One big advantage of Disney Dollars; people would treat them like souvenirs, and every Disney Dollar you kept was a dollar Disney kept. They functioned like store credit that often went uncollected.
@@eacalvert They might be more fun for kids to look at and spend. And the whole thing about "oh, it's only 20 Disney dollars" being a bit further removed from "oh, I worked 3 hours to get that money".
I guess more like a strange loan? These notes must still be bought back if ever presented so it is still a liability. Disney can assume a certain percentage have been lost or destroyed but there must be a line item in their accounts somewhere that keeps a bit of money aside just in case.
@@simonpowell9975 Or you could think of it as "buying stocks", where people have put let's say 1 million into your company initially. Normally you'd have to pay the people back 2 million when your company has gone up in value, but with this setup the value is tied to the US dollar rather than the worth of the company. In my 1 mil - 2 mil sort of example: The company already used that money they initially got to invest into projects that would make profit, so having to pay the same exact amount isn't that big of deal. Normally stocks would rise in value, but in this case inflation is devalueing it. Also, people can sell them on Ebay/whatever and this way Disney doesn't even have to buy them back. Considering all of these, it's hardly a liability. There's many ways to interpret such things, which is fun! And of course "buying stocks" is a "strange loan" as well :)
Fun fact: Universal Orlando did and still does something very similar. It used to be "Universal dollars" but those have been discontinued in favor of "Gringotts cash", which is basically just dollar bills themed to Harry Potter.
Also: Kidzania, where kids earn their banknotes (called "Kidzo", plural: "Kidzos") by role-playing jobs. Since I never visited them (I knew it from watching TV many years ago), I don't know if you can purchase their currency with real money but for sure, their money cannot be cashed out into real money. By the way, the banknotes feel like real-life currencies (particularly Chinese Jiao notes and the 1999 50000IDR note) and have UV images and fibers
@@tripthongUwU But isnt kidzos just for the games? Im pretty sure you cant buy food inside with them. And you get em as part of the initial payment, like tickets
At the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US government was printing special cardboard tokens that replaced coins as metal coins weighed too much to have shipped into the region. They could only be used at the base exchanges in theater as well as as at commissaries and base exchanges elsewhere once you’ve rotated out. I always thought they were cool because the printed designs were always changing.
It's not just during the war. They've been doing it for decades, over 30 years at least, and it's because shipping coins is way too expensive so they give you the pogs instead because they are way lighter to ship.
It goes back a lot longer than that, at least to WW2 from what I know without having to google it. Aside from the logistics of coinage weight that I've never considered, it's to keep US currency from floating around the war zone. Uncle Sam doesn't want genuine US dollars getting distributed in potentially hostile territory, spent on all the unsavoury things a soldier might buy. It can't really be prevented, especially now that US dollars are good worldwide, but at least the military isn't paying for a cargo plane full of real cash to essentially scatter in the wind.
@@johnladuke6475 you'd think introducing your currency into circulation in the enemy country would be a good thing as it gives you economic leverage once you go for peace, since now there's economic integration. the value of your currency and your markets are now linked to that country and that would be something they'd have to consider. though that could be the very reason they don't want it, as that could come with obligations. still, it would be better empire building to purposefully pump US dollars into circulation overseas.
I remember considering getting Disney Dollars when I first visited the theme parks when I was a kid - sort of like collecting foreign currency, but I decided against getting it, because it seemed to me at the time that I could not exchange it back for US Dollars. That if I bought the Disney Dollars, it was basically like buying a gift card that I could only spend on Disney owned property. Seemed like a fun idea, just a more expensive and less useful one than I would have liked it to be.
Heh, there is an myth that there is more Canadian Tire “money” in circulation than physical Canadian currency. It’s also worth more, technically, because it’s a coupon, and thus applied before tax. Arcades used to take it on par. I’d say that the virtual CTC card makes it less useful, except that Canadian Tire owns so many other stores! Also, the 3 cent coupons are worth so much now.
I was thinking "Canadian Tire...Canadian Tire...Canadian Tire..." all through the video. Like its Disney equivalent Canadian Tire "money"/scrip/whatever you want to call it was designed like real banknotes and printed by the same people.
@@justfrankjustdank2538 Canadian Tire is a nationwide chain of automotive, hardware, and housewares. Kinda like Walmart without the clothing and having mechanics to work on your car. Many small businesses would legitimately accept CT money as currency because they could turn around and use it at the store for their own needs.
At first I wanted to laugh about this, but then I remembered that Canadian Tire Dollars were a thing for much longer than this. Get a few dollar-lookalike coupons with your change, a refund of your purhcase at pennies on the dollar. Collect them for years in an empty paint can, unable to throw away "money" even though it's almost worthless. And I don't know anyone without a story of at least one power tool purchased with a massive wad of Canadian Tire money, like it was the Weimar Republic.
Canadian Tire money has been a fun kids toy for play currency with almost real value since you could actually buy something for real with it. My brother and I always loved collecting the stuff and playing with it.
So many companies also do with with various loyalty points programs. This guy Sam on a totally different RUclips channel made an entire video about how Airlines make more money off of their loyalty programs than the actual flights in some cases.
I don't really get why it's surprising that this is legal. What's the difference to coupons that you get e.g. at a School festival and can exchange against snacks or stuff like that?
@@leonguyen896 sure, it would be a problem to pay your employees with a made up currency. But why shouldn't you be able to say "you can buy this piece of paper and exchange it for goods and services in our park"?
They are essentially glorified gift cards, but what makes them different is that they are redeemable for full cash value. The only real legal issue I could see would be counterfeiting (the Treasury is really specific about its requirements for play money), but I imagine the colorful Disney characters and glitter make that a moot point. Disney money doesn't serve a practical purpose (just being a decorative substitute for regular cash), unlike casino chips, which serve the practical function of speeding up play (and also the more sinister function of helping you part with your dough). So it kinda just seems like more of Disney's "immersive experience" schtick. However, the huge cost they put into printing them and theoretically zero profit if all the money were redeemed proves that can't be true. It turns out that if people want to exchange real money for Disney money, they don't usually change the rest back when they leave the park. They take it home as souvenirs or collector's items. Disney may have made $200 million on outstanding bills. Disney's new pay systems have that casino chip-advantage as well as being much more convenient for customers, but they lose most of the profit from people walking out with fake money.
