America’s favorite family outings are increasingly out of reach

> The basic, economical attractions are still there if you look.

Yeah, I live in Baltimore, and my wife and I go with our toddler to a beach at a state park. It's a 30 minute drive away, little patch of sand on the banks of the Back River, no waves, not more than 4 feet deep at the deepest part of the swimming area. Lots of shaded picnic tables and we bring food from home. More than one playground if the little guy wants a change of pace from the water. Honestly perfect for us, since shallow, placid river water is a lot more fun for a toddler than straight-up ocean breakers, and big shade trees within a hundred feet saves us schlepping a shade structure.

It's 18 bucks plus gas for a full- to half-day outing.

We bring friends and they're always amazed that it was right under their noses - people in Maryland are just stuck on sitting in traffic for hours and paying for lodging to go to one of the big ocean beach destinations (e.g. Ocean City).

> I think everything is just generally "nicer".

That's an interesting perspective that I wouldn't have expected. I didn't grow up anywhere near the 50s, but I feel like everything is worse from even my childhood in the 90s and 2000s. Malls are decrepit, national and state parks are under maintained but overrun with visitors, stadium seats could not be smaller (and are often so vertical in the "affordable" seats it creates vertigo sensations), parking lots are full of gigantic cracks and poorly marked areas and holes, theme parks are under maintained and expensive with huge lines and many from my childhood closed down, and it goes on and on. I went to an NFL game (only because I got free tickets). It took around 45 minutes from our car in the parking lot (not including the time to be directed to park), in a lot that I'm pretty sure was not paved at all, to get to our seats. The seats were so high up, we could barely see anything. We might as well have been watching from a nearby skyscraper. And the seats were sardine seats, as in sitting sideways so as to not hit the people in front of you with your knees. Those seats probably cost those around me hundreds of dollars.

It's also well known that many people from those older times had rents and mortgages at much smaller percentages of their monthly income than those today, whereas today they can exceed 50% easily.

I'm sorry, but I've been to the State Fair and comparing it as a Disney alternative is kind of a joke. State Fairs are glorified carnivals, and probably hire some actual carnys for the month they are open. To compare that to the rides at Disney is really a stretch. You could have at least suggested Six Flags like amusement park instead.

Your other points I'll agree with. State Fairs->Disney was just too much of a stretch for me to accept.

Just one thing: National parks aren’t exactly expensive, right?

During our travels through the US they definitely provided the most bang for the buck, especially given that we had the $80 annual pass. In that context it was actually state parks that were an additional cost for us, though certainly never any kind of substantial cost. The tiniest fraction of our budget. Doing stuff in cities was much more expensive and we didn’t even consider visiting Disneyland, even though we actually stayed a couple of nights in Orlando (to visit the Kennedy Space Center – one of the most expensive things we did - followed by a visit to the neighboring state park, which was very cheap).

We never stayed inside or even just near the parks, so that certainly helped. Our budget of spending between $100 and $150 per night for three people always felt very manageable (mostly AirBnB and so we nearly always had a kitchen to cook food) but I can see how that might be too much for some people.

I think had we wanted to stay closer to the national parks (to explore them more thoroughly instead of basically doing day trips to like twenty of them) we would have spent a bit more on places to sleep (more like $200).

The fun things to do in national parks don’t cost any additional money, at least usually. I guess if you want to ride a mule down to the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon? But even that’s more limited by scarcity than price. Maybe there are little costs here and there (like renting bikes in the Everglades) but we definitely spent more on t-shirts about national parks than we did on things to do in national parks. They felt like a real benevolent gift most of the time, expect when there were too many other people, I guess (though since we were one of those too many people we could hardly complain).

The trouble with these comparisons is that they assume the world remains static while only prices change. But the positional status of the same kind of product or the same brand can also change in the market. For example, movie theaters used to be the only way to watch movies in 1960. Today, big screen LCDs and streaming are affordable to the median family. As a result, theaters have had to move upmarket to offer a compelling alternative to watching movies at home. It’s not just that the theaters are way nicer, which they are, but that they necessarily occupy a higher end segment of the entertainment sector because other products have filled in some of the mass market segment.

Cars are another good example of this. A 1985 Honda Accord is just not as nice of a car as a 2022 Honda Accord: https://www.netcarshow.com/honda/1985-accord_sedan. Not only in absolute terms, but in relative terms. The Accord occupies a premium segment of the market today compared to 1985.

Disney, likewise, is much bigger and better today. The hotels are much nicer. Tech conditions people to expect better products for less money every year, but that doesn’t translate into meat space. A bigger park with more attractions, nicer and cleaner hotel rooms, etc., all cost more to build and maintain even in inflation-adjusted terms.

    Instead of MLB/NFL, check out summer or arena leagues.

Yeah. Just because some activities have migrated from being "everyman" activities that 75% of the population can afford to things that 75% of the population can't afford, doesn't mean that reflects the overall reality of the average person's lived experience.

Things like MLB/NFL games have greatly outpaced inflation. One reason people keep paying for them (aside from other obvious factors, like love of the game) is because we have been conditioned to believe that they are things "average" people can afford them when in fact that hasn't been true for a long time.

Even if sports ticket prices didn't outpace inflation, the fact is that 50 years ago being at the stadium was the best way to see the game. Your other alternative was a tiny, balky TV or radio. These days you can see them at home in HD on a giant screen that would have seemed like science fiction 25 years ago and in fact, because of cable bundling, you may already be paying for this privilege even if you don't want to.

