The ever-increasing popularity of Disney’s theme parks, fuelled by new attractions like Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, has resulted in most visits requiring hours and hours of standing in line for rides. But a Florida man found a clever solution to the problem by using an official Disney World app that allows VIPs to skip the lines, running on what police say turned out to be a stolen iPad.
For guests who didn’t want to spend most of their vacations standing in a long queue, Disney introduced a service in 1999 called FastPass that allowed guests to secure a spot on a ride at a later time, and spend their time waiting in other parts of a park enjoying other attractions. It was eventually joined by other virtual queue services called FastPass+ and MaxPass, which let guests book spots on rides weeks in advance or pay an optional daily or annual fee to avoid the parks’ long lines.
Last month, however, Disney announced that FastPass, FastPass+, and MaxPass were being replaced with a new service called Disney Genie+ that will charge guests “$15 per ticket per day at Disney World and $20 per ticket per day at Disneyland” to skip the long lines and board a ride at a specific scheduled time using the parks’ new Lightning Lane option. Understandably, given how expensive access to the parks already is, many Disney fans were upset at having to shell out even more money to avoid standing in line for what is often hours at a time.
It turns out there’s yet another option for skipping the long lines at the parks that could potentially get you in trouble with the mouse and the local authorities. In June, earlier this year, a 30-year-old Florida man named Rennan Carletto was discovered by an investigations manager from the park’s Tickets and Resort Fraud department using an official Walt Disney World app to create unauthorized reservations in order to skip the line at a Disney’s Hollywood Studios attraction for a tour group he was leading.
The app in question is provided to official Walt Disney World cast members on approved devices and allows them to skip lines entirely for VIPs and other visitors without having to use the virtual queueing systems made available to regular guests. When the investigator witnessed Carletto and the group he was with skip one of the lines, they told the Disney staff operating the attraction to cancel the reservations and refuse them access.
The investigator and an off-duty deputy then followed Carletto to the parking lot to see if they would use the app to create additional reservations, and when eventually confronted, Carletto claimed he was working for a company called ‘A Class’ and that his boss, another man identified only as Tony, had given him the iPad to use and that he had no idea it was stolen property. Local authorities were called to the park and the iPad was returned to the investigator, but officials told a local NBC affiliate that “the investigator has dealt with ‘Tony’ in the past for the same issues but could not provide further information on the man.” There’s no word on how the iPad was removed from the park, but it was apparently never reported so stolen, so while Carletto wasn’t charged with a crime, Disney did, however, slap him with a trespassing warning for all its parks.