I've watched Carmel transform over the 30 years I've lived in central Indiana. Increasingly, I didn't understand the aesthetic; it didn't decode for me. Last year, for the first time, I went to Disney World. (Our son proposed to his girlfriend there, and she was raised on Disney.) The next time I went to Carmel, specifically to the area around the Hotel Carmichael, it clicked. Carmel is going for that aesthetic. But I didn't understand why until this article. Now I see that Disney may be setting the standard for guest experience for the wealthy, and Carmel wants to attract the same kinds of people.
Disney straight up didn't work for me. It felt ultra-curated. Carmel increasingly feels like that to me as well and I want to spend less and less time there. If it weren't for Muldoon's, a favorite of mine over the entire time I've lived here, I would almost never go there.
I grew up working class and so did my wife. Even though we together make 95th+ percentile wages (which astonishes both of us), the coding that speaks to the really wealthy just doesn't connect with us and likely never will. We moved back to Indianapolis this year, from Zionsville, albeit to the far north side. I never felt like I fit in Zionsville; this is much more like it for me.
I have to think that the aesthetic and amenities that Carmel and other northern suburbs are installing will draw more wealthy people to them, people who might have lived in or not moved out of Indianapolis. I'm all for competition but at the same time the tax base in Indy sure doesn't seem sufficient to fund things local governments do (roads, schools, parks). This only makes it worse.
I do agree Carmel has gone more upscale. But Carmel also provides lots of low cost or even free amenities to people who don't live there. If you go to the playground at Central Park on a Saturday, for example, I'd estimate a third to half of the people aren't from Carmel. When we lived downtown we'd come up every few months because that playground was so great, and lots of other people appear to do the same. Also, all parking is free in Carmel, etc.
I have similar thoughts. I have friends who when they are in town stay at the Carmichael and commented on how the entire area is a bubble they would be happy to live in, whereas I just find the entire vibe there and in downtown Zionsville a bit weird - like these are just not my people.
On the other hand, if I were at the age where I was just starting a family, I don't think I would recommend living in Indianapolis. You get absolutely nothing for the taxes you pay - incompetent government, terrible roads and infrastructure, few decent public school options and an increasingly Democratic polity that indulges all the delusions about human behavior that produces in-your-face evidence of social decay in huge areas of the city. You are much better off buying a house in a suburb where your dollar goes further and you actually get safety and amenities that are respected by the public and well maintained. Suburbs have recognized this and clearly are trying to create enough live/work/play environment that people have no reason to visit the urban core. I think it's working and the political leadership of places like Indianapolis are too dim or ideologically bound to react.
As for Disney, I personally hate it but I think it still holds allure to a lot of people as one of those experiences that signal you've "made it" in some fashion, sort of like how some people used to look at trips to Las Vegas just because 85% of the people that go had to stretch themselves to make it happen. It's the same for NBA or NFL games - whenever I go, looking at the crowd I feel like a really high percentage have no business paying the money it took for them to be there with friends or family, but it's an opportunity to be seen and tell others you did it. We are still very much a consumer society and it shows up in things like this and goods like the cars people drive, another area that is really overpriced and yet people will stretch themselves to have what they want and can be seen with.
We lived in Zionsville for the schools. My oldest graduated from North Central but that was at a high point for education in Washington Township. Now that we're empty nested, back to Indianapolis with us.
Thanks for this interesting comment. I know what you mean about the 'over-curated' Disney aesthetic; it's hardly my favorite, either.
It raises a couple of interesting questions:
First, to what class does the Disney aesthetic appeal most? I've always assumed it's dead center middle class, but the point of this article and discussion is that it's harder then ever for middle class people to afford Disney.
And therefore second question: you mentioned 'coding that speaks to the wealthy' -- what exactly do you mean/any examples?
I've not been to a Disney park in years (and I've never been to Carmel); I wonder how/if these places are shifting their coding along with their pricing.
Your comment makes me realize that I'm assuming Disney is curated for the wealthy because it doesn't connect with *me,* someone who identifies as middle class. Maybe I'm wrong there. Maybe I have a little reverse prejudice going on.