(edit: There are still things that are special about the live experience, but the home experience has become massively better than it used to be)

So like collecting physical music, or attending movies in movie theaters as opposed to Netflixing them it makes some level of sense for live sports attendance to migrate from "everyman activity" to "premium niche thing for diehard fans with disposable income."

This is unfortunate in many ways, and it is a loss, but it does not necessarily equate to a degradation of average quality of life. That would only be the case if average people no longer had any affordable leisure options ...if there were no new affordable to replace those which migrated upscale.

(FWIW, I say all of this as a sports fan who does enjoy attending some games each year)

It's the same with colleges--even state universities now have luxury dorms with one bedroom/one bath units, massive gyms, bigger and nicer libraries and computer labs... and more useless programs that kids don't participate in or get much use from. At a UC I paid over $1000 a quarter in registration fees for those programs that I basically got zero benefits from them.

Housing is similar--there aren't many small 1200 sq ft starter homes with a one car garage being built--it's mostly big McMansions with a list of bullet points. There are fewer and fewer affordable entry points to housing and college for the working class to start building wealth from.

Growing up, my parents were very anti Disney[land|world]. We always knew it would never be something we were going to. They were offended by the cost and the crowds.

Now having a family of my own, we keep the tradition alive. Our kids know Disney(place) as a thing that is overpriced and overcrowded.

But, It’s all in what kind of recreation you seek. I’m sure there plenty of people who would be put off by all the camping and canoeing trips we do.

As a Clemson fan, I had a really weird experience this year. We didn't make the playoffs for the first time in 6 years, instead getting picked for the Cheez-It Bowl in Orlando...and it was fantastic.

I grew up taking a family trip over Christmas break every year to wherever Clemson was playing in a bowl game. This was the 90s, so it was never a top tier game for us but the trips were always great.

When my kids got old enough to start taking them on these trips, it was impossible to justify the $1,000+ cost per ticket for each playoff game. Before travel cost was factored in.

Tickets to the Cheez-It Bowl were in the $50-80 range and you could pay a little more to get access to the Club Level. Took the whole family to the game and the kids loved it. We all had a great time. And Clemson won (take that Iowa State).

> Just because you read about an attraction that seems cool, is 1,500 miles away, and is the best of breed nationwide, doesn't mean you need to or even get to experience it.

FOMO is real and amplified by media. Most medium-size cities in the US have plenty of family-friendly activities and entertainment.

My grandpa and his brothers would regularly cart their families a few miles up a canyon (now a regional park) to play pinochle and bocce while the kids raced up hills and splashed in a stream. These are things still accessible to most people.

There was a brief window, mostly the 1980s and 1990s, where we had the nicer things, but the prices hadn't really gone up yet.

To use the Disneyland example, in the late 1990s, Disneyland tickets could routinely be had off-season for $20 and annual passes were around $100. Adjust that for inflation, and you're still at 1/3 to 1/2 of today's prices. But most of Disneyland's expansion and most of the really groundbreaking things were already in place.

"Instead of MLB/NFL, check out summer or arena leagues"

This is a great option. I would add to this (smaller) college events. We take family outings to see collegiate volleyball, which is free (even parking!) and food is priced like the 1980s. It is possible to watch Olympians compete for less than the price of a movie ticket.

Similarly, the colleges near us have good (although small) museums. And student-run theaters often have public events that do not cost a lot of money.

I think this misses the point.

In the 1960s the “best of breed” entertainment (like Disney) was a available to middle class families. They also had the option of going to a cheap state fair, or local theatre, or minor league baseball.

Now, the middle class can’t afford those “best of breed” entertainment venues like they used to.

I doubt it's that much better.

My guess is it's MBAs. They figured out that you can squeeze people more and so they're doing it.

Before everything was optimized by a business person with as spreadsheet, people would set prices by reasonable guess, and that guess would simply be lower than optimal.

For instance there's a village shop where I live. You can get a hand made sandwich for two pounds. Similar factory made sandwiches at Marks would easily be closer to double.

I went to Disney World this year and Disney World in the 90s. Disney World now was not "nicer" than it was then, about the same, all the "enhancements" benefit Disney more than me the customer in my opinion, and in fact many of the attractions looked like they were barely hanging on. But Im more impressed by well made animatronics than video screens (which i can do at home) so maybe Im the wrong person to ask. I do remember the food tasting better and being more affordable in the 90s too. But we can chalk that up to the time difference.

Disney seems to be going after DINC people now instead of families with their pricing and overall strategy. Good luck with that.

> Instead of Disney, go to the state fair.

That's essentially the "skip the avocado toast" type of logic.

Except there were already state fairs in the 60s and Disney in the 60s and the latter was already a whole different level back then. So there has been real change if back then you could afford to take your kids to Disney and today the budget is only enough for the state fair anymore.

I think you have a good point. In regard to movies, there's an additional explanation: so many families have home theaters with large flat screen tvs. Cinemas have to compete with that and they do so by ramping up the experience, which of course costs more.

This doesn't seem like a serious suggestion when the conclusion is little more than "austerity for thee, not for me". To shut people out of enjoying things because of perceived "luxuries" that add very little to the experience seems misguided at best. Once the parking lot is renovated, it is not suddenly justified. That is an expense that causes prices to rise, thus affecting the set of people who can access the service. It has real material consequences.

