Disney parks price out the middle class

[Manifestor_of_Light]

86. When I was a kid, I whined endlessly wanting to go to Six Flags Over Texas.

We lived in Houston. Six Flags was in Arlington. Arlington, near Dallas, might as well have been the other side of the moon for all the good it did me. It was 250 miles away. And I heard excuses like "You're not old enough to remember it." Six Flags was the nearest large amusement park. This was before Astroworld in Houston was built. I guess six hours of driving was too much for the parents to deal with. Texas is big and they should have realized that you have to drive a lot.

We went to see my grumpy controlling grandparents and my mom had the nerve to call it a vacation. I told her that being around grumpy old people who said we couldn't run through the house, couldn't play our rock 'n' roll records, and had nothing to read and nothing to do out in the country, was NOT a vacation by any means. The only magazines were "Reader's Indigestion" (RIGHT WING HORSESHIT YUCK), "Progressive Farmer" (YUCK) and "The Cattleman" (YUCK). My grandmother didn't sit down and read because she had an overactive thyroid and was too hyper to sit down. She thought we were all lazy which led to a lot of antagonism and grief about my family not getting enough sleep because she tried to force us all to get up at 6:30 am and do lots of "farm chores" to feed those "farmhands" that did not exist.

It didn't do me any good to whine. We didn't take vacations because vacations were "frivolous". And also "you are not old enough to remember it". My sister dies in 1990 and what do the parents do a few weeks later? Take me and the grandchild, who is not old enough to remember it, to Disney World in Orlando.

I got real sick of not going anywhere for a vacation and being isolated from other people on a daily basis. My parents were jailers and thought it was a capital offense to go outside and look for other kids to play with. They called that "running off" like it was a sin and chased me down the sidewalk with a bamboo switch in hand. I could run faster than they could.

My parents thought getting on a jet and going somewhere was "frivolous". My sister and I went places on jets when we were grown and were criticized for it. I flew home from college on a jet and my mother said I was "spoiled" and said "you kids don't know what a bus is for". I said "Yeah, and I can fly home with my dirty laundry in 40 minutes, versus 4 hours on a bus. So?" I lived 200 miles away in college. I don't think my folks ever understood the amount of stress I was under in my job. I had to take a vacation and go some place every six months to relieve stress. My sister traveled a lot going to health conferences as part of her work.

Did anyone else have parents who thought vacations were frivolous and only for rich people? We grew up in a blue-collar town.