I’m Going to Disneyland
And Mortgaging My Home
I get into my 1965 Chevy Bel Aire, fill up the tank for $5, pick up a pack of Marlboros for 30-cents, stop at McDonald’s for a burger, fries and a vanilla shake for 50 cents, drove to the GW Bridge and pay 50 cents fare and then to Yankee Stadium where we buy reserve seat tickets for $2.50 each and I still have money left over from the 10-spot I started with. Final cost, $8.80.
That means, I have enough to pick up a six-pack of Ballantine beer for $1.76 on my way home.
Fast forward today, fill up the tank with regular for $35, pick up a pack of Marlboros for $21, stop at MickeyDee’s for a burger, fries and vanilla shake for $12.32, drive across the GW Bridge and pay the $16 toll, and then to Yankee Stadium where we buy reserve seat tickets for $20. Total cost, $104.32, not including victuals, for one Yankee game. That will be about all of the entertainment I can afford for the rest of the year.
And then there’s that six-pack of craft beer for $8 that I can’t afford.
It’s well past the point where cultural and recreational activities, including beer drinking, that were once the staple of the American family, are now priced beyond the reach of most Americans, unless they go to one Yankee game a year. And nobody can tell me that the costs are equal if inflation is factored in, no way, no how.
And for some truly horrifying factoids about the fall of the American dream, it costs $164 for one adult, meaning anyone 10 or older, to get in the front door past the expansive, plastic smiles of Mickey and Minney at Disneyland in California. How can an average American family whose kids want to visit the “Happiest place on Earth” possibly afford it, without getting a second mortgage. The answer is they can’t. And the new ticket cost doesn’t include dinner and bowling at Splitsville or a character dinner at Goofy’s Kitchen. Try to explain to your 4-year-old who dressed as Cinderella for Halloween that she won’t be visiting the real Disney Cinderella this year.
I am really done with Goofy and Mickey and Minnie and Cinderella and all the rest trying to brainwash my daughter to harass me into standing in lines for hours so I can spend a small fortune to enter the Magic Kingdom where an overcooked, undersized hamburger will cost $11.
For anyone who’s counting, Disneyland admission prices have increased by more than 5,000 percent since it opened in 1955 when admission was $1 and entering any of the 35 attractions cost between a dime and 35 cents. Not being a math wiz, I’m not going to try to compare the 1955 costs to today’s costs but suffice to say I don’t believe my salary has gone up 5,000 percent.
Need I say that the in 2020, the Walt Disney Company’s net worth reached $122.18 billion. The vision of the global 500 entertainment and media enterprise headquartered in Burbank, Calif., is to “entertain, inform and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling” and make tons of money for stockholders and company executives. The current Disney CEO, Bob Chapek, made $14.2 million in 2020, including his salary, stock awards and options. If I was Sneezy, I wouldn’t sneeze at that. The Little Mermaid, Beauty of Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin must be as happy as can be.
According to the Disney archives, Walt Disney arrived in California in the summer of 1923 with a lot of hopes but little else. He had made a cartoon in Kansas City about a little girl in a cartoon world, called “Alice’s Wonderland” and he decided that he could use it as his “pilot” film to sell a series of these “Alice Comedies” to a distributor. Soon after arriving in California, a distributor in New York, M. J. Winkler, contracted to distribute the Alice Comedies on Oct. 16, 1923, and this date became the start of the Disney company. You’ve come along way Mr. Disney.
Whether it’s Disneyland, Yankee Stadium, Broadway or a movie, the cultural destinations that have thrilled Americans for so many years, are a part of the American fiber and are forever implanted in our collective psyches and have added to the stability of families, are so expensive that they are beyond the wallets of all but the wealthiest families. The effects of denying these cultural activities to so many people is making the gaping chasm between the rich and the rest of us every wider while denying most of the artistic and athletic beauty of world class artists and athletes, unless we don’t mind watching the two-dimensional manifestations.
I would be less than I am if I have never been to Yankee Stadium and while I never craved Disneyland or Broadway, I did totally enjoy the double features at the Oritani Theater in Hackensack with the cartoons sandwiched in between, and some ice cream Bon Bons, all for under $2. And I know that was centuries ago but still, the costs have blown up way beyond what people can afford. The National Association of Theater Owners reported that in 1958, it cost an average of 68-cents to get in the movie. The association reported that the average price of a movie ticket in 2020 was $9.16. I didn’t even want to know how much Bon Bons cost.
I went to see Yankee games pretty regularly and it was magical to get the first glimpse of the emerald green grass infield and the red clay and knowing of the heroes who have graced the religious forum of baseball. I would go to Yankee Stadium and buy a reserve seat ticket for $2.50 and then by the sixth or seventh inning, we’d sneak down to the empty box seats and the ushers wouldn’t stop us unlike today when there are chains separating the boxes from all other seats, like a sign telling me that unless I have the dough, don’t even think about it, so I don’t even think about it. For comparison sake, the average Yankee ticket in 1950 was $1.54 and in 1967, the average box seat set you back $3.50. Today, you can get a really cool, field level box seat for $9,258, according to SeatGeek. I haven’t been to a game in years and it’s a good thing that I am not that 13-year-old boy who believed the sun rose and set based on whether the Yankees won or lost.
According to the latest reports, the Yankees are worth $5.25 billion, 5 percent more than last year. The Yankees are one of three American teams worth at least $5 billion, including the Dallas Cowboys, at $5.7 billion, and the New York Knicks, at $5 billion. This year, Yankees ace pitcher Gerrit Cole made a cool $36.5 million and isn’t he a role model.