> "Instead of MLB/NFL, check out summer or arena leagues."

until you go to the drew league to see your friend play, and lebron decides to show up (kyrie was a no-show of course). then you can't get in for any amount of money because all the bandwagoners jam the sidewalks and doorways, not to mention the gym. (not bitter)

> Now that person who traveled to all sorts of attractions continues to seek out new things -> bigger and better of course. More $$$.

I wonder if this the only trend pressuring prices up. Another effect of "bigger and better" is that it reduces the likelyhood of competition. And with less competition, there's less downward price pressure.

Another possible pressure is on why it has to be better. I don't think it's only consumer pressure. (Surely those who can't pay for "better" would rather stay at "good enough"). The problem is, what regulators consider "good enough" back then is not good enough today.

Some call this "progress". But some of these standards could be construed as protectionist barriers of entry

Yeah I love baseball but I gave up on MLB games. I used to travel to do that, now I just watch the home minor league games and even travel to other cities to those those teams. I realized that I had just as much fun at high school games as I ever did at the big guy games so MLB and other minor league stuff is quite fun. Similar, I find smaller parks and venues to go to. They all coast 1/10 - 1/2 as much as "the big guys" and my family has probably more fun as things are less crowded and hectic. We still go to some "major" stuff occasionally but not like when I was growing up. Things were way less refined and cushy and more affordable and less hectic.

> everything is just generally "nicer".

This is also a big contributor to the rising costs of:

* Housing * Food * Construction

Which all make regular appearances on HN as people wonder why they all cost more.

Safety standards are higher, quality standards are higher, convenience standards are higher.

Someone buying a house in the 1950's would have gotten an empty kitchen, no washer or dryer, no granite countertops, no detailing in the back yard.

Meals were simpler - 2 or 3 ingredients, mostly stock items, all local.

Roads and buildings are built to last longer, have fewer externalities, with more accessibility options for pedestrians, better energy utilization, etc.

I read an interview with a CEO of Efteling once (basically Dutch Disneyland) and they asked him if they would ever introduce a "fast pass". His answer was that they would never do such a thing because they want don't want their park to discriminate between rich and poor. All families are equal inside the gates. You can even take your own food and go for a picknic.

translated: Never complain, proles, just be glad you get some scraps from that ever-growing economy. Even if it's less than your parents.

I suspect that some of what your paying for at disney is all that advertisement they do.

>> I think everything is just generally "nicer". Stadium seats are cushier, parking lots are paved instead of gravel, sidewalks are a lot wider, more air-conditioned spaces, better food availability, etc.

I never asked for any of that. I just want some cost effective free options for fun.

I'm not so sure.

We were going through a family member's childhood boxes recently and came across all their old HS Football bills from the late 1950's. These things were really detailed and really good looking. 8 pages, full color, few ads, with loads of detail on the players for both teams and coaches. All for a public HS football program.

>> Someone growing up in the 1930s wasn't able to hop on the interstate and go 300 miles away for the weekend. Those growing up in the 80s were more apt to do that sort of thing

You mean 1950's, not 80's

Ok, out of couriosity: How many people who comment in this thread would actually have difficulty budgeting a trip to Disneyland if they wanted?

(Edit: this was supposed to be a top-level comment, not a reply. Sorry!)

> I think everything is just generally "nicer". Stadium seats are cushier, parking lots are paved instead of gravel, sidewalks are a lot wider, more air-conditioned spaces, better food availability, etc.

You’d think that the profits over the past 60 gears would have been able to pay for a lot of that.

But of course these things are owned by shareholders that demand returns, and if you just get a new loan/grant/subsidy to pay for your $108M parking lot (seriously wtf?), there’s that much more to pay out to the most important people of all.

This comes over as a very "Let them eat cake." response.

I know it's a cliché to blame all the world's problems on wealth inequality, and that a lot of accusations of wealth-inequality-problems can be reasonably blamed on other things...

But this one is definitely wealth inequality. They're probably making over half their revenue on "whales" that make up only 10% of their audience, but they don't want to ignore the rest of their audience because (1) they need to continuously convert casuals into whales or their audience will eventually just die off (2) word-of-mouth marketing is the most effective form of marketing, and there just aren't enough whales out there to keep something like MLB going all on their own.

I went to a rock festival this weekend with a lot of bigger rock names from the 00s and 10s. Three day tickets were $200-ish, not /awful/ but a bit pricey.

One draft of Bud Light was $12. A little take-out sized noodle box was $15. Tater tots with cheese was $12. Grocery store freezer-grade chicken tenders and fries were $25.

It was absolutely nuts.

see also: the entire airline industry

Price discrimination is the name of the game in today's world, and is taught in every economics class.

At some point, we need to ask folk to price goods for a meaningful cost, not the maximum allowable, for better access and a more open market. Money cannot be the only measurement of a meaningful marketplace.

> Yes of course if you buy a whole bunch of Stadium food it is expensive, but one of the entire gimmicks of the baseball stadium is that they make most of the money on beer and food. The thing is, food is optional! This is a form of progressive pricing that allows the team to charge people who are price insensitive more while still being affordable.

I don't think it's realistic to expect a family of four to have a good time sitting through a three hour baseball game without any food. And if their historical pricing data is correct, food and drink prices were comparatively much more reasonable in the 60s, so it's not a inherent property of ballparks to have outrageous concession prices.

> One last thing is to note that the experience at the stadium has changed enormously. Stadiums in the 60s were basically a bigger version of high school bleachers. Now they’re luxury palaces.

