Category: Florida

Should Disney sell a planned itinerary?

by philg

Disney supposedly has cut its maximum capacity, but the new maximum still results in multi-hour waits for rides, up to a one-hour wait to get through security before even reaching the ticket booths, no way to get food without waiting in an epic line, etc.

We stayed at a hotel near Disney Springs in mid-March and would not have been able to go to Disney if we’d wanted to because all of the reservation slots had been taken. The guests who had planned months in advance and who did go to the hotel reported having a mediocre or bad experience. They paid extra for the Genie+ system that is supposed to enable getting on rides without waiting in line, but using the app was a huge hassle. We heard about some folks paying an out-of-park planner $1800 to manage their Disney app interactions and then text them with instructions for where to go.

Disney obviously has captured 100 percent of the market for people who want to plan their vacations three months in advance, including which rides they’ll do and where they’ll eat, etc. They also have an offering for people who have an extra $850 per hour to spend on a VIP guide. The guide can’t get guests into restaurants, however, as explained in my 2019 review of this experience. In that review, I posted the following idea:

Plainly the mobs are buying a lot of hotel rooms, food, and souvenirs. But I wonder why Disney doesn’t have “Crowd-hater Days” in each park to capture the market of people who would be willing to pay a lot more to have the 1990s experience. There are four core parks within Disney World. Why not say that every Monday through Thursday one of these parks will be designated “Crowd-hater” and tickets will be sold at whatever price it takes to keep max line length down to 15 minutes? If ticket prices were doubled, for example, I think Disney would actually make more money in ticket revenue since demand should not be cut by more than 50 percent. By using a high price to limit admission to only one park at a time they should still be able to keep all of their hotels filled (tourists who don’t value the less-crowded experience will still go to the other core parks and/or the water parks).

Apparently, Disney is never going to do this. So I have a new idea… a pre-planned itinerary that includes reserved meal stops. It will be like Genie+ except that the guest doesn’t have to plan, think, or do anything other than show up at the pre-planned times and pay for whatever is ordered at the meals. The Disney in-house expert figures out in which order all of the rides should be done so as to minimize walking time. I think that this could easily be sold for 2X the price of a regular park ticket plus Genie+ and the cost to Disney and impact on the park should be the same as if someone diligently used Genie+ as designed. Perhaps there is a risk of cannibalizing the VIP guide sales, in which case the price would have to be higher.

How crowded is Walt Disney World now that Americans don’t need to go to work? Disney Springs, which is essentially just an outdoor shopping mall, had 45-90-minute waits for tables at the various restaurants on a Wednesday night in mid-March. Then people would wait in line for another 45 minutes to get a generic ice cream from Ghirardelli. Here are the lines to check out of the Disney trinket shop with $40 T-shirts, to get some BBQ, and to go into a LEGO store that sells the same sets as the LEGO store in your local shopping mall:

The Road to Serfdom is dedicated to “socialists of all parties,” reflecting Hayek’s view that love of central planning is near-universal. Why not a centrally planned no-line Disney vacation?

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Philip’s Book Club: Bubble in the Sun (about the Florida real estate boom 1895-1926ish)

by philg

The latest book… Bubble in the Sun: The Florida Boom of the 1920s and How It Brought on the Great Depression (Christopher Knowlton). I’m enjoying it so far (listening via Audible). Timely, considering that home prices in the decent neighborhoods of Florida have roughly doubled since the lockdowns began in the Northeast and California.

The author notes that at some point in the 1920s, Florida had 60 million single-family house lots mapped out and ready to sell.

Chart of Florida population growth from 1900-1930 (source):

For context, here’s Maskachusetts v. Florida over 120 years:

Note that 1947 is highlighted as an important year for window air conditioners and the 1960s as when home central A/C become standard (energy.gov).

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Florida state politics stir passions primarily among those who don’t live in Florida

by philg

We recently had an election here in Jupiter that generated a fair amount of local advertising, e.g., lawn signs at street corners, and discussion at the playgrounds, soccer fields, dog parks, skate parks, beach, etc. People are very interested in who will be on the town council and who will be the mayor. The hot button issues are real estate development, traffic, and spending on open space and parks.

State politics, on the other hand, don’t seem to capture Floridians’ attention. Far more people in Massachusetts talked about Governor Ron DeSantis, for example, than people here in Jupiter.

Here’s a UK magazine reporting on a statement by a California resident on proposed Florida legislation: “Apple CEO Tim Cook slams ‘deeply concerning’ Don’t Say Gay bill as ‘proud member of LGBT+ community’”: Apple CEO Tim Cook has condemned Florida’s harmful “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which if signed into law would prohibit “classroom discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity”.

