Stephen Levitt of Freakonomics fame recently posted about his family’s experience at Disney.  He makes some valid points about the “Disney experience” i.e. you end up spending a lot of time standing in line and it’s expensive.  As I posted before we just did the Disney thing last week and although we didn’t experience many long lines, the benefit of visiting at a non-peak time of year and early in the week, I can definitely vouch that it IS expensive.

Levitt also asks two questions:

1) Why is demand for Disneyworld so great?

2) Why do they make you stick your fingers into some machine when entering Disneyworld? What is the point?

My take is that although Disneyworld is expensive and puts you through a lot of waiting they do the basics well:  the place is much cleaner than your average theme park, the staff tends to be more pleasant than at your average theme park, the food is definitely better than at other theme parks and they offer more than roller coasters and spinning rides with their “multimedia” experiences.  They also have an inherent marketing advantage with their cartoons, movies, networks, etc.

Yet with all that I don’t think we’ll go back until it’s time for the grandkids.  There really isn’t a lot of stuff for the kids once they get into the teen years (my oldest two definitely found the shows to be a little cheesey on this trip and they’re just 12 and 13) and as an adult I have to say you tend to suffer through the experience for the sake of the kids.

As for the finger thing I found out the hard way that they use the finger scanner to tie you to a specific access card.  I don’t know if they use fingerprints or some other biometric but I know it definitely works since I mixed up my daughter’s card with mine and they had to re-code my card to let me in.

The paranoid part of my brain also thinks maybe the Bush administration has something to do with it…nah.