Here's a picture of the seats at Coors Field today [0]. Here's some pictures of 1960s baseball stadium seating [1][2]. They look pretty much the same to me. Now you get a cupholder, I guess?

[0]: https://www.thedenverchannel.com/sports/rockies/heres-what-g... [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/sports/baseball/al-jackso... [2]: https://nxstrib-com.go-vip.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/20...

I agree, especially when looking at Mets and Yankees tickets. The price difference isn’t really there.

We are a huge baseball family do a big extended family trip to the Yankees every year - usually $5-12 for 30 bleacher seats to a weekday game. I’m a Mets fan, and we usually do a few of games a year.

One of the things about the baseball experience is there are lots of ways to enjoy it. Usually we do one “big” trip where we score a deal on a resale ticket behind the plate or first base, often including food for $100-150. Then we’ll do a couple of SRO or upper deck trips with a $5-12 ticket. And we’ll also do lower level outfield tickets for $30-80.

I grew up I the 80s, and times weren’t all magic and marshmallows then either. My dad worked for the city and my mom was a nurse. We couldn’t afford fancy baseline seats at big city ballparks then either.

Baseball is different in smaller markets though. If you’re in Pittsburgh or Cincinnati, your baseball ticket options are very different.

> I am skeptical how they calculated baseball numbers

I went to a Giants game on Saturday and let me tell you they are underestimating how much things cost. The cheapest hotdogs were $11 + taxes and the cheapest beer was $12 + taxes. The cheapest and the saddest tickets still cost around $20.

Also, it’s been almost a decade since I saw a $9 movie. The only time I’ve had cheaper was when VC funded movie pass was like a thing for 2 months.

A lot of baseball stadiums also allow you to bring food and sealed pop into the stadium. My wife and I stop at the Gus's or Safeway around the corner of Oracle Park and grab a sandwich or snacks and a pop before we go to the Giants game. Add in outfield tickets and CalTrain and we can go pretty inexpensively.

> This is a form of progressive pricing that allows the team to charge people who are price insensitive more while still being affordable.

Is it not dystopian that we live in a world where a working class family can't take their kids to a baseball game and buy them a hotdog and a pop.

>The thing is, food is optional!

Have you ever gone anywhere with kids? If you can't bring food with you, it's not optional.

Do you enjoy drinking beer? Probably 90%+ of adults who go to a baseball game would like to enjoy some drinks during a 4 hour game with so much downtime.

So this argument of "but it's optional!" is pretty dumb. That's like going to a movie theatre and saying "well, popcorn and soda/drinks are optional!! look how cheap it is!". I mean, sure, but it's also a ridiculous argument for nearly everyone. Again, especially if one has kids.

I've been to a few different stadiums and been in several different suites (as a vendor, not like I'd ever pay for that crap). A lot of the game is spent watching TV screens in the suite watching the same thing that people at home are seeing for free-ish. Jerry World (aka where the Cowboys play for those not familiar) has ground level suites where you are actually standing slightly below the field. Once the game starts and the teams are along the sidelines in their normal placements, all you see are the backsides of the players waiting to do their jobs. Again, you spend the majority of the time looking up at the giant TV to see actual game play. Clear evidence that a fool and his money are easily parted.

Also at what point does watching a game live become worth it?

I can pay a lot of money to get a good seat with a good view of the action. Or I can pay a lot less and get nosebleed seats - but why? At that point watching the game on TV seems to make more sense. Yes there is the "atmosphere" of being in the bleachers, but I'm not sure that's still worth being stuck up in the nosebleed tiers.

In 1960, we had 16 MLB teams [1]. We currently have 30 [2].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_in_baseball

2. https://www.espn.com/mlb/standings

Disney World didn't open until 1971, 11 years after your 1960. So just with that, we actually have 2x more Disney's than we did in 1960. But in reality there's actually a lot more.

Epcot opened in 1982. Hollywood Studios and Typhoon Lagoon opened in 1989. Blizzard Beach opened in 1995. Animal Kingdom opened in 1998. California Adventure opened in 2001. These are only the parks in the US, not including the parks overseas. On top of that a few of these parks have had a good bit of expansion since their original opening, there has been more engineering to increase effective capacity of the rides, etc. Disney alone can move a lot more people through a Disney park every day than they could in 1960.

And then this ignores all the other theme parks which opened since Disney. Universal Orlando Resort opened in 1990. Universal's Islands of Adventure opened in 1999. Kings Island opened in '71. Carowinds opened in '73. Six Flags alone has 11 theme parks they still operate which opened after 1960, and all water parks they operate opened after 1960. Our stock of amusement parks has increased a ton since 1960.

Even Disneyland isn't insanely expensive for those who live locally - they have a "California Resident" pass to encourage locals to go during down times.

What makes it expensive is airfare and hotel added on top of the tickets.

That feels like you’re identifying a cause, not invalidating the comparison?

Also, there is Disney World, and EuroDisney, and hundreds of other non-Disney theme parks throughout the US and worldwide. Disney is setting a price that keeps them at the upper echelon of theme parks, whether the experience itself is deserving or not.

I don't know about the Anaheim location but Disney has dramatically expanded their Florida park since it opened in 1971 and a large number of competing theme parks have been built in the area.

I will teach my children, if I ever have any, to eat at the movies.