The UK’s BBC reports on another California’s opinion: “Disney apologises for ‘silence’ on ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill”.

Walt Disney’s CEO has apologised for his “painful silence” on a Florida sex education bill critics warn will isolate LGBT youth.

“You needed me to be a stronger ally in the fight for equal rights and I let you down. I am sorry,” Bob Chapek told employees.

His comments come amid internal complaints that “gay affection” is routinely cut from some Disney films.

The so-called ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill is due to become law.

It bans discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten to third grade classes (aged 8-9) or when “not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards”.

The BBC article is misleading, I think. It says that “discussions” of 2SLGBTQQIA+ are banned in kindergarten, but, in fact, I think it is only “instruction” regarding 2SLGBTQQIA+ that is banned. So the kindergarteners could discuss the 10 Best Gay Saunas in the USA and the teacher could say which one was his/her/zir/their favorite. But the teacher couldn’t organize a lesson about what happens inside the 10 best gay saunas. (3 out of the 10 best gay saunas in the above-referenced article are actually in Florida, in case an after-school program for K-3 or a pre-school needs to organize a field trip)

The UK’s Daily Mail also wrote about this, March 9, 2022:

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday said a Florida bill that would place limits on instruction about gender identity and sexual orientation is a ‘form of bullying’ against LGBTQI kids.

The Parental Rights in Education bill, dubbed the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill by critics, was passed by Florida’s Republican-dominated Senate on Tuesday and will now head to GOP Governor Ron DeSantis’ desk.

Psaki said the bill ‘would discriminate against families, against kids, put these kids in a position of not getting the support they need at a time where that’s exactly what they need.’

Its text says that ‘classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.’

President Joe Biden himself condemned the bill as ‘hateful.’

A full-scale war in Europe apparently cannot distract the Biden Administration from focusing on Florida politics. Nor does a war in Europe distract news media in the UK from writing about what the Florida legislature is up to.

What do the haters say in favor of this bill, according to the Daily Mail?

[DeSantis spokeswoman Christina] Pushaw pointed out to DailyMail.com that the legislation does not include the word ‘gay’ or single out any one identity or orientation.

‘The idea that it’s inappropriate for adults to instruct kindergarteners about sexual topics should not be controversial in the least,’ she said in response to Psaki’s comments.

‘Children should never be sexualized. 4-9 year olds are far too young to be learning about these topics in school. If a student has any questions about sexuality or gender, it’s solely up to that child’s parent or guardian to decide how they want to answer those questions. This is not an LGBT issue, and most Floridians – gay or straight – are fully in favor of child safeguarding and parents’ rights.’

Separately, if we combine Ukraine and 2SLGBTQQIA+, we find a 2021 article, “‘Constantly pursued’: Ukraine’s LGBT+ activists attacked online and in the street” (Reuters):

Ukraine legalised gay sex in 1991, but conservative elements in the mainly Orthodox Christian nation often speak out against rights for LGBT+ people, and members of the far-right regularly target groups and events linked to the community.

The LGBT Human Rights Nash Mir Center, which monitors anti-LGBT+ violence in Ukraine, recorded 24 attacks on LGBT+ centres and events last year, more than double the figure for 2019.

From Wikipedia:

Article 51 of the [Ukraine] Constitution specifically defines marriage as a voluntary union between a man and a woman. No legal recognition exists for same-sex marriage, nor is there any sort of more limited recognition for same-sex couples

Will it soon be time for a NYT history rewrite in which Ukraine is presented as a long-established haven for the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community?

Circling back to the original topic… the most powerful political entities in Florida seem to be counties. They collect the lion’s share of property taxes, leaving the sales tax scraps for the state. Counties run the schools and parks that residents are passionate about. I wonder if the Florida legislature and governor are actually staging some of the stuff that they do simply to see how much they can wind up people in California, Washington, D.C., and New York.

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Florida rejects Science regarding COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children

by philg

A hot war rages in Ukraine and Americans have the leisure to argue about the extent to which 5-year-olds should be given an emergency use authorized vaccine against a disease that kills the elderly.

For the past 16 months, friends who are physicians have been saying

  • vaccinate everyone over 50 or 60 (threshold varies by doc)
  • vaccinate no healthy person under 30
  • offer the COVID vaccine to people between 30 and 50/60

(See Is it ethical for a physician to vaccinate a healthy 20-year-old against COVID-19? from January 2021, for example)

Horrifyingly, it seems that a public health bureaucrat agrees with the Deplorable Docs in my social circle… “Florida to recommend against Covid-19 vaccine for healthy children” (CNN):

The CDC recommended that children get vaccinated in November, when the shot became available to most kids. Since then, about 22 million children have become fully vaccinated, including 1.1 million Florida kids.

But Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo said the state is going to issue separate guidance urging parents not to vaccinate their kids. Ladapo did not say when that guidance would become official and provided few additional details.

The Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics was also critical of the decision.

“The COVID-19 vaccine is our best hope for ending the pandemic,” chapter President Dr. Lisa Gwynn said in a statement. “The Surgeon General’s comments today misrepresent the benefits of the vaccine, which has been proven to prevent serious illness, hospitalizations and long-term symptoms from COVID-19 in children and adolescents, including those who are otherwise healthy.

“The evidence is clear that when people are vaccinated, they are significantly less likely to get very sick and need hospital care. There is widespread consensus among medical and public health experts about the life-saving benefits of this vaccine.”

Ordinarily, CNN loves to celebrate immigrant success stories. In the case of the above-cited Science-rejecter, according to Wikipedia, the journey began with five years of unmasked childhood in Nigeria, migration to the U.S., and an education at Harvard Medical School. In addition to his M.D., Dr. Ladapo holds a Ph.D. in health policy from Harvard, yet CNN does not consider this migration journey worth highlighting.

From Friday, a mother and child who narrowly escaped a New York tourist’s attempt to vaccinate them both:

(in front of the electric utility’s (free) manatee lagoon)

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Prius sighting in Florida

by philg

Two middle-aged ladies were in front of us at Lion Country Safari:

Biden/Harris, Black Lives Matter, and Eat More Kale plus an Imagine there’s no hunger license plate (proceeds to the Florida Association of Food Banks). The “UU” sticker likely is for “Unitarian Universalism”, a pro-Palestinian church (settler colonialism by Jews in Israel is bad; settler colonialism in North America is not so bad that any Unitarian Universalist church needs to give back its land to the nearest Native Americans).

The next day, we found the “Prius Eater” in the Costco parking lot:

Through the window at Lion Country Safari:

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The 6-year-old hater responds to an interview with a World War II veteran

by philg

Follow-up to The 6-year-old hater…

We took the kids to the National Navy SEAL Museum (a mask-free and indoor/outdoor experience, like most Florida experiences). The museum was showing an interview with a World War II veteran in his 90s. The 6-year-old asked “Is that Joe Biden?”

We learned that Anthony Fauci was a SEAL (“Using Science to Maximize Success”):

We did not enter the raffle to win a sniper rifle…

The Museum’s yard is filled with interesting boats, submarines, and a very-tough-visitors-welcome obstacle course:

Earlier in the day, we learned at the St. Lucie County Aquarium that high-fertility immigrants make life difficult for natives:

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Is Service in your DNA?

by philg

Here’s a sign that I was able to contemplate at leisure while waiting to get a license plate (Florida delegates what would a massive DMV bureaucracy to counties).

The “Is Service in your DNA?” headline made me wonder how often people write “If not, Moderna can add it for you” underneath.

Could service actually be in your DNA? Conscientiousness and Agreeableness, out of the Big Five, seem likely to be important for doing a good job in customer service. Wikipedia says these are 49 percent and 42 percent genetic.

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Let’s go to Brandon (Florida)

by philg

Our 8-year-old ran out of books to read on our recent excursion around the Florida Free State. Google Maps showed us that the most convenient bookstores between Lakeland and Tampa were in… Brandon, where the hated anti-#Science governor recently went to sign an anti-#Science law passed by the anti-#Science legislature.

According to Wikipedia, Brandon, FL is merely an unincorporated part of a county, i.e., not an actual city or town. It is home to a huge shopping mall, a bunch of strip malls, various components of the health care industry, and some car dealers. For the COVID-averse, the Westfield Mall has an outdoor dining area:

If you’re concerned that you’re not sufficiently obese for SARS-CoV-2 to get a good grip on you, you can get an entire pint of Cinnabon frosting inside the mall. Also a hijab, if you’re not satisfied with Is the face mask the Church of Shutdown’s hijab?

(It was much more common to see covered women, including in full burqas, in the Tampa area compared to in Jupiter/Palm Beach.)

