THE DARK SIDE OF DISNEY has hit #71 in Amazon’s bestselling Humor books! I’m sure it’ll last a good two seconds and will then plummet back to #8,002,439 or whatever, but I took a screenshot for posterity.
Thanks to everyone who has purchased the book. Hope you’re all enjoying it!
Here we go again. First cups that track your drink usage, now “NextGen” wristbands with your tickets, room key, FastPass, pool access, and credit card info on them.
RFID wristbands (photo from Dizfanatic.com)
I’m all for making life easier, and admittedly would rather carry around one card than five, but what is Disney’s obsession with RFID? What’s so bad about magnetic stripes? Is it really that much harder to swipe a card than it is to hold up your arm to a RFID reader?
The reason I’m bitching is twofold: first, I hate wearing wristbands. They’re uncomfortable, and I find myself constantly tugging at them. Secondly, and more importantly, RFID is not secure, because it requires broadcasting of the information on the chip/tag across the air. Which means that information can be intercepted via an antenna. Which can’t happen with a magnetic stripe.
Here are a few of my sources:
-Second, an article about a “white hat” hacker who built a portable RFID reader/antenna that allowed him to read Passport data while driving around in his car!
-Finally, and coolest/most worrisome of all, are publicly available plans for a portable RFID reader/transmitter that can quickly read an RFID tag and then transmit a copy of that same info. Meaning, someone could copy your RFID data from a distance and use it over and over to buy drinks (charged to your credit card), get into the parks, get into your room, have sex with your wife, etc. And this is from 2009 (as was the article above), so one can only imagine how much this technology has been refined over the past two years. A quick search of eBay confirms this….
Portable RFID reader/transmitter
The bottom line is that while RFID might be fine for drink refills (even though, as I’ve stated before, and as is confirmed here, it’s easy to hack the system for free drinks), it is NOT a secure way to store personal/valuable information! If Disney does in fact start using these wristbands, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you do NOT link your room key or credit card info to the wristband!
Naegleria fowleri, the brain-eating amoeba that supposedly shut down River Country, strikes again! From the headline: “Two children and a young man have died this summer from rare infection that lives in water.” One of these was in Florida!
Of course, every year this happens, and every year Disney-bound parents FREAK THE FUCK OUT! “DON’T TOUCH THE WATER!! ANY WATER!!! YOU WILL DIE!!!! DRINK SODA AND GET WILFORD BRIMLEY’S DIABETUS INSTEAD!!!” they tell their kids. Because it’s not like kids have been swimming in lakes with minimal consequences since the dawn of time or anything…. But I digress.
Brain-Eating Amoeba!!!
Supposedly this amoeba was the reason that River Country was shut down and swimming was banned in all WDW lakes. Upon a moment’s examination, this excuse is revealed to be complete and total bullshit. First of all, water sports are still allowed in Bay Lake, including plenty where you could easily get water up your nose (this is how the amoeba enters the brain). Secondly, you’re exponentially more likely to drown in the lazy river at Typhoon Lagoon than you are to die from a brain-eating amoeba, but you don’t see Disney banning swimming altogether.
More than likely, the real reason River Country shut down was the same reason that Discovery Island was closed, namely that a bigger and better version of the park was built, and there was no reason to keep the old rinky-dink version open (Animal Kingdom in the case of Discovery Island, Typhoon Lagoon and then Blizzard Beach for River Country). I’m also of the opinion that the lakes around WDW were getting polluted from the boat traffic, and Disney didn’t feel like spending the money to keep the water clean enough to meet guest satisfaction.
Regardless, it’s best if you can avoid getting warm, murky lake water up your nose. But as a normal human being who doesn’t like the feeling of water up their nose, I’m assuming you already knew that, brain-eating amoeba or not, right?
The headline from The Orlando Sentinel reads: SEX OFFENDER ACCUSED OF LEWD PUNCHING AT DISNEY’S TYPHOON LAGOON. That pretty much says it all, but you can check out the lurid details here.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the wave pool at Typhoon Lagoon qualifies as “most likely place to be molested in Walt Disney World”. It seems like every month some pervert is caught touching kids there. A quick Google search reveals plenty of these stories, including here, here, and here. Funny thing is, you never read about molestations at Blizzard Beach….
Look, I understand how water parks get people all riled up and horny. I myself have stood at the bottom of the Humunga Kowabunga, waiting for women to lose their bikini tops.
This kid is waiting to see boobs
And I’ll even cop to staring at the barely-covered asses of hot girls who might possibly be jailbait. But I DON’T TOUCH THEM! At no time at the water parks do any of my appendages come anywhere near the boobs or asses of anyone other than my wife. And you know, somehow 99% of the population is also able to keep their hands to themselves, too, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that when you bring your kid to Typhoon Lagoon, their ass will not be groped.