My girlfriend and I always try to support our local theater by getting as much concessions as possible. Movie theaters are a very important part of my life and I don’t want them to die. A movie ticket wouldn’t fund a thing, especially with inflation now.

People on HN really be throwing around terms like "monopoly" with no sense.

How is baseball a monopoly? There's not only competition between teams and leagues, but with other sports!

How is Disneyland a monopoly? There's not only competition with other theme and amusement parks, but with all forms of passive entertainment (plays, movies, comedy shows, music festivals)!

Baseball is a monopoly by who? Certainly not MLB, they're just the biggest game in town but by no means the only game, nor even the most common, nor even the most expensive in many places.

The thing I wonder about with movies and food: where is the competition? Where is the free market thing? If the price of tickets and food is an issue for people to not go to the cinema more often, surely a competitor would see that as an opportunity and gouge prices?

I mean that's basically what Uber did with a ton of investor money; undercut the competition out of business. Muh free market.

edit: oh you mentioned monopolies already, I should've finished reading your reply lmao

I still think that it’s madness that entertainment companies priced out the general public like that. I understand that they are not charities and that’s some people are still paying these extortionate prices but still.

Part of me thinks it’s crazy how we all seem fine about building a two-tiered world where the rich get richer and can enjoy luxurious things while the poor scrap by.

I believe it’s clearly a consequence of the policies enacted in the 80s. These policies were pushed out with a total disregard for social cohesion. It’s all about making target numbers grow bigger without looking at the big picture. My belief is we have reached a point where inequality needs to be tamed if we don’t want our states to be torn apart but the idea has apparently never been as unpopular with half of the population.

As someone who doesn't really follow sports much anymore, and doesn't really care much about specific teams, I much prefer going to Minor League games.

Much cheaper, parking is easy, nowhere near as crowded, much more relaxed, and the baseball is practically indistinguishable to me from Major League.

Minor league games are an amazing steal; especially if you have a local team you can follow - you get up close and personal, and often the players stick around for autographs and fun.

I have quite fond memories of the Everett Aquasox; I wish we had a minor league team closer to where I am now. And sometimes you even get to see the stars when they're on injury rehab!

Baseball stadiums are great experience for small market teams. You can see Cleveland play for like $15 because they never sell out. Meanwhile good luck finding a dodger game for $15. It's priced as high as the market can bear. If they can sell dodger tickets for as much as they do and still sell out every single home game they will continue pricing them even higher next season until some limit has been reached like it has for cleveland with those $15 bleacher seats you can score. Right now it looks like the limit does not exist for large market teams like the dodgers at least.

The Orioles are for sure dirt-cheap. They run promotions where you can get in for four bucks. When I was in Pittsburgh for a minute the Pirates were a crazy bargain too.

If the MTA ever gets its shit together I'll be able to get there and back on the Light Rail, too.

With Disneyland from Aug 1-2 with 2 adults and 2 kids (age 10,12), the cheapest on-site hotel is Disneyland Hotel at $607/night. If you then do 1-day 1-park tickets on the 1st, that's $600.

The costs here come from trying to stay on-property. If you stay off-property (but still close enough to walk) you can book a 4-star for less than $300. And the ticket prices are based on demand, if you can go during the middle of the week in september it's around $400 for a day of Disneyland.

Your statistic is for households. Theirs is for "families", and may only include households with children.

> WTF, if your from LA you just drive there?

Then you get dinged on gas and parking, and you don't have as much time to actually enjoy the park.

You could get day tickets at Disneyland before EPCOT opened. I still have some that are hand stamped and signed from the late 70's.

The parks are out of control. You pay more for longer wait times. On the other hand if they lowered prices/let more people in, the wait times and crowding would be even worse and there would be complaining about that. The real problem is they just need more parks - some in the midwest wouldn't kill them so people wouldn't have to travel as far. Spread the load out.

It might have just been bias growing up with Disneyland but I much preferred it to the magic kingdom - it seemed like they watered the individual parks down to encourage people to park hop.

The real issue is I think a lot of companies just assumed they couldn't compete at the same level as Disney so they didn't even bother trying. I think Universal with Harry Potter found out that yes, you can steal attendees from the house of mouse and providing a themed experience is also doable - they are far from invulnerable. I'm eagerly looking forward to Universal's Epic Universe; hopefully it will light a fire under others (hey Cedar Fair - there's more to parks than just coasters!) that it is worth it to up their game too.

>Being a Disney aficionado, I have to note: the price in the 60s was only to get in the park. You had to buy separate tickets for each attraction once you were in

The article literally covers this, both in their infographic for Disney, and in the paragraph preceding.

>(One important clarifying note: Back in 1960, you paid for the park admission ticket and the rides separately. We’ve combined those costs below.)

Maybe read the article before you comment about its faults...

They explicitly mention that they accounted for that in their calculation

For these particular services I think

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease

is more like it. That is, a Raspberry Pi is a much more powerful computer than the IBM 360/75 that planned the moon mission and costs orders of magnitude less but there has been no productivity improvement for baseball players.

Movies are an entirely business than they were back in the day. I remember Ghostbusters being in the theater for more than a year, and back then there were not just the first-run theaters that charged full price but many second-run theaters that had cut-rate double features (I remember seeing one of Gremlins and The Dark Crystal)

Today home video "competes" with theaters in some sense, a month of Netflix costs less than one movie ticket but the consequence isn't downward price pressures on theaters but exactly the opposite because home video demolished the second-run theaters leaving the first-run theaters to go on their own trajectory.

