Firefighters confronted DeSantis' governing board on Wednesday. “The removal of this benefit takes away, for some, their entire reason for working here."
Honestly, I kind of agree with this. The state was paying for these passes, not Disney. Thats an inscestuous relationship between the state and private enterprise. It should never have been that way in the firstplace.
The offset of 1400 in wage increases seems a bit low to compensate, but if its enough to buy a season pass then no harm no foul.
Disney can supply the free passes if they want to; let them foot the bill
They’re spending 6.4 million taxpayer dollars on suing and countersuing Disney between this year and the next. While taking away a popular , family friendly benefit costing 2;5 million per year.
DeSantis is a legit Disney villain. They could make an animated film featuring him as a comically stupid bad guy.
Meanwhile, he passed a bill to strip schools of funding by giving new vouchers to parents for their kids ‘education’, including homeschool. The money can be spent on a number of things outside school… one if which is Florida theme park admission!
The union has had a rather rocky relationship with Disney, who appoints all five seats on the district’s Board of Supervisors. Their focus is largely on the theme park business and union members allege the Board cares little for actual employees of the District, which includes first responders like firefighters. Fire trucks and rescue units have broken down on multiple occasions, forcing responders to arrive on the scene in SUVs. Staffing has also remained inadequately low. Disney and Reedy Creek have both aggressively denied these claims.
Sounds like things weren’t great with Disney, but choosing DeSantis isn’t going to work out any better for them
My wife’s grandparents lived literally down the road from a theme park (not in Florida) and during the summers especially both vehicle and foot traffic on their street could be nuts. The theme park would give out a number of free passes to all the residents that lived within a certain distance as a way to apologize for having to put up with all the traffic. My wife and I used those free passes a couple times before her grandparents passed.
DeSantis and his cronies are major a**holes for taking a perk like this away from the very people who risk their own lives to keep others safe.
it’s a common benefit provided by a lot of employers in the area. i’ve been to Disney for free more than i have been paying, yet i never rated this benefit. rather, someone that did would get me in instead.
This is a standard perk for Disney employees. Reddy Creek providing it to the fire firefighters was basically an acknowledgement that the fire fighters were Disney employees. Disney was explicitly in charge of Reddy Creek so that made some sense. Desantis ripped Reddy Creek away from Disney to win political points, and is now hurting the firefighters, apparently just for fun, in his continued vendetta.
This. Surprised this is so far down. I’d expect it also, this fool is giving Disney a chance to be the good guys again at no actual cost to them. It’s handing Disney a no-brainer PR win.
Good PR is worth more when there is bad news first. If Disney does this sight unseen it’s worth less than giving out passes next week after this story gets around.
It looks like this is a $1,400 per year perk. That's really expensive if you're considering buying it out of pocket, but not a huge amount in terms of salary. This should never be a make it or break it kind of benefit. Negotiate to make an extra $1,400 next year and buy it out of your own pocket.
Edit: just adding that I am incredibly anti-DeSantis, but this is a nothing burger.
No I don't think their perk is $1400. If it is a Cast Member Silver Pass, they can get three people plus themselves in to any park every day of the year for free. If you have family come over it's more than $100 per person per day. These tickets always include a Park Hopper option, adding another $40-50 in cost. If you use this perk 20 times per year for 3+1 people (which is definitely within reason), that would be more than $8000 and up to $12000 if you include the Park Hopper option. Maybe you could get that cheaper with season passes, but those are tied to an individual. $1400 is way, way off .
Considering this quote from the article; ‘Firefighter Aaron Clark, whose father was also a district firefighter, choked up as he recounted how growing up his dad took him to the parks using the passes and how he now does the same thing with his three daughters.’ I think you’re spot on. They also mention discounts in the park which was a part of a cast member badge. When I worked in the parks I could have sworn they also had the blue ID (as opposed to green for 3rd party vendor), but that was a while ago.
They also bought 400 passes for all of the RCID employees, so they probably got a significant discount. Also considering Disney pays 86% of the taxes that fund RCID, it might have been cheaper to give away the passes and keep the tax money. Even at $10k a person (an absurdly high estimate), $4 million is a drop in the Disney bucket.
In addition to the other person who replied to you, I also wanted to point out that the firefighters did not say they were only firefighters for that Disney pass perk, just that it was the main reason they worked in that specific location. If they didn’t get that perk, I’m sure some of them have other stations closer to their home or would prefer to move somewhere less crowded or with better traffic on their daily commute. The Disney to I Drive area of Orlando is traffic/tourist hell. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to work there without some special benefits.
It’s clear that you don’t understand Disney Adults. Even if it were just a $1,400 per year perk, the people that work there solely because of the perk that allows them to go to Disney properties whenever they want will have just lost their incentive. It’s entirely likely that some of these people have willingly turned down positions at fire departments or in the industries that require their experience for the explicit reason that they enjoy the access to disney their job provides. Without that, there would be little incentive to stay even if they could get a $1400 bonus.
Autocorrect. Yes, you got what I meant to say. I’m not fixing it because I want to preserve context for the replies. But the shame and laughter are both felt for that mistake.
well, if free parking passes were the main reason for being a firefighter, well, jeeze, i dunno what to say about that, except they shouldn't be. either disney covers the parking fees for when they're on duty, if that's even an issue, or these guys gotta get another gig
yeah, i'm not gonna lose sleep over these guys losing their freaking parking passes. desantis is hurting so many others so much worse on the regular, i'm gonna save my emoting for the fascism, thanks
Who’s to say that these firefighters chose the Disney district over a neighbor because of the better benefits? Maybe they have young kids who they want to be able to enjoy the parks on a regular basis without spending so much. Maybe this benefit is worth an extra 30 minute commute each day. Lots of reasons to chose one job over another.