Disney reminds me of a luxury hotel The staff nearly falls over itself trying to be relentlessly helpful. The finishes are fine. The experiences are elevated. Order room service french fries and they come on a silver platter. That sort of thing. With my one day of experience at Disney, it felt more like that, in a way. The "authentic 50s diner" we visited didn't have any silver platters, but everything was uber polished and perfect. It just didn't connet with me.
I'm glad buc-ee's got a little more famous. When I was younger and I visited family; I told them it was really funny how it looks that, for Houston, going to a gas station was this big deal. I'm glad they stuck with their ethos — it's paying off.
The same exact thing happened in Major League Baseball in the 1990s. I remember that is when the league consciously started moving away from being an everyman sport to that of luxury boxes (and huge player salaries). Now, a beer at a game will cost you $15, and that's at parks in Cleveland and Detroit. I'm sure it must be higher in NYC and LA.
I read an article recently about why the upper decks in modern ball parks are such bad places to watch games from. It is because of the addition of the tiers of luxury boxes that generate so much income. They have pushed the upper decks so far up that the fans who sit there are hundreds more feet from the field than they used to be in the parks of old. It's a far cry from the days of the bleacher creatures.
This resonates with me. I grew up an Atlanta Braves fan and lived near and then in Atlanta during their 90s heydey - I remember Tommy Lasorda around that time making a point that baseball was the last professional sport that was price-accessible to the average person. Turner Field, a fantastic ballpark, had $1 bleacher seats, and at sellout games you could buy standing-room tickets for $5.
After being gone for about 20 years, I was back briefly 2 years ago for a conference, and a vendor took some of us to a game at Truist Park. The feeling I got walking through the planned-village gauntlet of shops, restaurants, and bars on the way into the ballpark - is that EVERYTHING was aimed like a gun at my wallet, with the express purpose of extracting as much $$$ as possible.
We have a AAA Orioles affiliate where I live now, and I find it more closely resembles the ballpark experience I used to have in Atlanta -- a relatively relaxed, fun evening for my family of 5 that doesn't break the bank (unless I decide I want to purchase a $15 beer).
There's two sides to this dimension, though. There's the premiumization of some middle-class services, but then there's the degradation of others to a much lower level quality than existed before. Six Flags used to be a nice place in the 80's. It wasn't as prestigious as Disney, but it was a reasonable alternative. You can't say that of Six Flags today.
Elite overproduction and income inequality doesn't explain the transition from a middle-class society into a stratified Latin American model until you also factor in the Lumpenization of the lower-middle class. Without the lumpenization of the lower-middle, the middle-class would be able to simply eschew the rat-race competition for a dwindling supply of premium goods and services. However, since the lower-middle class has begun to adopt the lifestyles and social pathologies formerly confined to the welfare underclass, public services are so degraded that they become unusable by decent people. From Six Flags, to public swimming pools, to public schools, the failure to check underclass dysfunction and the growth of pathological behavior into the lower-middle class is the second jaw of the trap closing down on the middle-class.
Those of us who grew up in more frugal households remember the constant reminders: don't dress like that, don't act that way, show some self-respect, have dignity, that's our last name you're running through the mud young man. There was a dignified lower-middle class that could abide by social standards of decency and there was the underclass who could not and were excluded. No shirts, no shoes, no service. It wasn't the police that kept lower-middle class boys from devolving into "white trash" behavior, it was fear of our fathers and grandfathers. As the epidemic of fatherlessness (among other things) spreads into higher income brackets, so too follows the descent of decent working folks into lumpenproletariat depravity.
That's why the stratification trap is so deadly. Decent people who want to live a decent life can't eschew the rat race and escape the bidding war for premium services, because nobody will do anything about the lumpenized lower-middle class who have joined in with the underclass in ruining all public spaces. We can't just ride the city mass transit because even if we never get stabbed by some psychopath that the justice system set loose for the 14th time, there's also the mugger, the pervert, or just the puddle of piss in which I'd rather not have to stand. Six Flags is the alter-Disney, the one in which they didn't premiumize the park, and which became the park for everyone. And look where that got them.
I was a teenager in the 70s and I find all of these changes saddening. We used to go on vacations where the day trips were planned only once we'd arrived. Sometimes on the same day at breakfast - "Why don't we go to abc National Park today?" and off we'd go. Not anymore. Everything must be planned and reserved in advance and then "enjoyed" with way too many others. Spontaneous visits to major natural attractions are not possible. I have no answers, but today's young people do not know what they have missed.