(And as for TV sets and things to plug into TV sets... Today's TV offers better quality than was imaginable in the 1960s and is cheap in comparison. It's astonishing what people spent for old game consoles like the Atari 2600, what a VCR and tapes cost in 1980, ...)

In the UK the 1980 banking act introduced formerly excluded commercial banks to housing loans and simultaneously increased the statutory maximum loan value from 3* single wage earners salary to 5* combined household income of married couples. Previously only mutual savings and loan member societies aka building societies could lend private housing loans. Not only now was the public forced into paying for profit margins, but access to capital enjoyed by commercial banks vastly outgunned the much more regulated thrifts who eg couldn't easily raise their offer rates above long term deposit bases. Disastrous in the up rate eighties. Louis Ranieri of Solomon Brothers fame opened The Mortgage Corporation in London and shipped in top trading talent but the thrifts not only knew nothing about their books but weren't persuaded to unload like the accidental priming of the US mortgage market. Although profit seeking it seemed only Ranieri ever gave a damn to do anything that might have saved UK S&Ls. Nothing contributed to the dissolution of the family more than this legislative enforcement of the necessity for one of any separating couple to forgo the ability to afford a home.

P.S. Increasing the lending limit naturally turbocharged inflation. Adjusting your books to manage changing rates environment requires at least functional treasury and cash desks. Into this century several household name UK mutuals turned into banks didn't have their own CHAPS terminal. (Clearing House Automated Payments. Entry level facility for a even a token treasury function. Edit: for that matter even for a small company such as ours.)

Edit: added about the rates market and the abysmal neglect of UK capital economic underpinnings. Things were so desperate and freewheeling the largest UK thrift only was persuaded to return the six billion it's actuaries deemed in excess of pension fund requirements at the time of demutualization in 2018. No carry paid. Edit2: only Ranieri.. have / gave a damn. Ed3 Louis' name correctly.

This is a great site except for the Hayek quote in the end. One of the bad things that happened in 1971 is that people started listening to scumbags like Hayek, instead of economists like Maynard Keynes who genuinely wanted the economy to help everyone and make the entire country richer and more powerful.

The post word war economic order was Keynesian. It created the greatest economic boom known to mankind. Then people got greedy and the ideas of the kinds of Hayek got in vogue. Not only did the middle class get screwed but the philosophy of Hayek and the like made it seem like it was completely necessary and cosmically just that the middle class must get screwed.

Force of globalization was/is too strong to turn back time

And yet pro events and Disney consistently sell out or are packed. So there must be additional complicating factors at work here.

Immigration from non-european countries exploded right around that time due to the immigration and nationality act.

I don't know if that's co-orelation or causation.

https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/ft_20...

I have to wonder how much of it is this. My father and grandfather spoke of going camping at their favourite regional camping spots. When I went to university however, I had similar vacation experiences to people from all over the country as we all went to Disney and we all went to Vancouver and we all went Banff.

The vacation/leisure experience is homogenizing for the middle class and decreasingly local.

Where are you where you have empty camp grounds?

The local/state ones here in the PNW are booked out months in advance nearly everywhere. I suspect bots are being used.

> I am not convinced either that a trip to Disneyland with hotel stay was ever within reach of everyone, especially without a level of planning and saving for it.

In the 1990s my immigrant family was able to afford a trip to Disneyworld approximately one year after we arrived in the US. We were not poor, but not well-off by any means: only one person in the family could legally work, we lived in a not-very-good apartment in a not-very-good area, our one car was old and used, and all our furniture was acquired from yard sales.

And yet we could afford the Disney theme park tickets. (Not a Disney hotel, of course; hotels were overpriced even then, so we drove 1000 miles to Florida and stayed with a family we knew.)

Incorrect. You can have an increasing segment of the population in count but the percentage of that population of the whole of the population is decreasing.

The amount of money you could spend on your daughter on a Disney trip...they have an incredible amount of princess-related add-ons.

If you get the cheapest anything, you'll have an imperfect experience. But I just pulled up mlb.com and checked prices for a random DB game (Friday night game, Aug 5). Outfield seats at field level are 25 bucks. Or you can get tickets right by the bullpen in foul ball territory for $25.

Not bad for 3+ hours of friday night entertainment.

Interestingly, in 1960 there were 16 MLB teams that played 154 regular season games for a total of 1232 games that year, compared to 30 MLB teams playing 162 games for 2430 total games (almost double!) a year today. I imagine other sports have seen a similar trend as well.

> That's about 180% as many people competing for the same entertainment resources.

That makes sense for Disneyland and maybe baseball teams, but less so to explain movie theaters, since they're not supply constrained in the same way.

It's also nice (in a way) because they're much more cognizant of this, and if you are willing to flex you can get in much cheaper than a normal "high time face-value" price.

Last time I went we brought 12 people for about a grand.

Seems like they should just build more Disneylands.

The sheeple have been corporatized. They sit in front of the idiot box for 21+ hours weekly soaking up the advertisements telling them what to buy and where to vacation. Most people are boring and unoriginal. They just want do the same things as all the other sheeple

I assume that you only count the contiguous western United States. Some Alaska national parks are very inaccessible.

I think they're talking about "yearly activities" - at least in the southwest it was relatively common for families to take a "vacation" each summer which was usually centered around something like going to Disneyland, or traveling somewhere, etc.

