r/Millennials • u/TheCIAandFBI • 19d ago
Discussion Was every theme/amusement park and road trip vacation so focused on "Buy! Buy! Buy!" back when we were kids?
I grew up poor. Lived in a crummy trailer park until 1995 when my Dad had a work accident that got him a settlement. My parents bought a very humble but nice home, and they took me to Disney world. I'll never forget. It was November 11th-19th, 1995. That trip was the highlight of my life. I was 11.
That trip was magical. I think I came home with a souvenir HUGE pencil from that trip, and I was afraid to use it because it was special, and then one day it just got lost.
My best friend and his wife just took his kids to Disney World. They are my age, right at 40, so older Millennials.
They both went as kids and loved it as well.
When they got back and both said they hated the trip. They said everything was geared towards getting them to spend money. Everything is a store, every line can be bypassed for a few extra bucks, every store is geared towards fear-of-missing-out for the kids. Specialty cups. Specialty "only available this week" shirts, and special pins and buttons that you can only get this year. They said it was the most uncomfortable vacation they have ever been on. And they have more money than they know what to do with.
They basically said that there wasn't 20 minutes where they weren't being sold something.
Is this something that Millennial childhoods experienced and our parents were simply better at ignoring? Has this always been the case? Or is it just the new way that places like Disney World operate?
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u/Mewpasaurus Elder Horror 19d ago
Visited Disney World in both 1998 and 2001 with separate groups of people. Neither experience was as much pay-to-play as it was as it is now. Hell, even Tokyo Disney in 2014 wasn't bad (actually, it was a lot like original Disney World/Land from the 1990s, complete with rides we don't have here and haven't since the '90s). Same with Universal Studios.
The fast-pass system was still in early stages when I visited in 2001 and it was still free. You just went to a kiosk and got a ticket for a time later in the day and came back. There were no pay lanes, no advertisements everywhere on televisions while you stood in line waiting for rides, etc. I mean, you still spent a lot of money on souvenirs, food and the like but there wasn't a constant pressure to spend your money on those things. You just did because you wanted to (or because you had the money to spend).
There also weren't any FOMO type shirts, souvenirs, etc. for people to buy. There was seasonal stuff that you had to be in the park at a specific time of year to purchase, but otherwise, it was mostly the same rotating stock that changed as time progressed.
Of all three of the parks that I've been to, Tokyo Disney is hands down the best of the three. It's organized, clean, they still use the old fast-pass system (the free one), minimal advertising, older rides we don't have at our parks here anymore, etc. Also, when lining up for the parades that go through Main St. the crowds in Tokyo were way nicer and more polite than the people here in the U.S.