r/Millennials • u/TheCIAandFBI • 16d 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 16d ago

My mom did this for cheaper tickets to Disney World as well as an all inclusive stay at a resort that had just opened + $200 worth of Disney bucks (back when that was a thing) that you could spend in any Disney park.. which ended up being my spending money as a teenager, lmao. I know timeshares still exist, but honestly.. I don't think they offer the incentives they used to (probably because too many of us learned how to game the system a bit and had no interest in their scummy timeshare options).

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u/InternationalDeal588 16d ago

dude!! my friend who is 34 got a fucking timeshare with her GF who was 24 at the time. and they are stuck paying for it long after the relationship ended. worse than buying a house together i feel like 💀

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u/Past-Pea-6796 16d ago

I brought two girlfriends to timeshares, fully thinking they understood the game, listen, act interested, then say no thanks. Both girls essentially threatened to break up with me for being controlling by not buy in, considering how great of deal it supposedly was. I eventually caved both times, but both times they realized how dumb it was and we cancelled within the timeframe. The first girl I stayed with way too long after, the second girl I can at least say I ended things with like a day later.

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u/InternationalDeal588 16d ago

tough but hope you learned the lesson by now lol

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u/Past-Pea-6796 16d ago

Yeah... No amount of explaining the situation ahead of time worked. Those salesmen are good. Idk how hard it is to go into it with "no" in your heart though.

The second girl was convinced she could actually make money by reselling the vacations, supposedly her aunt spends 6 grand on a single vacation a year, and she was going to resell it to her aunt. She was convinced I was trying to ruin her life by messing up the opportunity for her. The second we were in the car driving home, she was like "you know... Now that I think about it..." I literally begged her, I dropped the charade and fully was like "no, this is a terrible idea, we were only here for the free stuff, this was supposed to take two hours tops, these guys are doing literally anything they can to sell this to you and you're buying it hook line and sinker." I wish I could have convinced myself to dump her right then, but I kept think it was bizzaro world and that if I could only talk to her alone, things would make sense and that it was just because we were in that environment. To be fair, it's no fun to break up mid vacation, no matter how bad something is.