@@sebastiane7556 Again, you're looking at it from the customers' perspective. Think of how things would work if employee's were paid exclusively in goods and services from their employer. It'd just be slavery with extra steps. You'd understand if you ever had a job.
I mean, in an era before the gift card existed this kind of thing wasn't that uncommon. I mean that's essentially exactly what they were (except better in some ways cause you can't redeem a gift card for cash). And pretty art.
On the coal miners money - here in Newfoundland, the main industry was cod fishing back in the day. The fish trade was completely controlled by the wealthy merchants. Instead of paying the poor, often uneducated fisherman, the merchants would give them the clothes, food, and other things they needed throughout the year on a credit. The merchants would then set the prices for things the fishermen bought at the end of the season when they sold their summers catch. Basically the merchants would manipulate the credit of the fishermen to maximize profits from the fish trade and keep the fishermen in debt or even deeper. It's pretty interesting and similar to the coal mining thing. It's referred to as the Truck System in Newfoundland if anyone wants to look it up.
HOLY HOLY!!! I can proudly say that I have the two HOTTEST women on this planet as MY GIRLFRIENDS! I am the unprettiest RUclipsr ever, but they love me for what's inside! Thanks for listening his
0:05 - yeah? Well, neither was Benjamin Franklin or Alexander Hamilton... the only real qualification for one to have one's picture on a piece of US Currency is that one must not be a living person. As Mickey Mouse is not a living person, Mickey Mouse CAN be featured on official US Currency, it would just be super weird if they did that. Usually the non-real figures used on currency are either mythological figures or personifications like Lady Liberty.
Also Susan B. Anthony, Sacajawea, Lewis & Clark, unidentified Indian on coins. Salmon P Chase on the $10,000 bill, and hopefully Harriet Tubman in the near future.
@@speedocowboy Harriet Tubman will come as a result of the ridiculous inflation we have been seeing lately. At this rate, they'll probably need to start printing $500 bills again. I don't think "hopefully" is the right word to use in that case.
I feel like a lot of companies "make their own currency" and were doing so legally long before "Disney Dollars". We usually call them gift certificates or gift cards. All Disney did with "Disney Dollars" is present the gift certificate in a creative way and made them double as souvenirs/collectables. Which was a pretty smart idea. The Constitutional limits on coining money has nothing to do with it.
I know that Canadian Tire did a very similar thing except what they did was basically replace coins with paper versions that can only be spent at Canadian Tire.
@@epicmanpog7846 I agree. Which is why I put the phrase "make their own currency" in quotes. I was making fun of the video for calling Disney Dollars currency by pointing out that they were nothing more than fancy gift certificates.
@@SurelyIjest206 But you can say the same thing about any currency. What makes this differ from a gift certificate of dodgey company scrips is that they had real value and were treated like currency and not like gift certificates. It's all about intention.
4:41 As an Iowan who went to Disney World in 2018 with my family, all of us wearing those nfc fitbits to waste money left and right, that was really surprising to hear as a comedic example Well done👌🏼
Sorry, but... claiming Hello Fresh "massively cuts" on your carbon footprint is massively dumb. Normal cooking: Travel to shop and buy in bulk, for, at least 4 cooking sessions, let's say. Each session two to four portions. That's one travel and packaging set for 8-16 portions. As opposed to hello fresh, where it's one travel and packaging set for each portion. Or each two portions. Or each 4 portions. Even in the latter case, it's still 4 times more carbon-intensive regarding packaging and delivery, than normal shopping. I don't mind when youtubers make ads for stupid things. But I mind when they make ads for stupid things which claim to be more ecological, while they're the precise opposite.
Also hello fresh has been exploiting workers and participating in union busting practices. Most likely their script that he is reading off but absolutely devoid of morals if he knows what’s going on… chances are he hasn’t flown under the noise
In the context of his sentence he is saying that the lack of food waste reduces his carbon footprint. But really thats just a funny way of saying "hello fresh portions are so small I always eat the whole thing and am still hungry afterwards"
@@Ryan-ft6pq i can see that nobody asked. that's the problem. with world in general currently. nobody asks anymore whether what they're told makes any goddamn sense.
@@Acc_Expired "In the context of his sentence he is saying that the lack of food waste reduces his carbon footprint." which I give zero fucks about because in the context of reality rotting plants/meat are normal parts of the carbon cycle, and his food waste would produce a miniscule amount of it compared to the carbon produced by processing and burning fossils to produce the packagings and deliver it to him, plus then the carbon footprint of disposing of those plastic packagings. i don't care that it makes sense in the context of the sentence when the sentence doesn't make sense in the context of reality. also I'm not shitting on the ingredients or recipes or portion sizes, I've never tried them (and never will). they might be great for all i care. I'm not even that angry about their incredibly environment-unfriendly business model, actually. It's incredibly dumb and incredibly wasteful, but whatever. It's specifically how one of their main marketing points is that precise blatant, stupidly obvious lie, that pisses me off.
@@Acc_Expired The portions likely the ones that recommended by nutritionist or what you see on "serving size" at side your cookie box. So instead of "big mac", which is really 2 to 3 portions, you get exactly 1 "beef burger". But almost nobody has only 6 chips, we eat whole can of pringles (4-6 servings) in one sitting. And I know because I do.
When I served in Vietnam, we had a military script which we could exchange for Piasters, the currency at the time. Theoretically they were the equivalent to the US dollar, but we were prohibited from having dollars. Also, the Army would occasionally have a script changeover day when all the old script would become worthless. We could buy money orders to send home but there were some restrictions which I won't go into here.
In WW2 here in the Philippines when economies were down, and no hope in sight. An artificial money was created that was used to trade. It was called "Mickey Mouse Money"
They also functioned a lot like gift cards. You gave your kids $50 in disney dollars, they basically had to spend it at a Disney location and couldn't say take the money and run to the Arcade or something. It also much like in game currency we get now in Mobile games always encouraged people to spend just a bit more, because that $5 in Disney dollars didn't quite cover the cost of the item they were buying and they didn't want to leave the park with extra money left over.
Kevin (Perjurer) didn't (so far), but I do believe Rob (Midway to Main Street) did*, and it wasn't THAT long... Kevin has had so much success with his 100+ minute Easy Pass doc (7.8 million views and counting) that you'd expect that. * also made a thorough one on Reedy Creek (Walt Disney World's government entity)
While it would be a scary world to live in, I kind of want to read a headline about international inspectors demanding access to Disney's reactor sites to verify that they aren't breeding and enriching weapons-grade material. And getting denied by dystopian soldiers in mouse-ear helmets.
