October 27, 2023, 5:44 PM ·
Let’s talk about one of the more disrespectful, selfish things that people can do when they visit Walt Disney World, or any other theme park for that matter.Line jumping.
We’re not talking about the sanctioned line jumping of skip passes, such as Lightning Lane. Sure, some fans might see upcharge front-of-line passes as disrespectful to other guests, too, but that’s another topic for another day. Today, let’s focus on old-school, “push your way to the front” line jumping.Visitors try to jump the queues at every theme and amusement park, but I am going to single out the Disney parks today for the simple reason that those are the parks where I see line jumping the most. Other parks either seem to have more unyielding guests who find ways to, uh, dissuade potential jumpers… or don’t have queues long enough to bother jumping. (I will leave to the audience to decide which parks fit which categories.)Some line jumping deserves a pass. Many of us who have raised kids know that little ones can pick the most inopportune times to announce, with great urgency, “I gotta go.” If one parent take the child out to the toilet and wants to rejoin the rest of the family later, I don’t want to be the one to get in their way.Unfortunately, the selfish among us know that and take advantage. Of course, they rarely have a small child with them, but the story’s the same – “I’m just catching up with my family.” If there’s just one person trying this, that’s plausible. But when it’s a group of multiple teens or young adults, sorry, but everyone knows you are trying to cheat the line here. If part of your group went ahead of you, they can step aside and let the rest of us pass until you catch up.So what do you do in this situation? In a perfect world, parks would employ enough experienced and empowered queue monitors to eject any wanna-be line skippers without other guests having to get involved. Since that rarely, happens, other fans basically have two choices: ignore it, or get in their way.
Having grown up with both a sense of outrage for rule breaking and a desire to avoid social interactions at all costs, this one’s a doozy for me. That’s why I was so attracted to the idea of virtual queuing. As Syndrome might say, “if everyone jumps the line, then no one can.” But Disney’s implementation of virtual queues instead just puts dedicated fans at risk of not being able to experience the ride they want most. So, the sooner that Disney-style VQs go away, the better, as far as I am concerned.Which brings us back to the question at hand. What to do about line jumpers? When answering, I would ask that you pick your initial, gut reaction to someone trying to push past you in line.
Creative solutions welcomed in the comments, of course. And please tell us which parks, Disney or not, are doing a good job of policing their queues.
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