The LEGO store in the mall had a huge stack of “Everyone is Awesome” rainbow kits near the register. The web site says “The new LEGO Everyone is Awesome set celebrates positivity and kindness in our families, our communities and our world.” and contains an inspirational story from the designer, Matthew Ashton: “Being LGBTQIA+ myself, I knew I needed to step up to the plate and make a real statement about love and inclusivity, and generally spread some LEGO® love to everybody who needs it. Children are our role models and they welcome everyone, no matter their background. … Being quite an effeminate kid, I was constantly told by different adults around me what I should and shouldn’t play with, that I needed to behave like a ‘real boy’ and to toughen up. I was dissuaded from doing the things that came most naturally to me. … I was actually fine with all the kids at school. … this set is not just for the LGBTQIA+ community. It’s for all of the allies – parents, siblings, friends, schoolmates, colleagues etc. – out there as well.”

If you need some body shape inspiration before hitting the food court, the mall includes a manatee sculpture:

Inconsistent with the town’s status as the World Center of Deplorability (not only in Florida, but also named “Brandon”), there is apparently a high demand for Alfa Romeos:

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Karen visits a Florida theme park

by philg

This is a quote from a friend’s Facebook post, but I am not going to use the WordPress Quote style because it will be easier to read if not in italics. The names have been changed. The author is a professor who lives in a Biden- and Fauci-supporting town. Any similarities to Confessions are purely coincidental… (and let me just state for the record that the author is a far smarter and nicer person that I have ever been!)

I’ve made what might have been the single worst error of judgment in my 40 years of life. If any good will come of it, it’s only in the confession and warning that I now feel morally compelled to give my friends.

One month ago, my 8-year-old daughter [Alice], who just finished the Harry Potter series, begged to go to Universal Studios in Orlando over Christmas break to see their Harry Potter park. It seemed like a good time: Alice (and her 4-year-old brother [Robert]) hadn’t enjoyed any trip of this kind since before the pandemic, Alice at last would finally be vaccinated, [wife] and I had just gotten our booster shots, Delta was in retreat, and covid numbers were actually extremely low in Florida. Plus we figured it would be mainly outdoors, and we’d mask, and [wife] found a website claiming it wouldn’t be very crowded on the dates we wanted to visit.

So I plunked down a few grand for (non-refundable) tickets. And then, literally the next day, we learned about the Omicron variant from South Africa. And to my eternal shame, I didn’t cancel the trip, despite my understanding of exponential growth. I couldn’t bear to face my daughter and tell her she wasn’t going after all, nor could I bear to face my family and tell them the planning and money were all wasted.

So now we’re here. And the reality is: it’s crowded as hell — one of the most unpleasant, sardine-packed places I’ve ever experienced in my life, before or during covid. The majority of guests (and even many employees) are unmasked. It’s mostly indoors. For every single ride, you stand for more than an hour in cramped, enclosed waiting areas while hordes of unmasked people breathe on you. It’s obviously an Omicron superspreader site. Indeed, the chances that one or more of us caught it today are EXCEEDINGLY high. Plus … it’s not even fun, like Disney World is. It sucks. Just endless lines, crowds, ripoffs, and uninspired rides.

Many of the rides play jokey recorded audio messages about how the ride is so terrifying, how much danger you’re in, phew you survived it, etc. etc. All those messages now take on new, unapproved meanings.

From the minute we arrived, I started saying “we have to leave this place, we have to leave, WE HAVE TO LEAVE NOW” — and yet, I’m ashamed to say, it took us 5+ hours to do so. I kept deferring to the … err … majority vote among my family, that we shouldn’t make a TOTAL loss of this trip, and surely we can find something here that’s relatively covid-safe?

Our mistake did, at least, give me perhaps my first opportunity of this entire pandemic to stare directly into the heart of the half of the country for which the virus might as well not be real — and I found the view absolutely terrifying, and it’s given me a new, visceral understanding for how we managed to lose 800,000+ Americans, and that understanding will stay with me as long as I live.

I’m sorry to everyone for whom I was a bad example. I’m sorry to everyone who my family might have endangered. Please learn from our mistake.

In the meantime, do any of my friends have suggestions for what to do for the rest of this trip? (Where one possibility is, “take the next flight back to [cozy Deplorable-free university town] and never look back”?)

ADDED: [wife] wanted me to emphasize how Universal Studios is endangering lives for greed, by packing people way, WAY more densely than can possibly be safe.

Alice [the 8-year-old], alone among us, actually enjoyed the park (!) and wants to return to it tomorrow.

Thus endeth the Confessions of Karen. The Confessions of Greenspun begins here…

I’ve made what might have been the single worst error of judgment in what feels like nearly 100 years of life. If any good will come of it, it’s only in the confession and warning that I now feel morally compelled to give my friends. I purchased an annual pass to Legoland Florida (Winter Haven, just south of Orlando) and we decided to visit during the beginning of the two-week Florida Christmas school vacation.