DIS raised prices a lot in the past several years as it came to recognize that it's really a hospitality company masquerading as a movie studio. Linear TV is a melting ice cube; movie box office is stagnant at best. Sports are profitable but bidding for rights is intensely competitive. No one besides NFLX has figured out how to make much money off streaming; DIS manages to run it at a 5% operating margin now.
But Parks run at a ~30% margin IIRC and drive the large majority of operating income. It's only a slight exaggeration to say the rest of the business now exists as a marketing funnel for the parks. I think DIS still has aspirations of driving more profitability to streaming and balancing that out somewhat, but the jury is still out on that strategy.
You could probably connect these financials to a larger cultural point. The quality-adjusted cost of consuming content on a screen has plummeted. There was a trope in the 80s and 90s of the middle-class character envying another man's home theater and home library (LaserDisc!) or even his HBO subscription. I seem to remember some early Simpsons episodes having this theme. All that's now largely out of date, because those costs are trivial. Yet meanwhile real-world experiences are now at a premium.
You are right about Buc-ee’s. The places are awesome. Why did it take 50 years after the interstate highways were built for someone to figure out that what the traveling public really wants is a clean toilet? These places have acres of parking, more gas pumps than you can count, gasoline, diesel fuel, DEF, and even no-ethanol fuel for your small engine equipment. If you’re going hunting or fishing or camping, they got just about anything you might need in one stop. 20 pounds of ice is about $2.00. I’ve never been in one that wasn’t wall-to-wall with customers. Buc-ee’s knows what their market needs and they deliver it by the truck load. It is truly an American entrepreneurial capitalist success story. I couldn’t be happier for them.
It was just a failure of imagination. A Pilot station is amazing compared to your run-of-the-mill gas station, both in terms of scale and average cleanliness. Who could have guessed that you could then take THAT idea, scale it up 10x, pay everyone extremely well, and blow Pilot out of the water?
My father was a USAF Officer, and I lived in Germany from 1971 to 1976. We flew back from Germany in 1976 when I was 8 years old to Florida. Not only were my brothers and I blown away by all the color TV channels and crtoons on Saturday AM (we had a single black and whie AFRTS channel while in Germany) but we went to Disney World that summer. It was amazing.
We were stationed in Southern California from 1997 to 1980 and went to Disney Land, Knott's Berry Farm, and Magic Mountain regularly. We then moved to Texas and I went to Six Flags regularly as a teenager.
I have experenced not a little frustration at how different the major theme park experence "fels" now. Things are much more expensive and it seems like you hardly get the expierence of going on great rides like I remember.
I'm in the top 5% of income earners but, with 5 kids, we've only driven to Disney World or Universal Sudios four times in 15 years. One time we went when one of Disney World's theme parks was at capacity and couldn't take more people. It's expensive to go to Disney World even with a military discount and it's never been worth staing at a Disney property or pay for Fastlane because it's so expensive for a family of 7.
I also resonate with the idea that some upgraded experiences are much more in reach and common. When I was a kid, going into a 7-Eleven and getting a Slurpee was the height of a great place to stop in to. Now, I'm obsesses with Wawa markets - the coffee and the food there is fantastic and 7-Eleven feels like a dump.
One thing I agree with renn is that real conservatives whatever there economic situation need to end this stupid obsession with Disney. It is a corporation filled with people that has hated your politics and they still give time, energy and money including debt fueled money to these people. They do it as their homes, real communities and children could use that money for more than just an idiotic "experience". Start to create value in your community and invest in what really matters instead of giving to a theme park ruled by lefty managers.
I know you don’t mean it this way but it comes across at the end as “Hey you can’t afford Disney for the same reason you can’t afford a house, but look, you get a neat gas station!”
The real crux is the “being forced to pay for it” point you made. Our taxes are being soaked from us to basically make money for others. It’s like when that one town used eminent domain not for a public good but to sell the land to a developer for a “better tax base”. They stopped representing people and started representing land.
One additional difference in demand for Disney: foreign visitors. Of course there were some in years past, but now there are lots of wealthy East Asians and Europeans (and others) who will gladly make a Disney trip to the USA, typically to Disney World. There are Disney parks in Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, obviously, but another characteristic of the now-richer and much bigger international upper and upper-middle classes is that they can afford to 'collect' park visits around the world, i.e. they'll visit their 'local' park first, then go looking for more.