@@johnladuke6475 Sounds like a cyberpunk story plot. You might want to read Jack Yeovil's Dark Future series, I don't think that he mentions Disney specifically, but he has stuff like that in his stories. And one of the protagonists is Elvis, who became a bounty hunter instead of going back into music after returning from his deployment.
Fun fact this channel is called Half as Interesting because for half the video they explain something that could be described as interesting and the other half shilling for a sponsor that the average viewer has no interest in.
2:28 LMAO THAT'S HOW THINGS ARE IN OUR SCHOOL- There are these special coupons that can only be used in the school canteen and the stuff in the canteen just so happens to be overpriced.
@@normanm11 true..but disney has tons more money and resources..plus it is kinda legal if their boats are in fact from a nation that doesnt ban that....yea..its complex..but freakin doable
I'd always assumed that the Disney Dollars were more of a coupon thing...and a way to make it seem like you were getting discounts when you, actually, weren't. The buy a vacation package and get so many Disney Dollars included which you need to use, at Disney, part.
Casinos, points programs, etc. currency is very clearly allowed to be made by whoever. The USD is only allowed to be minted and produced by entities approved by the government. The money in your bank account is just presented to you in terms of USD but it likely does not exist in that form, it likely exists in the banks internal currency formulation which could simply be a liability on a balance sheet, or as gold in a vault. Currency is not defined by the US government, or any government for that matter. It is defined by what people are willing to use and are confident in what the value will be come the time to use it. Companies hold a lot of discretionary power in creating localized currencies to help dampen changes on the balance sheet by saying “only USD and Points will be useable when doing business with us.” Currencies are just a way to lag or damp the discrepancies between income and expenses. A company can charge a bit more for a flight if the buyer knows the cost is 5% below at the end of it. Thus the company gains a 5% liability to do useful work with with the ability to control the value of the liability over time.
This sounds a lot like video game currency, except for the ability to exchange them back for actual currency (there are a scant few games that support that, and some more that have off-company transactions in that vein.)
1:40 That he ended up in a federal prison even its clear for anybody with more intelligence than a slice of toast that his currency was not a official currency is one of the things which gives me as a European a very serious shock moment about the US justice system. Thats one of the points which scare me. Seriously. This is not right.
As a European, in a non-Euro country, I note that our country / state penal code has long contained a specific prison term for issuing tokens or coupons intended for general circulation, with a specific exception allowing the circulation of actual foreign currency. Banks need a special license exception to issue checks and credit cards.
Oh, let me explain from Canada. The problem here isn't the US justice system (that's a whole other issue). It's that a lot of them really aren't educated enough to actually notice the difference between that and a legitimate US dollar. You and I notice when they put a new portrait on a bill; I guarantee that there were people having a fit in a bank because they wouldn't accept the funny money. There's a nuclear-armed country of about 400 million people and a significant number of them fail your intelligence estimation for toast. Also they can't really agree who they want in charge.
@@senorbones Private currency is legal. Look at the Goldback. The issue they had was that the Liberty Dollar looked too much like US coins, which I would argue they do not. The Ron Paul coins were a special edition, there is also a Donald Trump edition. The normal coins just have Lady Liberty's head, with a torch on the back. They were never intended to copy or counterfeit US currency. They were made of silver that had more value than the face value of the coin in some cases. It cannot be a counterfeit because it does not copy any existing coin, and it is made of a precious metal that has at least as much value as its face value, so in that way it is actually much more stable and valuable than US fiat currency.
it's not about confusing them with real dollars, it's about preventing people to establish their own currency, since the federal reserve needs complete control over the economy. That's why they want to ban crypto so badly also.
I love how in the beginning he says you can tell it's not really because Mickey isn't a President, and then at 1:10 you see people making it rain with $100 Bills that have Benjamin Franklin on it... you know, someone that was never elected President. :)
I remember how wide spread it was & how easy it was to get & spend. We live in Wisconsin & we could go to our local bank & recieve this currancy just like receiving foreign currancy before visiting that country. I loved it! It was when cash was the main way to buy & it helped with a budget at the parks.
One thing bugs me: if the Disney Dollars were exchangeable back to regular dollars... What was really the point? What was Disney gaining from essentially creating one more kind of token for the US dollar? I could understand it if it was a currency that you could e.g. win in a contest and then spend in Disney resorts, like a coupon. But the fact that it was exchangeable back seems to make no business sense to me.
Well, here's a couple of possibilities. At the end of the trip, many people probably kept a few of their Disney Dollars as souvenirs. Most were probably the dollar ones, but I'll bet a few kept higher denominations as well. When you consider that millions visit the theme parks each year, that quickly adds up. Every one that is NOT turned in is pure 100 percent profit for Disney - which is pretty good indeed. Another possibility is that those spending Disney Dollars might be inclined to spend them all - as opposed to not spending U.S. currency. You have to realize the psychology of it. You've got Disney Dollars, you're in the theme park. You'd probably be more inclined to spend that last $50 in Disney money on a ride or a toy, than if it's the last $50 in U.S. currency in your pocket. Yes, it's true that you could turn the $50 Disney for $50 U.S., but you'd be more likely to say "What the heck," if you had the Disney money in the first place.
As long as people accepted it Disney was esseintly creating their own (USD) money. When someone didnt turn them back in with Disney they would keep the USD money and lose a fancy piece of paper that cost a couple of cents to make. The bills were pretty much worthless and Disney got paid for a piece of paper and got advertisement at the same time. Its actually a really great idea of their perspective since controlling money is OP as hell.
@@cjmarshall0221 Same reason that a casino uses chips, cruise lines charge your Seapass card, etc. When you SEE cash, you're like - wow, that's real money. You see chips, or Disney money - meh...
@@frankpinmtl If casinos let people place real $100's on the table it would be real easy for someone to snatch and dash. Tokens aren't accepted off premises.
