When I was in grad school every visitor wanted to go to WDW. Ya know you’ve been there too many times when you know where every bathroom in the park is! I am glad my s took his family to Disneyland as I have no desire to go through all that now, with the cost and the overpriced extras and different pass levels needed to avoid the long lines and all the strategies needed to navigate the rides. Sounds like a royal headache.
As for “gambling”, I know zero about any casino or card game and do not care to learn, but I have a relative who is very good at one particular card game. even got to watch them in a televised tournament once. it was like watching paint dry.
I think part of understanding the Disney Parks hype could be one’s personal experience. H and I had been to Epcot within a year of it opening and had a great time, both in FutureWorld and World Showcase. We can still hum the chorus of Fruit Fruit Veggie Veggie in The Land pavilion. And were very excited to dine at Les Chefs de France.
Fast forward a number of years when son was seven, and we were visiting relatives in Florida while in-laws were also there. We were next going to DisneyWorld. MIL, very concerned, goes, “Tell me, Marilyn, what is Son going to do there?” I had no idea how to answer! Um, have fun? Turns out her only experience was going to the World Showcase at Epcot and probably not doing much more than shopping. Since she was a very ego centric woman, that was her entire concept of all of DW. So she obviously didn’t get the hype!
Incidentally, @Mjkacmom, S adored the video arcade at the Contemporary Resort. For him, it was heaven on earth.
I have been a successful professional gambler, but I don’t consider that “gambling.” It’s closer to investing – risking money only when you have a positive expected value, such that your balance is expected to increase over time, so long as you adequately account for risk tolerance/capacity and time horizon.
I think of gambling as more risking money when there is a negative expected value (the house has the edge), such that you are expected to lose over time, if you keep playing. I don’t care for or do this, but I can see why some people do. The 3 situations where I could see a presumed benefit are:
Many people are bad at considering odds, particularly when big numbers are involved. For example, how many people know or consider the odds of a win, when they buy a lottery ticket? The odds aren’t important. More important is how their life would change, if they won.
There is also a group that gambles due to financial desperation. This contributes to why the % of money spent on lottery increases dramatically as NW or income decreases. For example, persons living in the lowest income zip cods average more money per year on lottery tickets than the average could come up with in an emergency situation. Gambling can be seen as one of the few ways out and provides a valuable and motivating sense of hope.
Some also like the excitement/thrill/experience. There can be an addictive dopamine rush that many hope to repeat. There are some biological contributing factors.
Our son is a certified card counter (yep, that is a thing) and loves to pick up a few hundred at black jack here and there. He’s careful not to win enough to annoy the casinos and doesn’t have enough free time to go very often, doesn’t go to Vegas. We were totally surprised and concerned about the ethics and potential conflict with his service commitment only to find out it’s legal, and he learned to do it in a club of mathy officers. Eventually, he and another officer got so good at it they could keep the count no matter how large the shoe or number of players. From that level, the two of them entered contests and eventually became nationally “certified” through some organization.
I had a tee shirt made for his BD next month that says, “Silently Counting Cards” for his next casino trip.
ETA: We don’t gamble. Gambling and lotteries are for the mathematically impaired.
Been to a few. Underwhelmed. Wouldn’t go again. The pictures in the coffee table books are much better, so I always feel cheated. (But I feel that way about ALL places. For me, travel is highly overrated. I don’t get the hype, so I no longer do it.)
Southern California native here. I loved Disneyland growing up and when my girls were young. Disneyland today does not have the same appeal to me with the crowds and how expensive it is.
We had passes for the year before D1 went to kindergarten (D2 was 3) and it was so much fun. We would load the girls into the car on a Saturday morning and head to the park. We had a stroller they could both fit in and packed lunch and snacks. They loved all the old parades and stage shows - Main Street Electrical, The Lion King and the Pocahontas and Festival of Fools stage shows. For a treat they would get a Mickey Mouse ice cream bar. Some days we would stay late into the evening and other days just a few hours. The drive was just an hour and 15 minutes from our house. Before we left the park at night we would put the girls in their PJs and drive through the MacDonald’s near Disneyland to get them a happy meal. H and I have great memories of this Disneyland.
What’s almost as cool is by using the Play Disney Parks app, you can make the life-sized Millennium Falcon make noise, have alarms go off, sound like it’s trying to take off. Super fun.
I have to defend Las Vegas. I don’t get the gambling thing myself, but there are other things to do around Las Vegas, including some great hiking at Valley of Fire state park, Red Rock Canyon (or something close to that) and Zion National Park is just a couple of hours away. Plus you can walk and tour the Hoover Dam. We went to visit for a week once in December, because it was SOOO inexpensive. We even did an overnight in Zion, because we’d only paid less than 400 bucks for a week (or maybe only 5 days, but you get the idea), one block off the main drag, in a place that was perfectly fine/safe.
Maybe less of a product and more of a current fashion craze. I don’t get the appeal of white sneakers - especially when they are of the athletic variety. Sure, fine for the tennis court and maybe the gym…but as a fashion statement it seems dorky.
