The Dark Side of Disney (5 page)

1.
Sneak in through the exits
.

Depending on the time of day there could be anywhere from 1-5 exit gates open. Obviously you’ll want to go later in the evening when there are fewer employees per gate, and more people are leaving so you can get lost in the crowd. You’ll want to go through the handicapped entrance as opposed to jumping the turnstile.

Honestly the only time jumping the exit gates is going to be even slightly non-risky is right after Illuminations/Fantasmic/Wishes ends, and the parks are clearing out. But at that point, why are you even bothering? In fact, a CM tells me that anytime after the evening entertainment finishes is essentially “open gate time” because they need all available manpower to herd people out of the park. So if you really just want to visit the park for 30-45 minutes, nobody is going to try to stop you from walking in at the end of the night.

Magic Kingdom Exit Queue

Epcot’s Entrance queue – the far right is the service entrance

Disney Hollywood Studios Entry Gate

As an aside, there is no good time to jump the exit gates at Animal Kingdom because it closes too early, and there is no big event at the end of the evening to cause massive exit crowds.

2.
Sneak in through the entrances
.

“I don’t like hearing about people jumping the turnstiles,” a CM told me. “Too many times I’ve seen kids jump the turnstiles and they end up kicking the gate attendants in the process, sometimes on purpose. A lot of the attendants are older folks, and I’ve seen them get seriously hurt. It ends up looking like a scene from “Clockwork Orange”, with these sad old people lying on the ground bleeding, and a bunch of hooligan kids running off laughing. I don’t care as much that these kids are getting in for free, because they probably wouldn’t have paid regardless, but when they start hurting other Cast Members, that’s when I get mad.” Moral of the story: don’t jump the turnstiles – use the handicapped gates instead! Oh, and don’t kick old people. Unless they deserve it.

Don’t kick old people!

Unfortunately for Disney’s bottom line, this method of sneaking in seems fairly foolproof. Especially in the mornings during holidays there is simply no way you can be stopped if you decide to walk through a handicapped entry gate. The gate attendant will yell at you to stop, but assuming you’ve worn non-descript clothes you will blend into the crowd in a millisecond.

I’ve personally seen this method used many times, and the best part is it’s usually done by foreign tourists who have no intention of sneaking in, they’re just oblivious to their surroundings and think they’re bypassing the first of many long lines!

Honestly, sneaking into the parks is just plain stupid unless you’re only there for a day and don’t care if you get kicked out. Because do you really want to spend every day of your vacation worrying if that’ll be the day you go to Disney Jail? Wouldn’t you rather just pay for tickets (a relatively small amount compared to the rest of your vacation expenses) for some peace of mind?

Then again… go ahead and do it! Sneak in, get caught, and take pictures of Disney Jail for me so that I can exploit the fruits of your misfortune in the next edition of this book!

That said, there are ways you can get free tickets to WDW, which is almost the same as sneaking in, except it’s (mostly) legit. You have two options for free tickets: 1) timeshare presentations, and 2) becoming good friends with a 15-Year+ cast member.

Free Tickets from Timeshare Presentations:

Do you have nerves of steel and the willpower of an annoying mule who won’t move no matter how much you yell at him? Do you not mind wasting hours of your precious vacation touring a resort that can’t hold a candle to any of the WDW Deluxes and listening to a greasy salesman who is going to berate and insult you? Do you really, really, really not want to pay for your tickets? Well then, you might be a perfect candidate for a Timeshare Presentation!

Drive down International Boulevard and you’ll see plenty of booths advertising these things. Or just go to the lobby of one of the multitude of cheap offsite motels and they’ll likely have a kiosk promoting “FREE DISNEY TICKETS!!!” Tell the person at the booth or kiosk that you’re interested in attending the timeshare presentation, and they’ll tell you when and where to go. Make sure you get the details up front! Usually you AND your spouse need to attend, and in return for 90 minutes of your time you’ll get two free tickets to a WDW park. If these conditions are not specified in writing, move onto the next booth.

But getting into one of these presentations is the easy part. Getting out is the chore. My wife and I discovered this unpleasant dichotomy when we went on a timeshare presentation pretty soon after we were married. We didn’t have a lot of spending money, so free tickets seemed like a great way to have some extra cash for a romantic dinner at La Cellier. Wrong!