Hey, this happens here in Canada too! Canadian Tire, an automotive and all around hardware and housewares store here in Canada, issues Canadian Tire Money (legally, Canadian Tire “Money”) as kind of like a cash back rewards program where when you buy things at Canadian Tire you get a percentage (I think it’s like 5%?) back in Canadian Tire Money. You’d think that it can only be spent at Canadian Tire, and you’d be technically right, but I’ve seen charities accept Canadian Tire Money as donations, I guess so they can use it to buy what they need at Canadian Tire. (Like a pet rescue place accepting it to buy pet food and other pet paraphernalia there)
North Korea’s goal was always to counterfeit Disney Dollars, not USD. They were planning a class trip to Disney World. Disney Dollars just got discontinued too soon, so they had to switch to boring bucks 😢
1:56 it's okay, in my mind the line will always read "But despite the crazy idea, instead of NotHaus landing in a nut house, he just ended up in Federal Prison"
I actually have one of these, I always wondered why it existed and why my parents had it. I then learned when my parents brought me to Disney when I was little, they happened to use some and brought one home as a mémoire of sorts. Interesting to learn that it used to be its own currency!
Wait, you didn't answer any of the interesting questions lol. Why did this exist? How did you get disney dollars? What was the benefit to all that r&d on uncounterfeitable "money"
My guess: customers bought it at the entrance, like chips in casinos. And what was the benefit - marketing, kids wanting it and then spending it, i suppose
@@panda4247 Yup. Additionally, if you're spending goofy bills that have a drawing of Goofy's friend on them, it doesn't feel like you're spending actual money, even if the bills have the exact same value as money.
I used to get HAI videos in my feed ALLLL the time. In fact, I haven't seen HAI in my suggested videos for so long that I genuinely forgot this channel existed 😔 ... pumped to binge it 🙌
I had no idea. I’m still wondering the point of having Disney money. Were you only able to buy items at the park with the Disney money? Were they hoping you would buy too many Disney dollars and never cash them back in? I’m not getting the point.
I do remember that my parents kept one of their unused Disney dollars as a souvenir from their trip, and I suspect that was the major point of them at the time.
That's exactly the point. Also, Disney is volcano-lair levels of evil, so establishing their own currency they could theoretically manipulate and control is par for the course. Reminds me of that town the established.
I'd imagine that in the beginning, Disney didn't have credit card machines at every shop and food vendor. So someone could go to the Disney bank and charge the amount of Disney money they wanted for the day, then use that throughout the park. At the end of the day if the person had any left, they could exchange it back for cash.
There's also Kidzania (available at several countries), where kids simulate real-life jobs to get money in their currency called "Kidzos". Their places are miniature of cities with real companies as Kidzania's partners
@@sirk603 not child labor. It's just roleplay jobs and doesn't like real-life jobs. For example: the fireman job does only extinguish fake flames made of lamps. Pizza-making is DIY or choose your own topping, just like Papa Pizzeria where you can sort toppings into shapes you want
How is having food shipped overnight on an airplane in a giant box make you have a smaller carbon footprint than food shipped in bulk by truck to a store? That sounds like a load of malarkey to my
Also I find it really hard to believe that grocery prices are less than Hello Fresh's prices. And you probably have to go to the grocery store anyway for TP, snacks, fruit, other household items, right?
“Carbon footprint” is a marketing term. No individual is going to affect global warming meaningfully unless they’re a billionaire or something. Also, Hello Fresh is overtly anti-worker’s rights and retaliated against their employees for trying to unionize. I’m all for creators getting paid more, they deserve it, but some companies should be passed over for solidarity’s sake.
1:09 Fool, you use that weird dagger after the first asterisk. Do not use more than those two to avoid creating a paradoxically quantum rift in the spacetime continuum
Here in Canada, we have Canadian Tire Money, which is minted by the same company that prints real Canadian money. And it fools a lot of non-Canadians into thinking it's real Canadian money, for some reason. It's wild.
See also "hop tokens"; not the new digital stuff confusingly using the same name, but coinage issued from 1767 until the 1940s by farmers in Britain, primarily in Kent; when seasonal labourers would come down from London for a summer family working "holiday", they'd be paid in hop-tokens measured by the bushel, and they were primarily redeemed at the end of the season: in part, to encourage people to stay for the entire season and in part because before cash flow bridging loans etc, it was a way for the farmer to issue an IOU ahead of the farmer selling the crops. Local merchants all took them as tender, and there were various ways to cash out early (I assume at a loss), but today they're just collectors items or held in museums.
Nothing turns a shitty day around like a few HAI videos. Thank you Sam and uhhhhhhhh Sam’s colleagues (who are probably also friends) Ily more than I love that monk that studied the genetics of pea plants (and I REALLY love thqt guy. Miss him every damn day.)
Wabash, Indiana during the mid 1800s experienced huge flooding in the Wabash river and canal which where shut down and was the main way of trade. Due to the flooding they where allowed to use wooden coins in exchange for US currency for a while until it subsided.
...I’m not surprised, given the amount of things they’ve pulled off. Reedy Creek is odd. Edit: it seems this one isn’t even related to that one... the part that I don’t get after watching this video is why. If they were 1:1 exchangeable, and Disney put in the work and cost of actually making them hard to counterfeit, this seems like it wouldn’t really be worth it just to have bills with Mickey Mouse on them.
Disney is all about the experience- they probably figured Disney dollars would make you feel like you weren't in the real world and further immersed in park. Also while they have to be redeemable for USD, there is nothing to say they couldn't print more, give them out with promotions or ticket sales, and then expect to get most of them back from gift shops or resturaunts, making their value for a customer a dollar, but their cost to Disney to be somewhat less. Just speculating anyways
Except it is. It costs the Bureau of Engraving and Printing about 5 cents to produce a $100 note (slightly less ... about 3 cents ... to produce a $1 or $2 note, since those have fewer anticounterfeiting features). There are probably slightly fewer anti-counterfeiting measures in a Disney Dollar than in a US banknote, but there's also less of an "economy of scale", so let's assume it costs Disney around 5 cents per note regardless of denomination. If someone buys a Disney Dollar and exchanges it back for US currency, Disney has lost 5 cents. If someone buys a Disney Dollar and SPENDS it at Disneyland Disney has "sort of" lost 5 cents, but they also made whatever their normal profit on the item was (and if you think Disney's profit margins are as low as 5% can I interest you in some prime Disney-adjacent vacation land in the Everglades?). If someone buys a Disney Dollar and keeps it as a souvenir, Disney has made 95 cents. All Disney requires to break even is that one person in 20 keeps the Disney Dollar instead of exchanging it for US currency at the end of their trip. The number of people that need to keep the $5 or $10 notes instead of exchanging them is far smaller for Disney to break even or make a profit. There's also a psychological effect ("Oh, my trip's almost over and I still have some Mickey Money; I should spend it." and "It's not REAL money, after all, why not splurge?") Also, at the volume Disney is doing this, you can't entirely ignore the interest effect; if you buy Mickey Money when you book your trip (not an unreasonable scenario) and exchange it for cash at the end, you've effectively given Disney an interest-free loan for that length of time.