Let’s not just shit on everybody who loses a nice thing. I doubt these people are fighting fires solely for the paycheck.
Then make that perk part of their pay and not free passes. Then it would benefit all of the firefighters, not just the ones who want to take their kids to Disney.
I think that’s a valid argument, but it’s more expensive for Disney.
Let’s say you run a company and offer all of your 50 employees free park passes valued at $1500 for the public. Just giving them the passes costs you little. There’s some administrative overhead and the costs of park usage, but those are mostly spread across your million or so visitors paying for park access.
You can alternatively give the 50 employees the value of the passes. That’s $75k. Could be the price of another firefighter or two part timers. Maybe three interns. It’s a cost that could maybe be applied elsewhere.
For this headline/article, and US english in general, park passes do not refer to parking. The passes referred to would also not be used while they’re on duty.
Make no mistake this is a case of ‘the guy we voted for to Fuck with the people we don’t like is going after us instead’. Needle dick Ron laid waste to the state of Florida so he could play politics and the people of Florida got exactly what they wanted.
Well now the state is worse than it’s ever been and ol meatball is getting absolutely clowned on in the national spotlight. Eat shit dickhead, you thought you were the natural next choice but that’s all over.
Orange County, where Disney World is located, went for the D candidate 53-46. Don’t blame them for the malignant human tumor their state foisted on them.
But Disney themselves donated plenty to R candidates for years. The state and its inhabitants are finding out what that gets you.
I’ve spent far more time in the sunshine state than i ever would wish on anyone, Im not saying everyone in the state is brainwashed but there are plenty of people who cheer on as their state is imploding.
We have to acknowledge that Republicans have lots to offer if you’re a mega corp.
They pick up the phone for you and your lobbyists - day or night
They lower your tax burden
They functionally killed unionization - allowing you to pay your executives enormous sums of money while the majority of your workforce struggles financially.
If you’re somehow unable to outright buy their legislative agenda with bribes campaign donations, they can instead be forced to comply with subtle threats to leak details of their various homosexual escapades to the media.
They tend to have absolutely no morals - which is great for your shareholders.
But you see, Disney made the mistake of going woke. How dare they cast non-white or any gay characters in anything. Next they’ll tell us women should be able to vote. It’s a slippery slope.
Orlando and Tampa are both fairly liberal cities. Miami has a big Cuban population which leans conservative, Jacksonville is basically southern Georgia. Tallahassee is a weird one because you’ve got a bunch of government workers and it’s a college town. I think DeSantis would like to fuck with Tallahassee but doesn’t want to shit where he eats.
Oh he’s shitting there. How can one teach about the Seminole tribe without falling into the category of white guilt for subjugation of another group. Tallahassee is where Florida State University, who uses the Seminole as their emblem/mascot. The Seminoles faught a war (3 according to the U.S.) that spanned 42 years agaisnt the U.S. In the 90s and early 2000s they were still sorting out things, I think the Supreme Court was paying them a settlement over lands stolen.
That’s where it all gets dicey though, the Seminole tribe was made up of torn apart tribes they accepted into their culture as well as African Americans who were “granted” freedom after serving in the Civil War. The U.S. basically had tried to take a census per say of who they were, then tried to divy out the land as individually owned as per U.S. law. Previously it was all owned by the community/tribe I believe. Anyone that hadn’t been written down but was part of the tribe would essentially not get part of the payout.
Sorry I got way off topic. End of the day I guess what I meant is that stereotypically people who watch college sports are viewed as ignoring politics if they can. If the Seminoles had to change their name per request of the tribe stating “you can no longer use it if you are no longer allowing education to your populous about the subjugation you put us through.” People would get mad that they had to hear about it and mad they had to use another name.
Not to mention many would potentially protest it being changed and demand that their history be still an eligible topic. (Which would diminish the bills signed by Desantis)
There’s a lot of good facts in here, but I’m struggling to understand what point you were trying to make. Could you maybe clarify how all of that is related to DeSantis attacking Tallahassee and/or what point you were trying to make?
Yeah, Orlando is Orange county. Florida was the largest producer in the U.S. California is recently passing them up due to issues. Between the two it something like 95% of all the citrus grown in the U.S.
That said, if you want a sweeter, juicier orange, get an orange from Florida. If you want a longer shelf life orange, go with California.
We don’t know who this person voted for. They could be totally against Desantis and never voted for him like millions of other people did as well. I certainly didn’t vote for the premiere of my province who is corrupt and screwing us all over constantly.
I know a guy in the Reedy Creek fire department. He is a hard core Republican. When Desantis took over the board he didn’t think it would be a bad thing.
I like the guy and have known him for years so it’s sad to see it go this way but you get the government you votes for.
I have been practicing my pronunciation of “Cahnahdah,” trying to get it like Robin from 8 bit show & tell. Except I’m divorced with a kid and new partner who has a kid. I’d have to convince 10 other people to go with me so everyone can still see their kids.
Well Napoleon, my great great grandmother was from Nova Scotia. Unfortunately, it’s too remote for me to get the benefit of Canadian citizenship. But I’m willing to try - mainly for my daughter’s future. The US is fucked and I don’t see it getting better. And I won’t bring American bullshit with me. Maybe I need to meet a cute 40-something Canadian to smooth the waay.
This reminds me of the old women that were living off of their permanent alimony payments in Florida suddenly having that yanked by Republicans and who are VERY angry at DeSADIST as well.
Firefighters in Florida are about 90% conservatives. Even if this specific firefighter is not a conservative, his complaint is shared by his conservative coworkers. The conservatives are bitching and moaning about the results of their conservatism.
The most absurd people can still be hateful fucks. You can check for this by seeing if minority communities have worse response times or outcomes in the event of a fire.
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