At Disney World, the magic doesn’t unfold the same way for everyone. In his essay, Daniel Currell places two families in sharp relief: one stumbling through a gauntlet of 6 a.m. wake-up calls, app alerts, and frantic booking scrambles; the other drifting effortlessly from ride to ride, their day smoothed by money. The contrast is stark and telling. A park once imagined as a democratic playground for American families has hardened into a stratified experience, a theme-park parable of the country’s widening inequality. The fairy tale endures—but only for those who can afford it.
When you are at a Disney park, you will inevitably hear “When You Wish Upon a Star,” Disney’s unofficial anthem. Disney adopted that song in the 1940s; its second line, “makes no difference who you are,” encapsulated its egalitarian ethos. Now the song reads to me like nostalgic, middle-class cosplay that helps us relive the Disney that Walt created. The roughly $90 to get your family cut-the-line access to a premier ride (on top of what, for a family of four, could easily be over $700 dropped on tickets already) is the real Disney, the one the market created.
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