I remember when the Disney properties in Orlando and Anaheim had the "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire - Play It!" attraction. That would've been fun to play for Disney dollars, even at a 1% payout compared to the TV game, a $10,000 top prize. (The actual top prize was a trip to New York or a Disney cruise, the value of which was around $3,000 in the early 2000s)
Wow, I wish I kept those Disney Dollars I bought my kids to use as spending cash at the park back in 2008. I might have enough money now for one day at the parks 😝 😂
Okay so I knew what Disney Dollars were before going into this video and I have an interesting story to share about them. Both my parents worked for Disney in the 90s and while yes they were given real money for their work, they would also sometimes be paid in Disney Dollars and part of the reason why they left the company was because my Dad’s raises were ONLY Disney Dollars and that was not sustainable for raising a family, though from the stories they told me that money was not easily exchangeable for real currency🤔 I don’t know I’d have to ask them again but that would go against some of those guidelines set up in a way, but there was probably a loophole with it like, “But they get paid an average wage on top of that”
But if Disney dollars are a 1:1 exchange, then why go through the trouble? The only thing I can think of would be that it avoids sales taxes but I also don't know if sales taxes do or don't apply.
Not every Disney Dollar handed out will be spent. Souvenirs. People die. All those dollars are 100% profit for Disney. Even if 99.8% of people spend every Disney Dollar they get, think of how many people 0.2% of Disney patrons is. A lot of people.
I think he means what’s the point of the consumer switching to Disney dollars if there is no tangible difference between that and regular money. Seems simpler to skip the step of exchanging the currency and use normal cash instead to me.
Company scrips: NOW I get refference for "Malcolm in the middle" episodes when Francis and others have to pay gazillion dollars for sweets in Alaskan loggers shop.
The Central Mining Company wasn't a coal company; it was a copper mining company from Da Keweenaw; so too is the picture you showed of the proletariat, that's the olde Tamarack Mine, I believe~
@marvin: agreed. Florida and the county Disney is in, made a lot of concessions to/for Disney , to get them to come to Florida. It’s almost obscene. Money corrupts in so many ways.
When people say a country is a "nuclear power" they generally mean it has nuclear bombs, not that it has nuclear power plants. Japan and Spain have nuclear power plants, but aren't usually considered "nuclear powers."
There is another fun land named kidzania called “kidzos” you get them by doing jobs but in a kid level way, like fire firefighters, cleaning, and getting your own kidzania driving license, working on the kidzania radio, there is more but I can’t cover them now, you can use these “kidzos” to buy toys or maybe other stuff, that all I know about kidzos and kidzania, best childhood in the UAE
Can someone explain the purpose of Disney Dollars? Why would a person want to exchange US Dollars for Disney Dollars when US Dollars are accepted at the same places Disney Dollars are?
I got Disney dollars at a timeshare presentation. For sitting thru a 3 hr tour, presentation, pressure sell I got $50 Disney dollars which wasn’t too bad.
Von Nothaus did not end up in Federal Prison! The judge realized it was a Fed witchhunt. Though he was convicted, On December 2, 2014, he was sentenced to six months house arrest, with three years probation.
HAI should do a similar video...but on banks. They issue their own currency all the time. They just instead call it "deposits". Banks used to issue literal currency called bank notes though. Either way, it was (and still is) very suspect. Banks issue more claims on reserves then they have. This means the bank will either create money and steal through inflation or suffer a bank run.
Hello Fresh is glad to continue to let there employees suffer and would rather see them gone than organized and asking for better working conditions and livable wages
theres even a workaround to the laws: just oficially sell them as paper tokens and youre not even obligated to refund them as far as i know (at least where i live)
I bought some Disney dollars for a family member that was going to Disney World. I thought it was kind of a cool present! I don’t think they kept any for souvenirs but they may have spent more than they would have without the fake money?
So they are basically a gift certificate, but one that is refundable for cash. Which makes it better than most other gift certificates and cards. Nice.
One big advantage of Disney Dollars; people would treat them like souvenirs, and every Disney Dollar you kept was a dollar Disney kept. They functioned like store credit that often went uncollected.
I was thinking about that watching this and kinda figured that was the real reason behind this "currency"
I was questioning the reason, too, and yes, it seems to be it.
@@eacalvert They might be more fun for kids to look at and spend. And the whole thing about "oh, it's only 20 Disney dollars" being a bit further removed from "oh, I worked 3 hours to get that money".
I guess more like a strange loan? These notes must still be bought back if ever presented so it is still a liability. Disney can assume a certain percentage have been lost or destroyed but there must be a line item in their accounts somewhere that keeps a bit of money aside just in case.
@@simonpowell9975
Or you could think of it as "buying stocks", where people have put let's say 1 million into your company initially. Normally you'd have to pay the people back 2 million when your company has gone up in value, but with this setup the value is tied to the US dollar rather than the worth of the company.
In my 1 mil - 2 mil sort of example: The company already used that money they initially got to invest into projects that would make profit, so having to pay the same exact amount isn't that big of deal. Normally stocks would rise in value, but in this case inflation is devalueing it.
Also, people can sell them on Ebay/whatever and this way Disney doesn't even have to buy them back. Considering all of these, it's hardly a liability.
There's many ways to interpret such things, which is fun! And of course "buying stocks" is a "strange loan" as well :)
Fun fact: Universal Orlando did and still does something very similar. It used to be "Universal dollars" but those have been discontinued in favor of "Gringotts cash", which is basically just dollar bills themed to Harry Potter.
Also: Kidzania, where kids earn their banknotes (called "Kidzo", plural: "Kidzos") by role-playing jobs. Since I never visited them (I knew it from watching TV many years ago), I don't know if you can purchase their currency with real money but for sure, their money cannot be cashed out into real money. By the way, the banknotes feel like real-life currencies (particularly Chinese Jiao notes and the 1999 50000IDR note) and have UV images and fibers
@@tripthongUwU But isnt kidzos just for the games? Im pretty sure you cant buy food inside with them. And you get em as part of the initial payment, like tickets
Kings Dominion did the same as well.