Jailbait? You can look but DON'T TOUCH!
So, knowing that potential molesters will likely hit this post while searching for perverted things in Google, let me speak directly to them, as a public service announcement:
Dear perverts and potential Typhoon Lagoon molesters,
1. DON’T TOUCH KIDS!
2. And this is key, THESE PEOPLE ARE ON VACATION AT THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH! It’s bad enough molesting kids at Wet and Wild or Aquatica, but this is Disney World! These kids’ parents have probably saved for years for a vacation of a lifetime, and instead of a hug from Mickey their kids get ass-grabbed by some creepy fat guy? NOT COOL!
That is all perverts. Enjoy the rest of your day.
P.S. DON’T TOUCH KIDS!!!
Here are some highlights from my Epcot/WDW merchandise and memorabilia collection, including some one-of-a-kind items I’ve collected over the past 35 years.
Here’s another video shot during a trip with McGeorge. We were waiting in the Space Mountain queue when the ride shut down and the lights were turned on. Luckily I had my little Hi-8 camcorder, so I turned it on and filmed the proceedings. It was cool, but then turned to awesome when CMs started walking the track and then started running the cars again, with the lights still on!
Don’t forget that THE DARK SIDE OF DISNEY is now available on Amazon, and signed copies are for sale in the store section of this very website for the same price! And if you’re on the fence, you can even read the first 20% of the book at Smashwords!
The Dark Side of Disney is finally available for sale on Amazon! Both the Kindle and Paperback versions are there, and while the Paperback will be available direct from this site next week (signed and with extra goodies included), if you really want it RIGHT NOW Amazon will hook you up!
I also dug up and cut together a video from long ago of me and McGeorge exploring The Utilidors. It says ’97 on the vid, but after thinking about it, ’95 might be more accurate…. Whatever, I’m old, give me a break! Anyway, here it is:
Enjoy!
So Disney just released their “Free Dining” dates again, and as usual everyone is freaking out. People on message boards are in a frenzy, either complaining about how they already booked their vacation and can’t do Free Dining because of the blackout dates, or going on about how thrilled they are that it’s being offered again and how much money they’ll be saving.
Here are my thoughts on Free Dining, straight from the book:
“Free Dining” is Not Free!!!:
If you really think that Disney is going to give you something for free, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you. Their “Free Dining” promotion gets everyone up in a tizzy, because they hear the word “free” and start freaking out. But there’s nothing “free” about it. You’re actually paying out the ass for it!
The way the deal works is that you buy a package that includes your room, tickets, and the Disney Dining Plan, aka DDP (Quick Service if you’re staying at a Value Resort, or the regular plan if you’re at a Moderate), except the DDP is supposedly “free”. So they give you a single price for your entire vacation, and aside from souvenirs, once you hit the ground everything is already paid for.
The problems with this are numerous:
1. You’re not allowed to use any other discounts on top of this “free dining” promotion. So the “buy 4 get 3 free” deal, where you get 7 days at a resort for the price of 4? Nope, can’t do it. $500 gift card if you reserve a 7 day vacation? Nope. 40% off code? Not a chance. You have to pay full rack rates for your rooms, and no discounts on your tickets, either, which means Undercover Tourist is out the window. And to be perfectly frank, only suckers pay rack rate at WDW.
It used to be that you could probably do just as well at “Free Dining” as you could with these other discounts IF you were staying in a Value Resort, because everyone got the same version of the DDP, regardless of what kind of resort you stayed at. But now that they’ve changed the “Free Dining” for Values to “Quick Service” restaurants only, that slight edge is put into the negative. In other words, YOU ARE LOSING MONEY BY GETTING “FREE DINING” INSTEAD OF USING THE OTHER DISCOUNTS OUT THERE!!!
2. The DDP itself is overpriced. Just a few years ago, when it first started, it was a good deal. Each day you’d get a quick service meal, 2 snacks, and a table service meal with an appetizer, entrée, drink, and desert (the tip was also included) for $35/day. You still had to eat a buttload of food each day to come out ahead, but at least you COULD come out ahead and have it be a decent bargain. But now you don’t get the appetizer, you only get one snack, and the tip isn’t included. That’s a reduction of 30% at least, and at the price has increased to $48/day. As only Disney can, they’ve increased the price and decreased the service, and people are still buying it. What a rip-off.
Do me a favor: visit http://allears.net/din/dining.htm, check the prices on the restaurants you want to eat at, and then add up what you’ll spend per person per day (without gorging yourself). Most likely over the course of 7 days that amount is going to be equal to or less than what you would pay for the Dining Plan.
