

The story is starting to make national headlines, and I just love reading some of the comments from people on the story. Really give me a good laugh. Yahoo has a bunch of just ridiculousness in the comment section.
 
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