And speaking of those who pursue their Disney fun perhaps a bit too obsessively: other things I've read recently have explained how much of Disney's business now is adults-only, i.e. grown-ups without children who devote their time and money to living a Disney-defined life. Many of them may not be upper-middle class, but they are willing to squander (if I may use a judgey and hurty word) much of their still-considerable disposable income on park visits, Disney hotel stays, special character encounters, VIP mouse ears, and whatnot.
The extent of Disney's "kidulting" clientele really hit home for my wife and I when she took our then 2-year-old son to Walt Disney World (Florida) in 2021.
He was generally treated like a nuisance, and some of the "cast members" threatened to kick them both out of the park if he didn't start complying with the mask mandates.
(In case anyone's forgotten, Florida under Ron DeSantis famously relaxed its COVID regulations in mid-2020, so the fact that WDW was enforcing them a year later says a lot about the customers'/employees' demand for it.)
I am here to rant real quick about something that has irked me ever since lockdowns related to your commentary here: Public parks and nature spaces have been MAJORLY degraded by increased traffic that continues after lockdowns let up.
Our family has enjoyed hiking and other outdoors activities for years but since lockdowns numerous of our favorite parks are not only filled with lots of much ruder people (hooker clothing, blaring their music at others instead of wearing headphones, groups of unruly, unparented kids) but also the facilities at the parks have more wear and tear and problems like vandalism. Over the weekend one of my favorite local walking parks was spray-painted by some jackwagon. When I go to the public library, not only is it filled with homeless people but also people making out, showing their privates, and dropping off their kids for hours unsupervised.
Maybe rich people are bidding up the cost of nice experiences not just because they have more wealth but because the lower and increasingly middle classes no longer have basic manners and it sucks to be with them. This is the reason I'm considering buying our family a pool membership instead of using public swim areas -- the clientele that pays for things doesn't ruin the experience for others as much by behaving like barbarians. See, for example, the recent Carnival Cruise problems. Now just about every public place has been Carnival Cruised.
This phenomenon extends well beyond the US borders. It's behind the furore that's swirling around international tourism as well, as mass-market cruises and hordes of Americans and Asians flood prestige sights, especially in Europe, but increasingly in other places, too.
Status signalling via travel is becoming much, much harder work. Places that used to be a bit off the beaten track for American tourists such as Portugal, Turkey, and Croatia are now inundated with hoi polloi. Gotta head to ever-more-esoteric destinations to rack up some place names to drop at conference cocktail receptions . . . Georgia is still okay, maybe Slovenia, a couple of the Baltics -- there's not much left in Europe, frankly. So you see more and more 'travellers' focusing tightly on expensive, curated 'experiences' in exotic overseas venues.
I wonder if some of this conspicuous consumption is essentially subsidized by birth control? I.e. if we didn't have such a large childless population today we'd have less tourism because obviously kids would displace a good deal of the disposable income now being spent on travel.
True but while this is hard to tease out I feel like a lot of the recent affluence is fake in some way. We have a heavy debt/financialized economy and I don't see genuine comparable value being created out of many white-collar jobs that take home the large salaries that float such consumption levels. To take one example, all white-collar jobs today are probably at least half email, and weren't 20 years ago. Email back and forths are 80 percent (and I'm being generous) low-productivity in relation to the time spent on them.
In Southern California, we know the beaches that are well kept and the beaches that are degraded - and residents and visitors alike, if not entire neighborhoods, stratify along exactly the lines you describe. We do it for personal safety versus exclusion - the water is cleaner, there isn't trash on the beach, I don't worry about belongings left out, or family members getting assaulted. Bad elements tend to stand out real easily when we keep the standards high.
I've watched Carmel transform over the 30 years I've lived in central Indiana. Increasingly, I didn't understand the aesthetic; it didn't decode for me. Last year, for the first time, I went to Disney World. (Our son proposed to his girlfriend there, and she was raised on Disney.) The next time I went to Carmel, specifically to the area around the Hotel Carmichael, it clicked. Carmel is going for that aesthetic. But I didn't understand why until this article. Now I see that Disney may be setting the standard for guest experience for the wealthy, and Carmel wants to attract the same kinds of people.