Depending on how wealthy you were, there was a wide variation on what and how - poorer kids in my class would go to Magic mountain for a day (drive up early, drive home), richer kids would go to Disneyland for a few days and stay in the hotel. The nice thing was that you could have friends from class who were vastly different "wealth" go to the same park (the poorer kids would go for the day, but meet up with their friends who were staying at the hotel).

From what I remember we never really cared one way or the other, we just had fun.

Both health and safety and accessibility/ADA requirements. I was playing mini golf the other day and realized you couldn’t even build that course anymore, it’s not wheelchair friendly. The cost of starting or running any business open to the public has gone up astronomically with the growth of overwhelming bureaucracy at all levels of government.

>Health and safety bureaucrats arguably prevent affordable leisure activities

I've seen 100+ places in America that rent ATV's and about 4 that rent dirtbikes. I haven't fully investigated why, but I have to imagine it's some type of liability/lawsuit situation.

Or the industries are moving up-market. You have to go where the money is, and as the years go by there's less and less of it in the traditional "middle class".

I also wonder if easy access to credit pays a roll. Credit cards were simply harder to get back in the day (partially tied to interest rates), which means a lot more enforced savings. Nowadays even someone with marginal credit can get a $1000 limit, blow out the card and pay 20+%/month on a baseball game they couldn't afford in the first place. But the ball park/team won't care, they got their money.

Probably not, especially when dealing with families. Notice how the tickets are relatively cheap and usually have gone up the least? You get marketed the cost of the ticket, which might look reasonable, but then the cost of add-ons, like beer, parking, etc., are hidden from you. That's where the biggest increases are.

You, as an adult might have some foresight and self control to think, OK, I'm going to eat before I get there and I'll buy cheap merch at the store after the fact if I had a really good time, but they know that you probably won't say no to your kids who want a popcorn, a soda and to get the limited edition hat, all at outrageous markups...

They would, the point of this article is that the upwards pricing without upwards wages means more and more people can't afford the vacations. Unless they just build in more capacity (which they do where they can[0-2], although DisneyLand is quite constrained in terms of real estate), the demand is increasing much faster than that capacity and thus the prices are increasing to match what the market will bear.

0: https://insidethemagic.net/2012/06/double-dumbo-debuts-at-th...

1: https://thedisneyblog.com/2015/03/06/epcots-soarin-to-add-th...

2: https://www.themeparkinsider.com/flume/201605/5083/

Or maybe there’s unequal wealth distribution. Someone might be willing to pay but can’t make that much. One example is software engineer vs mailman.

Prices weren't even that bad once they moved to Petco, as long as you were willing to roll up on the Trolley for a weekday game.

Supply vs Demand can't be escaped.

Good old days when poor people were going to Disneyland, had access to a mortgage and were not discriminated through red-zoning.

Ah the good old days.

So much bloat in campgrounds. Paved pads, 50A electric, game rooms, continental breakfasts, ridiculous playgrounds, etc. The economical options are still out there, mostly state parks and city run venues. Don't be surprised when they don't have a pull through spot that can accomodate an $80,000 fifth wheel with two AC's though.

The campground reservation system has caused me more issues than the price. I drove through a "full" campground a few weekends ago and half the spots were empty.

People are making reservations and not showing up.

It was fairly recently that I discovered people in my state were trying to book camping trips (and RV trips) 6 months in advance (and then just not going if they couldn't) because there are a few reservable spots that everybody wants to get. It baffles me that even living near a national forest, most people aren't just driving into it and finding an empty spot to camp. Even with all the unpleasantness, people seem to think they MUST book go to a crowded place where all the nature has been cleared away to make room for someone to park their tent trailer night after night. I take friends camping with me and show them spots I just found myself in the forest and they're amazed at how quiet, beautiful, and easy it is to just decide at the last minute we're gonna go pitch a tent in the forest.

It seems to me that a lot of the things people think are expensive are things that they unnecessarily insist on relying on someone else for, and / or that they do not lower their demand for regardless of the price. Well then, of course it's expensive.

If you camp like they did in the 60s?

I don’t. I have a modern backpack with a camel pack and lightweight tent and electric lantern et cetera. But those are one-time costs. And they’re totally optional. Car camping is still highly accessible and cheap as hell.

I live in one of the most expensive places in the US and camp sites are almost free. Tents are not super expensive?

Well you no longer have to pay the lamplighter, milkman, weekly blockbuster rentals, etc.

insurance costs. Heck it's ~4k/year even if your primary employer pays the majority of the cost. And then you've got a deductible to hit...etc.

I think it's a matter of alternatives. Sure I can do all that, or I can drive down the road to a sports bar and pay a normal price for everything and watch the game and be back home in 15 minutes.

You have to get with the times and eliminate all that. Sell a VR package where I can watch the game as though I am sitting behind first base. Bonus if my buddy across the country can sit next to me and we can chat.

They're trying to continue to make money in a world with locality rules and limited space, and we are increasingly entering one where your location doesn't matter. Covid just pushed this agenda a little harder than it was naturally playing out.

You can't really count on the Light Rail here (Baltimore).

Might have a great experience, might be stuck at the station for an hour waiting for a train. We used to do what you suggest when I was a kid (park at the light rail terminus, ride in to Orioles games), but ... that was back when it used to run more-or-less reliably.

Housing is expensive because it's what people can afford. I often wonder how much damage was done by encouraging dual income families. It provided temporary relief, at the expense of raising costs and bringing everyone back to a previous single-earner lifestyle long-term.