We scheduled a presentation with a company who’d sent us a mailer months earlier and they told us they’d pick us up at our Disney resort, so we didn’t even need to rent a car. Since we’d used DME, renting a car to get free tickets wouldn’t have made much financial sense. But we learned the first lesson of timeshare presentations: Never, EVER get into a car with your salesman!

Anyway, the sales guy drives up in a nice BMW, and he’s got this charming Greek accent and is wearing a white suit and looks like George Hamilton, except not quite as leathery. So there goes my wife, right? She’s fawning all over him, and I have to admit the guy is pretty suave. We get in the car and he actually seems nice and he shows us pictures of his family and then tells us how he was a double-agent spy for the UK in Greece, which doesn’t make much sense, but why would someone lie about that? And then I realize I’ve been sucked in by this guy and we’ve already driven 35 minutes and I have no idea where we are! Like, we’re in the middle of a swamp somewhere!

I’m a little freaked now, but I try my best to calmly ask George Hamilton where the fuck we are, and he says, “Oh, we’re almost to the resort,” but it comes out sounding more like, “Oh, we’re driving out to a secluded location where I can rape you and your wife and then feed you to the alligators!” I look at my wife with an “oh shit!” expression and she’s still looking at George with googly eyes but then she sees my expression of horror and suddenly snaps out of it, looks out the window at our desolate surroundings, and then she starts freaking out a bit, too.

Just as I’m about to fucking karate chop George in the throat and steal his car, we actually do pull up to a “resort”. The first thing we see is this really nice St.Augustine sort of old-Spanish building with a bunch of balconies overlooking a big lake with a boat dock. It’s pretty impressive. Except then it becomes plainly obvious that there’s this one nice building in the center and then a bunch of dilapidated husks of identical buildings around the rest of the lake, all abandoned and overgrown and looking like they’re covered with mildew or something. It’s creepy.

George walks us into the main building and into a big conference room, where there are a few other couples who have obviously been here a while. He offers us some sodas and cookies, and tells us that now we’re going to “get down to business”. So he goes through this whole spiel that sounds like an awesome deal, and I’m almost convinced, but then I remember that a) we have no money, and b) this place is in the middle of nowhere and most of the buildings are in ruins, and there’s no fucking way I’d ever want to vacation here. Which I pretty much tell George, in so many words.

Well, he’s not fazed a bit. He cuts the price by 50% and starts going on about how we can trade into other resorts all around the world, blah blah blah. We hear a champagne cork pop a few tables over as a beaten-down couple celebrates their new major investment. George looks agitated, and it goes downhill from there. Long story short he keeps talking, I keep saying “no”, he drops the price like eight more times, I still say, “no”, and he gets increasingly angry and starts going on about how he has to feed his kids, and how I’m making them starve or some such nonsense.

That’s when I look at my watch and notice three hours have gone by since we left our resort. Now I’m pissed. I tell George flat out that we’re not buying a timeshare at this dump, and that if I wanted to buy a timeshare to begin with I’d do it on eBay where I can literally get it for a penny, and that we just want our Disney tickets and want to go back to our resort.

Now he’s really fuming but I can tell he doesn’t want to freak out in front of the other couples, so he says “Fine, come with me to get your tickets,” and brings us into a small office where another guy is sitting behind a desk.

This office looks like it’s from the 50s with dirty wood paneling and a rusted metal desk, and the guy behind the desk has a bad toupee that also looks like it’s from the 50s. My wife and I sit in equally rusty chairs as George looms behind us, arms crossed. So then toupee guy proceeds to basically yell at us for ten minutes about how we’re shitty people because we’ve wasted George’s time and now he might get fired and he’s yelling at me about how I’m a cheapskate, and it’s really pretty awful and my wife is crying but I don’t want to hit the guy because I want to get out of there with our Disney tickets and if I knock him out we probably won’t get them! So I just sit there and smile and finally he stops yelling and I calmly say, “I want my goddamned tickets, and I want to go back to our resort now or I’m calling the police and telling them you kidnapped us.”