But shouldn't "Gringotts Cash" be large coins instead?
@@catriamflockentanz it should be but paper bills are much easier to mass produce than plastic/metal coins
At the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US government was printing special cardboard tokens that replaced coins as metal coins weighed too much to have shipped into the region. They could only be used at the base exchanges in theater as well as as at commissaries and base exchanges elsewhere once you’ve rotated out. I always thought they were cool because the printed designs were always changing.
Cool! I never heard of that!
It's not just during the war. They've been doing it for decades, over 30 years at least, and it's because shipping coins is way too expensive so they give you the pogs instead because they are way lighter to ship.
I still have a few dollars worth of the cardboard coins laying around somewhere.
It goes back a lot longer than that, at least to WW2 from what I know without having to google it. Aside from the logistics of coinage weight that I've never considered, it's to keep US currency from floating around the war zone. Uncle Sam doesn't want genuine US dollars getting distributed in potentially hostile territory, spent on all the unsavoury things a soldier might buy. It can't really be prevented, especially now that US dollars are good worldwide, but at least the military isn't paying for a cargo plane full of real cash to essentially scatter in the wind.
@@johnladuke6475 you'd think introducing your currency into circulation in the enemy country would be a good thing as it gives you economic leverage once you go for peace, since now there's economic integration. the value of your currency and your markets are now linked to that country and that would be something they'd have to consider. though that could be the very reason they don't want it, as that could come with obligations.
still, it would be better empire building to purposefully pump US dollars into circulation overseas.
I remember getting Disney Dollars as a birthday present. Kind of an awesome way to say "we're going to Disney World".
For me, it was magic bands.
Soooo did you go?
That's so sweet!
@@ulysselouisdatoudelmer7365what do you think?
I remember considering getting Disney Dollars when I first visited the theme parks when I was a kid - sort of like collecting foreign currency, but I decided against getting it, because it seemed to me at the time that I could not exchange it back for US Dollars. That if I bought the Disney Dollars, it was basically like buying a gift card that I could only spend on Disney owned property. Seemed like a fun idea, just a more expensive and less useful one than I would have liked it to be.
looks over at my blockbuster gift card still with 20$ on it, and nods.
Heh, there is an myth that there is more Canadian Tire “money” in circulation than physical Canadian currency. It’s also worth more, technically, because it’s a coupon, and thus applied before tax. Arcades used to take it on par. I’d say that the virtual CTC card makes it less useful, except that Canadian Tire owns so many other stores! Also, the 3 cent coupons are worth so much now.
I swear every canadain home has a stack of CT bills. I have over $15 in CT money. It's a lot of bills lol.
its kind of sad they don't do the paper money anymore but ofc it makes sense cost wise
I was thinking "Canadian Tire...Canadian Tire...Canadian Tire..." all through the video. Like its Disney equivalent Canadian Tire "money"/scrip/whatever you want to call it was designed like real banknotes and printed by the same people.
no one knows what tires are fyi, can u explain to these americans?
@@justfrankjustdank2538 Canadian Tire is a nationwide chain of automotive, hardware, and housewares. Kinda like Walmart without the clothing and having mechanics to work on your car.
Many small businesses would legitimately accept CT money as currency because they could turn around and use it at the store for their own needs.
At first I wanted to laugh about this, but then I remembered that Canadian Tire Dollars were a thing for much longer than this. Get a few dollar-lookalike coupons with your change, a refund of your purhcase at pennies on the dollar. Collect them for years in an empty paint can, unable to throw away "money" even though it's almost worthless. And I don't know anyone without a story of at least one power tool purchased with a massive wad of Canadian Tire money, like it was the Weimar Republic.
Canadian Tire money has been a fun kids toy for play currency with almost real value since you could actually buy something for real with it. My brother and I always loved collecting the stuff and playing with it.
@@emerson-biggons7078 Yeah, but Canadian money in general looks like play currency.
@@ScooterinAB As far as I'm concerned so does yours 😂
@@emerson-biggons7078 I'm Canadian.
Yessss I even have a Canadian tire one dollar coin!
So many companies also do with with various loyalty points programs. This guy Sam on a totally different RUclips channel made an entire video about how Airlines make more money off of their loyalty programs than the actual flights in some cases.
I hate that guy
@@OLBastholm why
I don't really get why it's surprising that this is legal. What's the difference to coupons that you get e.g. at a School festival and can exchange against snacks or stuff like that?
Didn't you watch the video? It's because it's illegal to pay your workers in scrip.
@@leonguyen896 sure, it would be a problem to pay your employees with a made up currency. But why shouldn't you be able to say "you can buy this piece of paper and exchange it for goods and services in our park"?
They are essentially glorified gift cards, but what makes them different is that they are redeemable for full cash value. The only real legal issue I could see would be counterfeiting (the Treasury is really specific about its requirements for play money), but I imagine the colorful Disney characters and glitter make that a moot point.
Disney money doesn't serve a practical purpose (just being a decorative substitute for regular cash), unlike casino chips, which serve the practical function of speeding up play (and also the more sinister function of helping you part with your dough). So it kinda just seems like more of Disney's "immersive experience" schtick. However, the huge cost they put into printing them and theoretically zero profit if all the money were redeemed proves that can't be true. It turns out that if people want to exchange real money for Disney money, they don't usually change the rest back when they leave the park. They take it home as souvenirs or collector's items. Disney may have made $200 million on outstanding bills.
Disney's new pay systems have that casino chip-advantage as well as being much more convenient for customers, but they lose most of the profit from people walking out with fake money.
@@sebastiane7556
You can't sell coupons back to get the amount of dollars paid for them though, right?
@@sebastiane7556 Again, you're looking at it from the customers' perspective. Think of how things would work if employee's were paid exclusively in goods and services from their employer. It'd just be slavery with extra steps. You'd understand if you ever had a job.
I mean, in an era before the gift card existed this kind of thing wasn't that uncommon. I mean that's essentially exactly what they were (except better in some ways cause you can't redeem a gift card for cash). And pretty art.
I totally forgot about the MCDs buck.
