Disney's Photo Pass

Since I don't seem to be making much progress in wrapping up the rest of the Disney trip, I'm going to rant and rave a bit about their Photo Pass Photographers.

These are the guys that wander around the park and take your picture. Its all down to a science now, and you have a little card you carry around, and every time they take your photo, they scan it and its added to your account. You then have thirty days to decide if you want to buy the pictures.

During our week there, we ended up with 162 Photo Pass images. Several of them were duplicates of what I had taken. But for some events, like Captain Jack's Pirate Tutorial, the photographer had a much better view than we did. So his pictures were a thousand times better than what we took.

And thus my dilemma began. For $150, I could order a DVD with all 162 images on it. But I didn't want all 162. I only wanted about 15 of them. But I have to spend $9.95 per photo I want to receive two 4x6 photos, of the same print, or $14.95 to get a digital download of the photo. At that rate, I should just buy the DVD.

I've spent the past 30 days trying to decide just how important it was to me to get the upclose photos of Alex fighting Captain Jack. The ones that actually showed their faces, as opposed to the back of their heads.


So at 10:45 pm last night - 15 minutes before my photos would expire, I caved.

And bought just these two photos.

I especially love Alex's smile in this one with Captain Jack's arm around him.

And here a few I really wanted, but ultimately didn't want $14.95 worth.

Carl did a print screen editing trick to get these for me. They are extremely rotten quality and would never print out in an actual photograph, but at least I can see the little logo they insert at the bottom for you that says something like "I Met Captain Jack Sparrow." Since I can't enlarge it into any kind of decent quality - and that font is pretty darn small - I'm not exactly sure what it says.

This one cracks me up. I want to say its priceless, but since I didn't think I should spend $14.95 on it, I suppose it does have a value, and calling it priceless doesn't seem right. Anyway... this is one the photographer shot of Ryan after he realized that Alex and three other children got to go up on stage, and that he was not going to be selected.

My poor baby! I knew he was sad about it, but I didn't realize he was this sad.

But its okay... because he was one of the second batch of kids picked to come up at the end for the Pirates Oath.

See? We're Similin' Ryan again.

I just wish that I didn't have to make a difficult, Sophie's Choice-like decision as to which photos to buy. I get that Disney is a huge corporation, run by executives whose job it is to find as many ways possible to take as many of my dollars as possible. But would it kill them to offer some sort of option between $14.95 per digital file and $150.00 for 162? Even 5 for $50 would have been better, and made me feel I was getting a bulk special. I probably would have spent the $50, and bought all 5 of these if that were the case. But instead, I just bought the two images, and Disney, you lost $20 of my dollars that I know you would like to get.