One morning this month, as soon as Disneyland opened, visitors bolted towardStar Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.

“Walk! Walk!” park employees admonished, but even just fast-walking, it felt as though we were running with the bulls in Pamplona.

My family’s strategy — and apparently everyone else’s — was to race toward the themed area with one of the park’s most coveted rides:Rise of the Resistance. By the time we arrived, there was already a line. But the wait time had to be shorter than it would be later in the day, when visitors who didn’t wake up before dawn got to the storied amusement park.

The ride itself is jaw-droppingly immersive, taking us past Storm Troopers and beneath AT-AT Walkers, and featuring lifelike animatronics and blaster fire.

We’d had our misgivings about visiting the park, even during a lull in COVID cases. Most visitors didn’t wear masks, including a man in a “Socialism Distancing” baseball cap. (This week, its characters began hugging guests again.) But this rite of passage seemed long overdue for our 10-year-old twins, and afterward, as we strolled through an amazing set reminiscent of Tatooine, I was excited for the day to come, for the flashy new rides and my childhood favorites alike.

The park was spotless as ever. As we wobbled off the Mad Tea Party, a spinning cups ride, I joked to my sons that any puke would get cleaned up before it hit the ground.

As the day wore on and wait times stretched ever longer, our ebullient mood dampened each time those who had paid extra moved ahead in the lines.Genie+(在迪斯尼乐园, $20 per person, per day) offers speedier entrance on selected rides, while Individual Lightning Lane ($7-$20 per ride, per person) gets you more quickly into the most popular attractions. Both services launched last year at Disney World and Disneyland.

That cost comes on top of thehundreds of dollarsfamilies spend just on admission.

Previously, there were complimentaryline-skippingoptions. Now, complaints online include suspicions that Disneyinflated its estimated wait timesfor rides to drive customer demand for the premium service, as well asscathing posts on Reddit: “Capitalism has driven the parks so far away from the idea of a place where parents and kids can have fun together. … That’s becoming less and less possible because the obscene amounts of money they take in are never enough to satisfy their stakeholders. This iswhat really annoys me.”

In response to the criticism, a Disney spokesperson told me, “We’ve received positive feedback from our guests about how this service helps to maximize their day doing more of what’s important to them and avoiding long wait times. As we do with all of our offerings, we will continue to evolve and enhance it based on guest feedback.”

It offered the same sort of answer to Bloomberg, which published arecent report:“Disney’s New Line System Is Driving Parkgoers Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Bonkers.”

But business is business. According to itsfirst-quarter earnings report, Disney raked in $7.2 billion from its division that includes parks, due to a higher volume of guests, and the introduction of Genie+ and Lightning Lane.

Of course we could have forked over the money the park requires to cut the line, but the idea irked me on principle. Wait times were long back when I was a kid at Disneyland, but at least it felt like all of us were in it together. How naive I was, I now realize. As naive as believing that it’s a small world after all.