On the coal miners money - here in Newfoundland, the main industry was cod fishing back in the day. The fish trade was completely controlled by the wealthy merchants. Instead of paying the poor, often uneducated fisherman, the merchants would give them the clothes, food, and other things they needed throughout the year on a credit. The merchants would then set the prices for things the fishermen bought at the end of the season when they sold their summers catch. Basically the merchants would manipulate the credit of the fishermen to maximize profits from the fish trade and keep the fishermen in debt or even deeper.
It's pretty interesting and similar to the coal mining thing. It's referred to as the Truck System in Newfoundland if anyone wants to look it up.
Huh. No wonder half of the Alberta population is Newfies. I'd leave too if the only industry was actively robbing me.
Thanks for sharing!
If featuring a president is the only requirement for it to be legal currency, I guess I need to be concerned about my 100$ bills 😅
The same goes for $10 bills and a significant number of $1 coins.
HOLY HOLY!!! I can proudly say that I have the two HOTTEST women on this planet as MY GIRLFRIENDS! I am the unprettiest RUclipsr ever, but they love me for what's inside! Thanks for listening his
@@AxxLAfriku If I could stop one person on youtube from commenting ever again, it would be you
And $10 bills! ALEXANDER HAMILTON BABY, whole focus of my channel
@@AxxLAfriku Go away
0:05 - yeah? Well, neither was Benjamin Franklin or Alexander Hamilton... the only real qualification for one to have one's picture on a piece of US Currency is that one must not be a living person. As Mickey Mouse is not a living person, Mickey Mouse CAN be featured on official US Currency, it would just be super weird if they did that. Usually the non-real figures used on currency are either mythological figures or personifications like Lady Liberty.
Also Susan B. Anthony, Sacajawea, Lewis & Clark, unidentified Indian on coins. Salmon P Chase on the $10,000 bill, and hopefully Harriet Tubman in the near future.
@@speedocowboy Harriet Tubman will come as a result of the ridiculous inflation we have been seeing lately. At this rate, they'll probably need to start printing $500 bills again. I don't think "hopefully" is the right word to use in that case.
@@seancondon5572 Tubman is supposed to replace Jackson on the $20
@@speedocowboy They been saying that for 5+ years. You seen it yet? No. That means it ain't gonna happen.
@@seancondon5572 it's scheduled for 2030. it takes time.
I feel like a lot of companies "make their own currency" and were doing so legally long before "Disney Dollars". We usually call them gift certificates or gift cards. All Disney did with "Disney Dollars" is present the gift certificate in a creative way and made them double as souvenirs/collectables. Which was a pretty smart idea.
The Constitutional limits on coining money has nothing to do with it.
I know that Canadian Tire did a very similar thing except what they did was basically replace coins with paper versions that can only be spent at Canadian Tire.
LMAO what?? Gift cards are not their own legal form of currency
@@epicmanpog7846 I agree. Which is why I put the phrase "make their own currency" in quotes. I was making fun of the video for calling Disney Dollars currency by pointing out that they were nothing more than fancy gift certificates.
@@SurelyIjest206 oh sorry then lol
@@SurelyIjest206 But you can say the same thing about any currency. What makes this differ from a gift certificate of dodgey company scrips is that they had real value and were treated like currency and not like gift certificates. It's all about intention.
4:41 As an Iowan who went to Disney World in 2018 with my family, all of us wearing those nfc fitbits to waste money left and right, that was really surprising to hear as a comedic example
Well done👌🏼
Sorry, but... claiming Hello Fresh "massively cuts" on your carbon footprint is massively dumb.
Normal cooking: Travel to shop and buy in bulk, for, at least 4 cooking sessions, let's say. Each session two to four portions. That's one travel and packaging set for 8-16 portions.
As opposed to hello fresh, where it's one travel and packaging set for each portion. Or each two portions. Or each 4 portions. Even in the latter case, it's still 4 times more carbon-intensive regarding packaging and delivery, than normal shopping.
I don't mind when youtubers make ads for stupid things. But I mind when they make ads for stupid things which claim to be more ecological, while they're the precise opposite.
Also hello fresh has been exploiting workers and participating in union busting practices. Most likely their script that he is reading off but absolutely devoid of morals if he knows what’s going on… chances are he hasn’t flown under the noise
In the context of his sentence he is saying that the lack of food waste reduces his carbon footprint.
But really thats just a funny way of saying "hello fresh portions are so small I always eat the whole thing and am still hungry afterwards"
@@Ryan-ft6pq i can see that nobody asked. that's the problem. with world in general currently.
nobody asks anymore whether what they're told makes any goddamn sense.
@@Acc_Expired
"In the context of his sentence he is saying that the lack of food waste reduces his carbon footprint."
which I give zero fucks about because in the context of reality rotting plants/meat are normal parts of the carbon cycle, and his food waste would produce a miniscule amount of it compared to the carbon produced by processing and burning fossils to produce the packagings and deliver it to him, plus then the carbon footprint of disposing of those plastic packagings.
i don't care that it makes sense in the context of the sentence when the sentence doesn't make sense in the context of reality.
also I'm not shitting on the ingredients or recipes or portion sizes, I've never tried them (and never will). they might be great for all i care. I'm not even that angry about their incredibly environment-unfriendly business model, actually. It's incredibly dumb and incredibly wasteful, but whatever. It's specifically how one of their main marketing points is that precise blatant, stupidly obvious lie, that pisses me off.
@@Acc_Expired The portions likely the ones that recommended by nutritionist or what you see on "serving size" at side your cookie box. So instead of "big mac", which is really 2 to 3 portions, you get exactly 1 "beef burger".
But almost nobody has only 6 chips, we eat whole can of pringles (4-6 servings) in one sitting. And I know because I do.
I still have some but I wish kept more of them. Didn’t know they’d ever be discontinued. They’re pretty cool
When I served in Vietnam, we had a military script which we could exchange for Piasters, the currency at the time. Theoretically they were the equivalent to the US dollar, but we were prohibited from having dollars. Also, the Army would occasionally have a script changeover day when all the old script would become worthless. We could buy money orders to send home but there were some restrictions which I won't go into here.
Thank you for your service!
Jesus loves you!
@Mck Idyl Thanks. I didn't recall that.
OK. It's called scrip, not script.
@@awesome346 -_-
In WW2 here in the Philippines when economies were down, and no hope in sight.
