Most rides at Disney parks have pre-shows about 3/4 of the way through the line that set up the story for the ride. Sometimes these are audiovisual, sometimes animatronic, but always with audio and almost always dark.
Likewise, most Disney rides are "dark rides" where the ride is primarily in the dark with animatronics and the scenery lit by carefully designed show lighting.
Influencers have seen these pre-shows and rides a thousand times and don't care about them. They keep there full-brightness phone up and filming for them and talk over them to their audience. It's incredibly distracting and immersion breaking.
I imagine Disney sees them as a net-positive though, as I'm sure they drive tons of ticket sales. Most influencers are travel agents who get paid by Disney, or are affiliated with a travel agency.
FWIW, I dug into this a while back because I was curious.
Most of them don't get 'paid' by Disney in a traditional sense, but will get things like exclusive access to press events/rides, free upcoming products, or in the case with that flop of a star wars hotel a "free $7,000 hotel stay."
All of which lets them technically say "I'm not paid by Disney, they just gave me this to show all of you!"
Most of their money comes from donations/stickers/whatever the latest term for it is from the livestreams.
Usually the order with Disney showing off new stuff goes something like
- Travel agents
- Social Media Influencers
- Passholes
- D23 (aka pay $100/yr for access)
- Joe Shmoe
The IRS have a completely different point of view.
“Hey, we’ll give you a free stay if you promote our hotel!” is compensatory.
“Hey, we’ll give you a free stay” isn’t obviously so.
There is a clear if unstated expectation that they will receive positive reviews and promotion as a result.
There is no such thing as "free" when it comes to the US IRS.
But yeah, you're right. If you get audited, you might have to explain to the IRS that this is not compensatory income.
Oh, I fully agree and I would bet a majority of them know that as well, they just have figured out a way to use some weasel words to act like it's not a payment to the general public.
However:
If I buy you a gift and we agree for the gift you do task x for me. Now that is income and the value of the gift must be considered income on your tax return.
Disney isn't saying "here is a room for free if you do x, y , z"
Disney is saying "here is a room for free" and that is the end of it.
Of course the obvious issue for Disney is that the influencer might never do the review of the park and never in a million years could Disney take them to court complaining services were not rendered.
You cannot give a gift with expectation of return.
So it's not income.
But it's limited because the one giving you the gift really has to trust that you'll do the thing you do.
I am surprised Disney would bother to be honest. I thought their theme parks were popular enough already.
They want to keep being popular ;). Same as the coke comment above me
> However:
> If I buy you a gift and we agree for the gift you do task x for me. Now that is income and the value of the gift must be considered income on your tax return.
Caveat donor! The hand of the taxman extends somewhat further than laid out here.
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe... :)
The USA has similar rules.
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...
Nah, but you can book it for literally 2 days for now, which is somewhat unheard of for something like it, especially with the Disney and Star Wars name attached.
>All of which lets them technically say "I'm not paid by Disney, they just gave me this to show all of you!"
So they literally are not receiving any meaningful payments from Disney. A “$7000 hotel stay” you can’t even resell is worth very little compared to $ in bank.
Also, you forgot about Club 33. Those folks sometimes get better treatment than the regular passholes.
Except it's $7k that they most likely would have spent themselves as a business expense to try and get money from their streams. It's still Disney paying them, just in an alternate way.
It's why YouTube, Amazon and others require you to disclose that you got the item for free, because that can significantly alter your view and is basically turning you into an ad.
How many "normal" people would spend $7k for a 2 day hotel stay where you basically are stuck in someone else's itinerary? Hint, not enough to fill out 100 rooms consistently, even within 2 days. But it was all "OMG THIS IS AWESOME YOU HAVE TO DO IT" from the 'influencers.'
>Also, you forgot about Club 33. Those folks sometimes get better treatment than the regular passholes.
Oops, yep. Forgot the $100k Disney club. Plus the timeshare suckers.
So and so. Here’s an exaggerated example: Disney likes your consistent shilling and grants you a Club 33 membership valued in many tens of thousands.
Even as a big Disney influencer there’s a very good chance you’d never have paid for this.
From a legal POV whether or not something like this is compensation isn’t clear, it’s highly dependent on the specific details. An influencer absolutely can legally receive gifts from Disney knowing that they’re almost certainly hoping for those gifts to pop up on that influencers feed.
I always assumed that was a legal requirement. Isn’t it technically classed as fraud (or something?) to not disclose that you were sponsored by the resort?
In the UK for example the advertising regulator decided it's advertising, kind of like a 'product placement' on television, and therefore needs to be clearly so/declared.
I hope he's OK too.
I also really like all the truck drivers who do cab views. There's an ambulance driver somewhere in Vietnam who livestreams his shifts. Oddly mesmerizing to watch him zip through dense city traffic without a care in the world.
Quite a few people who seem to found the best hustle possible. They go daily to Disneyland and other parks. Somehow get enough gifts and tips to pay for it.
Also like the bars that stream their house bands. That one guy who rides a scooter around downtown LA late at night and gets in weird conversations with drunks. A guy who races Matchbox cars on his track and keeps track of the winners in a pseudo league. An Italian man who looks vaguely like Mr. Bean and does an almost endless stretch of magic tricks.
The one that I think about often is this 19 yr old guy in the Ukrainian Army. Only caught him once. Back in the summer. He and his unit were not yet on the front lines but his superiors had him digging a trench anyways. He was half-assing the digging while his comrades relaxed under trees and occasionally yelled something that would make the young guy laugh. He'd perk up anytime someone with a cute girl avatar would say something to him. They'd say something that made him just beam with happiness. I'll always wonder what happened to him. I hope he's ok.