3. If you’re on the DDP, by the end of your vacation you’re going to be so f***ing sick of Disney food that you won’t ever want to eat again. But since you already paid for it you’ll feel obligated to keep those dining reservations and keep gorging yourself until it becomes an unpleasant burden. Why would you want to do that to yourself on vacation? Wouldn’t you rather just eat what you want, when you want, knowing that it’s okay if you want to skip a dinner ADR because you ate too much at lunch and you’re not hungry?
4. “But I like that it’s prepaid and I can budget for it,” you say. Yes, budgeting is important, and not being able to go over budget is a nice feature of the DDP. But you could also stash away the same amount of cash on a Disney Gift Card, and only use that to pay for your meals. Every time you use it the receipt printout tells you how much is left on your card, which is a great way to manage your spending.
5. WDW’s food quality and portion sizes have gone downhill big time since the DDP came around. Since the number crunchers have to make a profit on DDP, they can’t have any of the food at any of the restaurants be too different in price or quality. The reason being that if word gets around that there’s one spectacular restaurant, or one amazingly great (but expensive) thing on a certain menu, then everyone on the DDP will go to that one restaurant or order that one most expensive item on the menu, and Disney will lose money (in fact this has happened – as of this writing La Cellier, which often receives great reviews for their food and service, has gone from 1 Table Service credit to 2, effectively doubling the price of the meal. They also got rid of the really high-quality steaks there years ago). As a result, none of the restaurants stand out anymore, and all of the food is kinda blah.
The book publishing business is rather tedious!
After receiving the first proof I found a few things on the cover that needed to be changed, including the kick-ass last-minute addition of a quote from Chris Mitchell, the author of the sordid CM tell-all, Cast Member Confidential. Most of the other cover changes were due to it being really glossy (a good thing!) and also higher-res than I expected. CreateSpace really does a bang-up job with their printing.
Also, reading through it again I picked up on a few typos and formatting issues that I missed in the PDF. For some reason holding the actual paper book in your hand makes certain things jump out in a way that reading it on a computer screen doesn’t. To get a little philosophical, I think we’re so used to seeing typos and formatting errors on the Internet that we tend to gloss over errors on our screens almost by instinct. But we never expect to see such errors in professionally printed material, so I think they stand out a lot more….
Anyway, Jonas also did some revisions to the interior, sent back the files, and I uploaded them to CreateSpace and waited a day for the files to be approved. Not sure if a real person does this, but somehow the files are checked for various formatting issues. The files were approved this afternoon, so I promptly ordered the proof. Should be here by August 5th, and if all is good then THE DARK SIDE OF DISNEY will be for sale on Amazon around August 8th for ONLY $14.95!
A limited number of signed copies will also be available for the same price through this website. And the Kindle edition should be arriving on or soon after 8/8 as well, for a paltry sum of $2.99. That’s the kind of bargain you’d never see at WDW!
So, here’s the email I wrote to ValidFill to get some clarification on the new Refillable Mug system currently being tested at All Stars. I posed as a potentially interested vendor:
Hi,
I sent an email to your info@validfill.com email address, but it was
returned with a “user unknown” 550 error…. Hopefully this address works!
I’ve been looking at your RFID vending products, and had a few questions
that weren’t answered on your site.
1. Is the machine/cup/tag system self-contained, or do we need an external
server? I’m just wondering if all of the data is stored/written to the
RFID tag, or if it writes to some extensive back-end database that we’ll
need to support. –
2. If we’re having issues with the system, or need to override for a
customer, how difficult is this to do? Can a cashier do it, or is it
something that only a manager/supervisor could handle?
3. If the RFID tag is damaged somehow, is there an easy process for
restoring the customer’s information to a new tag/cup?
Thanks in advance,
Leonard Kinsey
—
And here’s the response I just received:
Leonard,
Thank you for your message.
I want to apologize for the info@validfill not working. We have corrected that
email account and it is now functioning.
Please see my responses to your questions below.
1. Our system is self contained. There is not a requirement for an external
server. All the cup information and data is stored on the RFID tag. There is not
a need for a back-end server.
2. There is a bypass switch on the side of our machines to allow a non-rfid tagged
cup to dispense. The cashier would insert their key and turn it to the bypass
position.
3. There is not a process to restore information to the users cup if the tag is
destroyed. We are considering it as a future option.
—
So the main question has been answered here: the data IS written directly to the RFID tag, and does NOT reference a back-end database! As I said previously, this definitely opens up the door for the tags to be hacked, or for “unlimited refill” tags to be programmed and sold by enterprising hackers.
Of course, the easier way to hack the system might be to find a discarded/expired mug and stick it in the microwave, which destroys the RFID tag. Then complain to Customer Service that your mug isn’t working, and have them reissue a new, functional one (you’d have to say that you threw away your original receipt). Stupid guests are always right, right?