Disney straight up didn't work for me. It felt ultra-curated. Carmel increasingly feels like that to me as well and I want to spend less and less time there. If it weren't for Muldoon's, a favorite of mine over the entire time I've lived here, I would almost never go there.
I grew up working class and so did my wife. Even though we together make 95th+ percentile wages (which astonishes both of us), the coding that speaks to the really wealthy just doesn't connect with us and likely never will. We moved back to Indianapolis this year, from Zionsville, albeit to the far north side. I never felt like I fit in Zionsville; this is much more like it for me.
I have to think that the aesthetic and amenities that Carmel and other northern suburbs are installing will draw more wealthy people to them, people who might have lived in or not moved out of Indianapolis. I'm all for competition but at the same time the tax base in Indy sure doesn't seem sufficient to fund things local governments do (roads, schools, parks). This only makes it worse.
I do agree Carmel has gone more upscale. But Carmel also provides lots of low cost or even free amenities to people who don't live there. If you go to the playground at Central Park on a Saturday, for example, I'd estimate a third to half of the people aren't from Carmel. When we lived downtown we'd come up every few months because that playground was so great, and lots of other people appear to do the same. Also, all parking is free in Carmel, etc.
I have similar thoughts. I have friends who when they are in town stay at the Carmichael and commented on how the entire area is a bubble they would be happy to live in, whereas I just find the entire vibe there and in downtown Zionsville a bit weird - like these are just not my people.
On the other hand, if I were at the age where I was just starting a family, I don't think I would recommend living in Indianapolis. You get absolutely nothing for the taxes you pay - incompetent government, terrible roads and infrastructure, few decent public school options and an increasingly Democratic polity that indulges all the delusions about human behavior that produces in-your-face evidence of social decay in huge areas of the city. You are much better off buying a house in a suburb where your dollar goes further and you actually get safety and amenities that are respected by the public and well maintained. Suburbs have recognized this and clearly are trying to create enough live/work/play environment that people have no reason to visit the urban core. I think it's working and the political leadership of places like Indianapolis are too dim or ideologically bound to react.
As for Disney, I personally hate it but I think it still holds allure to a lot of people as one of those experiences that signal you've "made it" in some fashion, sort of like how some people used to look at trips to Las Vegas just because 85% of the people that go had to stretch themselves to make it happen. It's the same for NBA or NFL games - whenever I go, looking at the crowd I feel like a really high percentage have no business paying the money it took for them to be there with friends or family, but it's an opportunity to be seen and tell others you did it. We are still very much a consumer society and it shows up in things like this and goods like the cars people drive, another area that is really overpriced and yet people will stretch themselves to have what they want and can be seen with.
We lived in Zionsville for the schools. My oldest graduated from North Central but that was at a high point for education in Washington Township. Now that we're empty nested, back to Indianapolis with us.
Thanks for this interesting comment. I know what you mean about the 'over-curated' Disney aesthetic; it's hardly my favorite, either.
It raises a couple of interesting questions:
First, to what class does the Disney aesthetic appeal most? I've always assumed it's dead center middle class, but the point of this article and discussion is that it's harder then ever for middle class people to afford Disney.
And therefore second question: you mentioned 'coding that speaks to the wealthy' -- what exactly do you mean/any examples?
I've not been to a Disney park in years (and I've never been to Carmel); I wonder how/if these places are shifting their coding along with their pricing.
Your comment makes me realize that I'm assuming Disney is curated for the wealthy because it doesn't connect with *me,* someone who identifies as middle class. Maybe I'm wrong there. Maybe I have a little reverse prejudice going on.
Disney reminds me of a luxury hotel The staff nearly falls over itself trying to be relentlessly helpful. The finishes are fine. The experiences are elevated. Order room service french fries and they come on a silver platter. That sort of thing. With my one day of experience at Disney, it felt more like that, in a way. The "authentic 50s diner" we visited didn't have any silver platters, but everything was uber polished and perfect. It just didn't connet with me.
I'm glad buc-ee's got a little more famous. When I was younger and I visited family; I told them it was really funny how it looks that, for Houston, going to a gas station was this big deal. I'm glad they stuck with their ethos — it's paying off.
I visited one for the first time last year.
