WORDS FROM W.W. April 6, 2019
It was crowded, but coming from Colorado where we had just recently experienced a type of blizzard called a “bomb cyclone” we were okay with the crowds in the midst of sunny 70 degree weather.
None of us had ever been to Universal Studios-Orlando, so we trudged the pedestrian lanes through the park together, dodging kids darting in front of us and clueless visitors who kept stopping to take family photos in the most inconvenient places.
Estimated wait times were posted in front of each attraction…30 minutes for this one, a quick 15 minute wait at that one. Our family of seven charted our course. What did we want to include in our day? What did we want the kids to experience? Where would we eat lunch and what would we eat?
And so we got in line for our first ride attraction, a 45 minute wait for an experience that was surely going to have longer lines later on in the day. We inched our way forward like kids in the elementary school lunch line.
To the side of us, however, I noticed that other people kept passing us by. It was as if they were in the express lane of the highway and we were in backed up traffic. I asked my daughter, Kecia, what the “zip-by-us” line happened to be?
“That’s for people with preferred status!”
“Preferred status?”
“You can pay an extra fee and skip the lines.”
“Oh!” I pondered the thought. I had just forked over $25 to park, paid a king’s ransom for our admission tickets, and now Universal was tempting me to join the illusion of being a part of the upper crust for another fee that bordered on extortion.
Later on I checked to see what that extra fee would be…$10, $20? Would it be as much as the parking?
$139.95 per person…on top of the regular admission fee of $115!
Let’s see! Let me do the math! That would be for our family of 7…ahh…$1,784.65, plus the $50 to park two vehicles…$1,834.65…plus lunch!
What does a willingness to spend $2,000 for a day at an amusement park say about us? Does it say something more about our impatience in waiting or our desire to receive preferential treatment? Or is it an indication that our culture now has an excess of impatient people who want to be pampered and made to feel special?
The fact that plenty of people strutted by our “poor man’s line” hinted that the last option may be closer to the truth than we want to admit.
Humility did not rush by us that day at Universal. It stood to the side so it didn’t get trampled. In a crowded place it went unnoticed and disregarded.
Such is life these days in more ways, it seems, than an amusement park!
Words from WW Blog 