The park is nowhere near as crowded as Disney (think suburban shopping mall on a Saturday versus Times Square on a Friday night), but we didn’t know what to expect so I paid up for the $90/day skip-the-lines band ($60/day during non-peak periods). Unlike Professor Karen’s experience at Universal, above, we found that we almost never needed to be indoors to enjoy Legoland. Most of the lines, which we skipped in any case, were outdoors. The park recommends masks when indoors, but the core customer base seems to be Floridians and therefore hardly any of the visitors were masked, indoors or out.

Our 6-year-old loved the water ski show so much that Senior Management needed to sit through two repeats.

If you thought that COVID-19 was bad, it is only because you haven’t been on Mia’s Riding Adventure. “Many of the rides play jokey recorded audio messages about how the ride is so terrifying, how much danger you’re in, phew you survived it, etc.,” said Professor Karen (above). If I could take over as dictator of the U.S. and thus were able to force Legoland to install such a message, it would start with “How much would you enjoy it if your first horse ride were as a jockey in the Kentucky Derby at 37 mph?” and then note that the ride was best suited for those who booked all of their coast-to-coast flights on the Vomit Comet. (Recommendation: Try the Dragon rollercoaster, which is not too violent and which starts with a flat slow tour through some fun LEGO scenery.)

The San Francisco miniature is not consistent with Reading list: San Fransicko. There wasn’t a single homeless encampment on any of the LEGO sidewalks. There was no open-air drug market.

Miami Beach without a traffic jam of Lamborghinis, Rolls-Royces, and Ferraris?

If you split your time between 12th Street and Haulover beaches, this might be the souvenir to bring home:

(One of my worst days since moving to Florida was at clothing-optional Haulover beach. Everything was awesome until some wag called Marine Mammal Rescue and they showed up at my blanket with a whale sling.)

Not every visitor was Deplorable. Here is a fully masked family:

They’re walking by a bust of a notorious racist (also known for popularizing Mileva Marić‘s explanations of the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, and conversion of matter into energy) made out of 500,000 Duplo bricks.

Short summary of my friend’s theme park experience and our own family’s: I’m not surprised that Floridians, who never entered the Covid Olympics and therefore don’t care which medal they win, show up to parks. But I am surprised that anyone who supported school closures, mask orders, and other Covid-related restrictions will show up (this is about half of Americans, so the parks should be at least half empty!). And I am truly shocked that the federal government allows the parks to remain open (also, the Super Bowl; why?). From Disney World during Code Orange coronapanic (September 2021):

(According to #Science, COVID-19 is a sufficiently serious public health issue that schools have been closed (for 1.5 years in our big cities) and/or children are made to wear masks 7 hours per day while also forgoing normal interaction (American kindergarten is now set up more like high school detention; kids must sit at their individual desks and not get close to other kids… while also wearing masks). If we are losing life years, contrary to Social Security and life insurance financials, the only sensible #Science-informed policy would be a presidential order shutting down all American theme parks. Pulling together 200,000+ people per day at Disney World (all four parks combined) means pulling together people in airliners (most of the folks we met had flown there), in restaurants, in hotels, etc. Even if they don’t get infected while on a roller coaster, they’re a lot more likely to get infected than if they’d stayed home, which remains the best demonstrated method of cutting one’s infection/transmission risk (our best vaccines can cut infection/transmission in half right now?). As a society we’ve determined that it makes sense to deny an education to millions of children if just one life can be saved. Shouldn’t the same logic apply to theme parks? If child can wait 1.5 years to learn, why can’t adults and children wait until the pandemic is over to ride a roller coaster?)

Related:

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Farewell to Christmas lights

by philg

I hope now that everyone has been inspired by the example of Kamala Harris’s family in quickly breaking down the Christmas decorations (illustrated in a photo from her childhood) to make room for Kwanzaa (no photos available). Tonight is New Year’s Eve, so it is time to say goodbye to the winter-themed Christmas decorations of which our Florida neighbors are so fond.

The twin pillars of religious faith for roughly half of Floridians (Disney and Jesus):

Only loosely related, the twin pillars of political faith for roughly half of Floridians, photographed 12/26 (air temp: 82; water temp: 75):

(Note the apparent gerrymandering in the above districts; they are neither rectangular nor contiguous.)

Speaking of politics, front yard political expression in our part of Florida is rare (1 in 500 houses?), so the few examples stand out (“Lets go Brandon, I agree,” says Santa?):

When you are having a tough time choosing among Mickey, Baby Jesus, penguins, snowmen, nutcrackers, reindeer, angels, Santa, etc.:

a few details from the above house:

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