The same exact thing happened in Major League Baseball in the 1990s. I remember that is when the league consciously started moving away from being an everyman sport to that of luxury boxes (and huge player salaries). Now, a beer at a game will cost you $15, and that's at parks in Cleveland and Detroit. I'm sure it must be higher in NYC and LA.
I read an article recently about why the upper decks in modern ball parks are such bad places to watch games from. It is because of the addition of the tiers of luxury boxes that generate so much income. They have pushed the upper decks so far up that the fans who sit there are hundreds more feet from the field than they used to be in the parks of old. It's a far cry from the days of the bleacher creatures.
This resonates with me. I grew up an Atlanta Braves fan and lived near and then in Atlanta during their 90s heydey - I remember Tommy Lasorda around that time making a point that baseball was the last professional sport that was price-accessible to the average person. Turner Field, a fantastic ballpark, had $1 bleacher seats, and at sellout games you could buy standing-room tickets for $5.
After being gone for about 20 years, I was back briefly 2 years ago for a conference, and a vendor took some of us to a game at Truist Park. The feeling I got walking through the planned-village gauntlet of shops, restaurants, and bars on the way into the ballpark - is that EVERYTHING was aimed like a gun at my wallet, with the express purpose of extracting as much $$$ as possible.
We have a AAA Orioles affiliate where I live now, and I find it more closely resembles the ballpark experience I used to have in Atlanta -- a relatively relaxed, fun evening for my family of 5 that doesn't break the bank (unless I decide I want to purchase a $15 beer).
There's two sides to this dimension, though. There's the premiumization of some middle-class services, but then there's the degradation of others to a much lower level quality than existed before. Six Flags used to be a nice place in the 80's. It wasn't as prestigious as Disney, but it was a reasonable alternative. You can't say that of Six Flags today.
Elite overproduction and income inequality doesn't explain the transition from a middle-class society into a stratified Latin American model until you also factor in the Lumpenization of the lower-middle class. Without the lumpenization of the lower-middle, the middle-class would be able to simply eschew the rat-race competition for a dwindling supply of premium goods and services. However, since the lower-middle class has begun to adopt the lifestyles and social pathologies formerly confined to the welfare underclass, public services are so degraded that they become unusable by decent people. From Six Flags, to public swimming pools, to public schools, the failure to check underclass dysfunction and the growth of pathological behavior into the lower-middle class is the second jaw of the trap closing down on the middle-class.
Those of us who grew up in more frugal households remember the constant reminders: don't dress like that, don't act that way, show some self-respect, have dignity, that's our last name you're running through the mud young man. There was a dignified lower-middle class that could abide by social standards of decency and there was the underclass who could not and were excluded. No shirts, no shoes, no service. It wasn't the police that kept lower-middle class boys from devolving into "white trash" behavior, it was fear of our fathers and grandfathers. As the epidemic of fatherlessness (among other things) spreads into higher income brackets, so too follows the descent of decent working folks into lumpenproletariat depravity.
That's why the stratification trap is so deadly. Decent people who want to live a decent life can't eschew the rat race and escape the bidding war for premium services, because nobody will do anything about the lumpenized lower-middle class who have joined in with the underclass in ruining all public spaces. We can't just ride the city mass transit because even if we never get stabbed by some psychopath that the justice system set loose for the 14th time, there's also the mugger, the pervert, or just the puddle of piss in which I'd rather not have to stand. Six Flags is the alter-Disney, the one in which they didn't premiumize the park, and which became the park for everyone. And look where that got them.
I was a teenager in the 70s and I find all of these changes saddening. We used to go on vacations where the day trips were planned only once we'd arrived. Sometimes on the same day at breakfast - "Why don't we go to abc National Park today?" and off we'd go. Not anymore. Everything must be planned and reserved in advance and then "enjoyed" with way too many others. Spontaneous visits to major natural attractions are not possible. I have no answers, but today's young people do not know what they have missed.
Good commentary.
DIS raised prices a lot in the past several years as it came to recognize that it's really a hospitality company masquerading as a movie studio. Linear TV is a melting ice cube; movie box office is stagnant at best. Sports are profitable but bidding for rights is intensely competitive. No one besides NFLX has figured out how to make much money off streaming; DIS manages to run it at a 5% operating margin now.
