Disneyworld Annual Passholders Group (or the authorities on WDW and unrivaled snobbery)
In the summer of 2018 my wife and I found ourselves in a position to become Disney annual passholders. We live seventy one miles across the Green Swamp Wilderness from the front gates of the Magic Kingdom. We have a daughter, a second grader, that has grown up going to the parks. She’s experienced them in the same fashion that many children from middle-class, Central Floridian families might. She’s at the perfect age to enjoy it all, tall enough to ride it all, and not scared to ride any of it. Last year we found ourselves going to the parks fairly regularly. We ran the numbers and realized we may be better off to pony up the cash and go ahead and buy annual passes. With minor trepidation, we cut the mouse a sizable chunk of cheddar and soon after we received our Mickey magnets in the mail.
Our semi-regular trips to WDW became regular. Eventually they bordered on frequent. If you want to go deep in that culture, it goes waaaayyyy deeper than the average Joe can imagine. Having the annual pass allows you to be choosy on how you spend your time and the pace at which you explore the parks. It allows you to appreciate details that otherwise go unnoticed when you’re having to rush through the parks to get your money’s worth from a single-day admission ticket. There are lots of secret or hidden interesting details and there’s a group of people that can tell you all about them……and any other detail about the parks you can imagine, whether you want the information or not. That group happens to be a particular WDW annual passholder facebook group.
Not long after we had our annual passes, my wife found the passholder group on facebook. We both joined because we knew there would be a wealth of information in there along with tips and tricks and shortcuts and the like. We were right. All of that was there as expected. The unexpected is what took me a little by surprise. I watched people, everyday people, display the sort of “holier than thou” behavior generally reserved for those at the cool kids lunch table.
I watched grown adults jump at the opportunity to correct someone when they mixed up their Disney history facts. I watched people berate others for making their own Disney inspired t-shirts and using the wrong shade of ink on a character’s dress. I watched them drag cast members under the bus for not showing their child more attention in some encounter, nevermind the fact that a hundred people were waiting in line behind them. They piss and moan about certain things taking too long and then whine about Disney removing the magic when they streamline processes to appease them.
Their childishness was off-putting to me. I mean seriously, WWWDD? << I’m not sure if that’s a thing but you get the sentiment. Walt wouldn’t tolerate that foolishness. He’d put out his cigarette, don a four-fingered, cartoonish, white Mickey glove and slap the Dole-Whip out your mouth. These morons bought an annual pass like anyone else in that group, then treated their Disney trivia prowess like a license to flex on those genuinely just seeking information. I hope the lot of them get stuck on the monorail indefinitely.
We didn’t renew our passes this year. We made the best of them last year but decided to wait until the park updates are complete to renew them. It’s ok to be passionate about something, even up to the point of things getting a little nerdy. When that passion warps into some superiority complex and you talk down to your fellow man, on the internet no less, you might as well be pulling the plug on Walt’s cryogenically frozen body yourself. Using a facebook group as a vehicle for belittling is lame. Grow up Mouseketeers. -IJ