With dual income you have to pay for daycare (2-3k/month), and that's not pre-tax. This lead to less births, requiring more immigration. The government used illegal immigration to fill the gap, which has put strain on our social services such-as schools.

I wonder if we were better off economically with the single earning household norm.

I think one problem is Americans aren’t the target market for major attractions and events as much as international tourists and of course high income Americans. The real whales have the sky boxes or rent out the whole venue.

This is just a self-limiting belief. Statements like " all the stuff girls expect" should be a red flag to you. Frankly, I hear this uttered by guys who are only making statements about how they think dating is like since they aren't actually doing much dating.

Hint: Try branching out beyond dinner dates, anyways. There are cheap/free dates that are far more interesting, and you filter for cool women that want to do those things.

"Wanna go to an expensive dinner?" isn't what women want in 2022 either. It's boring.

> all the stuff girls expect

The fact that someone is expecting someone else to be paying for dates in 2022 is just crazy.

People are scoffing at this but cutting out most of the dating pool because they don’t want to do cheap activities on dates is not easy advice to follow.

Appreciating more substance is something people mature into. Over the course of years, not the length of an romcom. Anyone already mature enough in their 20s is likely take.

> Intuitively I would have thought cars are cheaper too - but a moment of research indicated they're actually more expensive.

This surprised me so I looked into it -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_longevity#Statistics

- in 1960 a car's lifetime was about 100k miles, while today it's about 200k.

https://www.thepeoplehistory.com/60scars.html

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a38748092/new-car-average-...

- in 1960 the average new car cost $2,752 ($26,100 in 2022 dollars) - in 2022 the average new car costs $47,000

So in 1960 you'd pay about 26100/100000 = $0.26 / mile, whereas in 2022 you'd pay about $0.24 / mile. There'd also be qualitative differences in the experience like performance, comfort, safety, entertainment, etc.

On the whole it's not a lot cheaper (somewhere around 8%), but it turns out our intuitions were correct.

This is probably true, think of when more rural areas had thriving popluations. They aren't near a stadium or amusement park, a family's social life involved their church and "family outings" were organized by church groups. Populations grew around urban areas which have tons of churches in the US but also the opportunity to interact with many more types of people and an explosion of new types of activities.

I think Big Outing also made sure sitcom characters went to major league sports stadiums and amusement parks which people aspire to attain.

Has demand actually increased, or has it been bought out by people with more money than your average person?

I feel like this point is often missed. There's a fair amount of Disney superfans for example that have the wealth and ability to make frequent and often trips to Disneyland. If you have enough of those wealthy individuals, they can push out everyone else. In this scenario the price of the attraction(s) is almost irrelevant and incentivizes Disney to only cater to a very specific and wealthy crowd.

Real estate functions the same way as land is consolidated under wealthy individuals. These individuals then make a lot of their money by actively harming people's ability to rent or own property (though things like AirBnB) and then repeat the cycle.

The problem isn't fixed supply/demand, it's the consolidation of wealth and power in fewer individuals that then disproportinately affect the dynamics.

"Getting the same experience as earlier generations is more expensive"

"Thankfully you can just not get the same experience!"

You can only wring so much blood from a stone. The problem of declining working class comfort can't be solved by belt tightening forever. We, as working class folks need to start banding together and reclaiming our portion of profits.

Makes you wonder how much of your behaviour and fears are driven by headlines instead of reality. Sure things go up and down with the economy, but they also went very up for a lot of people (ie: demographic of people on hackernews) during COVID.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/02/23/savings-b...

Flights are expensive because demand is through the roof while labor is not available to fulfill the demand. Same for eating out.

Not negating that inflation is up within the last year, but did you realize how good were the last few years (even before COVID) but didn't quite realize as there was no headlines telling you that good news?

They're trying super hard to speak a recession into existence because we know why.

The plain Quaker oatmeal I buy in 42 oz canisters is 50% more expensive than it was 10 months ago. I can come up with more examples that have nothing to do with meat or animal protein if you'd like.

One thing you're ignoring is that even if you don't drive a car like myself as well, tangible stuff still has to be transported around. And for food, the war on fossil fuels is also a war on farms using Diesel powered equipment for which there is no replacement and nitrogen fertilizers made with natural gas. We've only just begun to see the effects of these two issues.

OK, there is one replacement for there and a lot more people in the world will be experiencing it: starvation.

This is such a stretch.

> Families were bigger in the 60s so things had to be cheaper for families to afford it.

Consider that perhaps your causality is reversed. Families are smaller now because existing is more expensive relative to wages.

> The root cause behind this is childlessness.

That is the current narrative being pushed by conservatives. All our problems are due to selfish individuals not having children. I suppose we can blame inflation too on all those child less dual income families as well? I mean if they had less money they wouldn't be able to buy up all the things and prices would be lower for everyone right?

This is totally out of touch with reality. Parking is absolutely necessary at 90% of these venues for a family.

Transportation trends in the last 50 years have simply gotten more and more car dependent. Do you live in the US, or are you talking about somewhere else? Do you have children?

People who would go to baseball games live far away from the stadium and would prefer to not walk or bike miles and miles to get there, and American public transit and biking infrastructure generally suck. Parking within 1000 feet of a venue is an expectation for most events and attendees.

To be fair buying 4 round trip tickets on most transit isn’t going to be very cheap either.