But Parks run at a ~30% margin IIRC and drive the large majority of operating income. It's only a slight exaggeration to say the rest of the business now exists as a marketing funnel for the parks. I think DIS still has aspirations of driving more profitability to streaming and balancing that out somewhat, but the jury is still out on that strategy.
You could probably connect these financials to a larger cultural point. The quality-adjusted cost of consuming content on a screen has plummeted. There was a trope in the 80s and 90s of the middle-class character envying another man's home theater and home library (LaserDisc!) or even his HBO subscription. I seem to remember some early Simpsons episodes having this theme. All that's now largely out of date, because those costs are trivial. Yet meanwhile real-world experiences are now at a premium.
You are right about Buc-ee’s. The places are awesome. Why did it take 50 years after the interstate highways were built for someone to figure out that what the traveling public really wants is a clean toilet? These places have acres of parking, more gas pumps than you can count, gasoline, diesel fuel, DEF, and even no-ethanol fuel for your small engine equipment. If you’re going hunting or fishing or camping, they got just about anything you might need in one stop. 20 pounds of ice is about $2.00. I’ve never been in one that wasn’t wall-to-wall with customers. Buc-ee’s knows what their market needs and they deliver it by the truck load. It is truly an American entrepreneurial capitalist success story. I couldn’t be happier for them.
I didn't realize they sold ethanol free gas. That's great.
It was just a failure of imagination. A Pilot station is amazing compared to your run-of-the-mill gas station, both in terms of scale and average cleanliness. Who could have guessed that you could then take THAT idea, scale it up 10x, pay everyone extremely well, and blow Pilot out of the water?
Gas stations - and especially gas station bathrooms - have gotten much, much better in the last 30 years.
This is an interesting post.
My father was a USAF Officer, and I lived in Germany from 1971 to 1976. We flew back from Germany in 1976 when I was 8 years old to Florida. Not only were my brothers and I blown away by all the color TV channels and crtoons on Saturday AM (we had a single black and whie AFRTS channel while in Germany) but we went to Disney World that summer. It was amazing.
We were stationed in Southern California from 1997 to 1980 and went to Disney Land, Knott's Berry Farm, and Magic Mountain regularly. We then moved to Texas and I went to Six Flags regularly as a teenager.
I have experenced not a little frustration at how different the major theme park experence "fels" now. Things are much more expensive and it seems like you hardly get the expierence of going on great rides like I remember.
I'm in the top 5% of income earners but, with 5 kids, we've only driven to Disney World or Universal Sudios four times in 15 years. One time we went when one of Disney World's theme parks was at capacity and couldn't take more people. It's expensive to go to Disney World even with a military discount and it's never been worth staing at a Disney property or pay for Fastlane because it's so expensive for a family of 7.
I also resonate with the idea that some upgraded experiences are much more in reach and common. When I was a kid, going into a 7-Eleven and getting a Slurpee was the height of a great place to stop in to. Now, I'm obsesses with Wawa markets - the coffee and the food there is fantastic and 7-Eleven feels like a dump.
7-Eleven wasn't a dump in the 70s. It wasn't enormous and grand like Wawa, but it was mighty nice then.
YMMV. It didn't feel like one. It's just that once I grew accustomed to Wawa, going into 7-Eleven feels very pedestrian.
Great analysis as always. Seeing the exact same thing in the UK.
There has been a kind of great sort between "premier" experiences and working class ones.
One thing I agree with renn is that real conservatives whatever there economic situation need to end this stupid obsession with Disney. It is a corporation filled with people that has hated your politics and they still give time, energy and money including debt fueled money to these people. They do it as their homes, real communities and children could use that money for more than just an idiotic "experience". Start to create value in your community and invest in what really matters instead of giving to a theme park ruled by lefty managers.
I know you don’t mean it this way but it comes across at the end as “Hey you can’t afford Disney for the same reason you can’t afford a house, but look, you get a neat gas station!”
The real crux is the “being forced to pay for it” point you made. Our taxes are being soaked from us to basically make money for others. It’s like when that one town used eminent domain not for a public good but to sell the land to a developer for a “better tax base”. They stopped representing people and started representing land.
Got 66 on the "Bubble Quiz"
65 for me. I lost a lot of points because I haven't lived in the USA for most of my adult life. If I had, I suspect I'd have been in the 70s.
