If you are coming to Disney World or thinking about it, you need to understand the new realities of the place, not just the hype and magic-talk. Walt Disney was a creative genius who used his imagination to make a lot of money. He was good at stirring young souls and he was good at making money.

Every where you go in Disney World, you are encouraged to have a “Magical Day.” It is very possible to have such a day there, but don’t take it for granted any longer. It takes a lot of money, careful planning, and skill at accessing new technologies that are not as simple as they seem.

Disney World is not run by Walt Disney or any single individual now. It is not driven by the imagination of a genius. It is a giant corporation run by corporate people who are, like most corporate people, obsessed primarily with making money.

There is a lot of magic still in Disney World but almost all of it came from Disney himself, whose name is evoked here more than Jesus Christ is in the Catholic Church. His name is on every bus, train, ride, pin, button, doll and toy,  hotel and restaurant. He was a sorcerer and a mystic, magic came naturally to him.

I’ve been to Disney World a dozen times in the past decade or so, and the place has grown and prospered beyond my imagination, and perhaps beyond Disney’s. The biggest change I have seen is the growth of the Stand By world there, a new class system in the country’s most beloved destination.

It is not any longer an egalitarian place where everyone can wander in with an equal shot at doing what they want to do. There is a distinct class system in place, and it is accelerating quite visibly. Corporations inevitably look to reach the people with the most money, they are not especially egalitarian, as Disney was.

There are now two ways to approach a Disney World ride or attraction or restaurant. The first is simply by walking up to it and trying to get inside. The second – the rapidly growing and encouraged one – is the Fast Pass system. If you wish get on the rides you want to go on or eat where you want to eat or go on the tour you’d like to go on, you need a Fast Pass reservation, a vast digital system by which you can get yourself and your family into a line that moves much faster than the line by people with less money, who can’t afford to stay on the grounds, who just show up. They are called Stand By’s, and they have to wait in a Stand-By line, often an hour or much more on really busy days.

At Disney World, they are citizens of the new Stand-By world.

Disney World has two worlds these days, a Stand By World and a Fast Pass world. If you are not in the Fast Pass World, you are outside the tent, you will spend a lot of time in line and be shut out of many things you would like to see and do.

The same is true of restaurants. If you are staying in one of the Disney Resorts, on the Disney property, you will have to plan months in advance or meet regularly with your concierge to navigate this system or spend hours on your cell phone or Ipad. Even with that, you may be denied access to many things. One restaurant has an 18-month waiting list, and many tours are booked up months in advance.

People staying on the grounds or who plan far in advance can have access to a Disney App called “My Disney Experience” where people can access the Fast Pass system (it is often down or dysfunctional) and make their reservations. People driving in for one or two days often don’t know about this system or don’t have the technology- or time – to access it. They can  wait in very long lines at new and sparse “Kiosks” that are supposed to help them, but it is often too late by the time they arrive. Each access to the good rides and restaurants is no longer possible.

It takes even the concierges 20 minutes to a half hour to get online and figure out a system that demands you sign up for three things, even if you only want one and dictates your schedule for you.

Clearly, this is a class system heavily weighted to cater to the people staying at the expensive hotels on the Disney grounds. Disney World does not ever limit attendance, the park is often filled to bursting, and the lines are endless, even disheartening, the hotels and resorts on the property are procreating rapidly. It did sadden me to see all of those strollers in kids waiting for 90 minutes or more to get on the Peter Pan ride, or any ride. They will spend a lot of their day waiting.

I don’t really know how Disney would have reacted to this, he loved to make money, but  he was always focused on putting children first – the parks were for them and their parents to have a good time together. Lines are not fun, and it is no fun for people to spend their hard-earned money and travel far to be denied access to the things they most want to see and have heard about for years. As we left Disney World today, I was stunned to see this vast crowd (photo above) just waiting just to get into the park. I think their waiting had just begun, it took them two hours just to buy tickets, now about $100 a person per day.

I wonder how many people the parks can really accommodate, I wonder if there is any limit to it?  The concierges helped me to get into some good restaurants – this took a very long time – and we gave up on many things. It was just too late, we were told. And we were not Stand-Bys, we were staying right in the heart of Disney World, we had access to the system, although we were not prepared for it.

Life for the Stand-By’s will just get more and more difficult and complex. I think the day will come soon when every ride at any time requires a reservation, this is not the simple and accessible experience that Disney had in mind.

I am very fond of Disney World, but I do not think Disney, whose name is so frequently invoked,  would have liked the Stand By world evolving there. For him, part of the magic of the park was in it’s perpetual sense of exploration and discovery. I think  he would agree that the magic dies when it takes so much time and energy to get to see it.