A good friend of mine took his family to DisneyWorld, and they had a great time. Among his stories about their vacation, this little bit of insight really stuck with me:

I amused myself by attempting to calculate something I call the Disney Critical Number: the maximum number of steps between two opportunities to buy something. The biggest DCN I got was 48, in the MetLife pavilion. My stride is a little under 3 feet.

Let the kids enjoy it, and you can marvel at it for what it is: an amazingly efficient machine designed to separate you from your money. Every place where there's a chair, someone has calculated the average amount of time you'll spend sitting on it. Everything you see, they know how long you'll look at it and what you're likely to do next. It is social engineering on a grand scale, and can be appreciated as such.

Posted by: Ted at 08:38 AM | category: Square Pegs
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