Fantastic analysis, Aaron.
One additional difference in demand for Disney: foreign visitors. Of course there were some in years past, but now there are lots of wealthy East Asians and Europeans (and others) who will gladly make a Disney trip to the USA, typically to Disney World. There are Disney parks in Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, obviously, but another characteristic of the now-richer and much bigger international upper and upper-middle classes is that they can afford to 'collect' park visits around the world, i.e. they'll visit their 'local' park first, then go looking for more.
And speaking of those who pursue their Disney fun perhaps a bit too obsessively: other things I've read recently have explained how much of Disney's business now is adults-only, i.e. grown-ups without children who devote their time and money to living a Disney-defined life. Many of them may not be upper-middle class, but they are willing to squander (if I may use a judgey and hurty word) much of their still-considerable disposable income on park visits, Disney hotel stays, special character encounters, VIP mouse ears, and whatnot.
Yes. Foreign tourism and kidsulting surely play into this as well.
The extent of Disney's "kidulting" clientele really hit home for my wife and I when she took our then 2-year-old son to Walt Disney World (Florida) in 2021.
He was generally treated like a nuisance, and some of the "cast members" threatened to kick them both out of the park if he didn't start complying with the mask mandates.
(In case anyone's forgotten, Florida under Ron DeSantis famously relaxed its COVID regulations in mid-2020, so the fact that WDW was enforcing them a year later says a lot about the customers'/employees' demand for it.)
I am here to rant real quick about something that has irked me ever since lockdowns related to your commentary here: Public parks and nature spaces have been MAJORLY degraded by increased traffic that continues after lockdowns let up.
Our family has enjoyed hiking and other outdoors activities for years but since lockdowns numerous of our favorite parks are not only filled with lots of much ruder people (hooker clothing, blaring their music at others instead of wearing headphones, groups of unruly, unparented kids) but also the facilities at the parks have more wear and tear and problems like vandalism. Over the weekend one of my favorite local walking parks was spray-painted by some jackwagon. When I go to the public library, not only is it filled with homeless people but also people making out, showing their privates, and dropping off their kids for hours unsupervised.
Maybe rich people are bidding up the cost of nice experiences not just because they have more wealth but because the lower and increasingly middle classes no longer have basic manners and it sucks to be with them. This is the reason I'm considering buying our family a pool membership instead of using public swim areas -- the clientele that pays for things doesn't ruin the experience for others as much by behaving like barbarians. See, for example, the recent Carnival Cruise problems. Now just about every public place has been Carnival Cruised.
This phenomenon extends well beyond the US borders. It's behind the furore that's swirling around international tourism as well, as mass-market cruises and hordes of Americans and Asians flood prestige sights, especially in Europe, but increasingly in other places, too.
Status signalling via travel is becoming much, much harder work. Places that used to be a bit off the beaten track for American tourists such as Portugal, Turkey, and Croatia are now inundated with hoi polloi. Gotta head to ever-more-esoteric destinations to rack up some place names to drop at conference cocktail receptions . . . Georgia is still okay, maybe Slovenia, a couple of the Baltics -- there's not much left in Europe, frankly. So you see more and more 'travellers' focusing tightly on expensive, curated 'experiences' in exotic overseas venues.
I wonder if some of this conspicuous consumption is essentially subsidized by birth control? I.e. if we didn't have such a large childless population today we'd have less tourism because obviously kids would displace a good deal of the disposable income now being spent on travel.
Probably - but we are also just much more affluent today.
True but while this is hard to tease out I feel like a lot of the recent affluence is fake in some way. We have a heavy debt/financialized economy and I don't see genuine comparable value being created out of many white-collar jobs that take home the large salaries that float such consumption levels. To take one example, all white-collar jobs today are probably at least half email, and weren't 20 years ago. Email back and forths are 80 percent (and I'm being generous) low-productivity in relation to the time spent on them.
I totally agree.
Complaints about degraded public spaces are increasingly common, alas.
In Southern California, we know the beaches that are well kept and the beaches that are degraded - and residents and visitors alike, if not entire neighborhoods, stratify along exactly the lines you describe. We do it for personal safety versus exclusion - the water is cleaner, there isn't trash on the beach, I don't worry about belongings left out, or family members getting assaulted. Bad elements tend to stand out real easily when we keep the standards high.