An artificial money was created that was used to trade.
It was called "Mickey Mouse Money"
They also functioned a lot like gift cards. You gave your kids $50 in disney dollars, they basically had to spend it at a Disney location and couldn't say take the money and run to the Arcade or something. It also much like in game currency we get now in Mobile games always encouraged people to spend just a bit more, because that $5 in Disney dollars didn't quite cover the cost of the item they were buying and they didn't want to leave the park with extra money left over.
I wait for Defunctland to make a 45 minutes documentary about this.
Kevin (Perjurer) didn't (so far), but I do believe Rob (Midway to Main Street) did*, and it wasn't THAT long...
Kevin has had so much success with his 100+ minute Easy Pass doc (7.8 million views and counting) that you'd expect that.
* also made a thorough one on Reedy Creek (Walt Disney World's government entity)
lol. I like Defunctland, but it's so true.
The nuclear power thing is technically true given their county has the right to build a nuclear reactor for power production.
While it would be a scary world to live in, I kind of want to read a headline about international inspectors demanding access to Disney's reactor sites to verify that they aren't breeding and enriching weapons-grade material. And getting denied by dystopian soldiers in mouse-ear helmets.
@@johnladuke6475 next thing you know, corporate war between disney and WB or universal studios breaks out.
@@johnladuke6475 Blue Helmet-Mouse Ear helmet confrontation
@@johnladuke6475 Sounds like a cyberpunk story plot. You might want to read Jack Yeovil's Dark Future series, I don't think that he mentions Disney specifically, but he has stuff like that in his stories. And one of the protagonists is Elvis, who became a bounty hunter instead of going back into music after returning from his deployment.
@@johnladuke6475 I'd like to see a headline that Disney has a official army and declare independance
Aww, I didn’t realize they got rid of Disney Dollars… I like collecting them
You like collecting them but hadn't noticed they've been out of print for 6 years?
@@Tunechi_Lee wtf 2016 is 6 years ago
Time flies
Canadian Tire used to emit it's own currency. It was printed by on real bank note paper. The values was around 1 cents to 2 dollars.
Fun fact this channel is called Half as Interesting because for half the video they explain something that could be described as interesting and the other half shilling for a sponsor that the average viewer has no interest in.
Welcome to your first time using the internet.
@@ScooterinAB *modern web
2:28 LMAO THAT'S HOW THINGS ARE IN OUR SCHOOL- There are these special coupons that can only be used in the school canteen and the stuff in the canteen just so happens to be overpriced.
Yes
To be honest, with cryptocurrency being a thing, they probably could do it again if they wanted to
And they'll probably use it to screw over their workers like the coal mines did in the late 19th century
@@FlamingoPulse
Did you even watch the video?
IT ISN’T LEGAL TO PAY EMPLOYEES WITH PRIVATE CURRENCY
@@normanm11 true..but disney has tons more money and resources..plus it is kinda legal if their boats are in fact from a nation that doesnt ban that....yea..its complex..but freakin doable
Non Fungible Toons
@@spykillergames8402 their employees would have to not pay taxes to the USA though.
I'd always assumed that the Disney Dollars were more of a coupon thing...and a way to make it seem like you were getting discounts when you, actually, weren't. The buy a vacation package and get so many Disney Dollars included which you need to use, at Disney, part.
I guess this video is now null and void after Florida closed this loop yesterday
Casinos, points programs, etc. currency is very clearly allowed to be made by whoever. The USD is only allowed to be minted and produced by entities approved by the government. The money in your bank account is just presented to you in terms of USD but it likely does not exist in that form, it likely exists in the banks internal currency formulation which could simply be a liability on a balance sheet, or as gold in a vault. Currency is not defined by the US government, or any government for that matter. It is defined by what people are willing to use and are confident in what the value will be come the time to use it. Companies hold a lot of discretionary power in creating localized currencies to help dampen changes on the balance sheet by saying “only USD and Points will be useable when doing business with us.” Currencies are just a way to lag or damp the discrepancies between income and expenses. A company can charge a bit more for a flight if the buyer knows the cost is 5% below at the end of it. Thus the company gains a 5% liability to do useful work with with the ability to control the value of the liability over time.
This sounds a lot like video game currency, except for the ability to exchange them back for actual currency (there are a scant few games that support that, and some more that have off-company transactions in that vein.)
Reminds me the "Canadian Tire" money back in the day
1:40 That he ended up in a federal prison even its clear for anybody with more intelligence than a slice of toast that his currency was not a official currency is one of the things which gives me as a European a very serious shock moment about the US justice system. Thats one of the points which scare me. Seriously. This is not right.
As a European, in a non-Euro country, I note that our country / state penal code has long contained a specific prison term for issuing tokens or coupons intended for general circulation, with a specific exception allowing the circulation of actual foreign currency. Banks need a special license exception to issue checks and credit cards.
Oh, let me explain from Canada. The problem here isn't the US justice system (that's a whole other issue). It's that a lot of them really aren't educated enough to actually notice the difference between that and a legitimate US dollar. You and I notice when they put a new portrait on a bill; I guarantee that there were people having a fit in a bank because they wouldn't accept the funny money. There's a nuclear-armed country of about 400 million people and a significant number of them fail your intelligence estimation for toast. Also they can't really agree who they want in charge.
@@senorbones Private currency is legal. Look at the Goldback. The issue they had was that the Liberty Dollar looked too much like US coins, which I would argue they do not. The Ron Paul coins were a special edition, there is also a Donald Trump edition. The normal coins just have Lady Liberty's head, with a torch on the back. They were never intended to copy or counterfeit US currency. They were made of silver that had more value than the face value of the coin in some cases. It cannot be a counterfeit because it does not copy any existing coin, and it is made of a precious metal that has at least as much value as its face value, so in that way it is actually much more stable and valuable than US fiat currency.
it's not about confusing them with real dollars, it's about preventing people to establish their own currency, since the federal reserve needs complete control over the economy. That's why they want to ban crypto so badly also.
@@johnladuke6475 Not really, no.
4:56 Cuts to informercial with "it certainly has in the where I live". Dope!
Mickey hasn't been elected President, but he's been a write-in candidate for President in at least the last three Presidential elections.
I love how in the beginning he says you can tell it's not really because Mickey isn't a President, and then at 1:10 you see people making it rain with $100 Bills that have Benjamin Franklin on it... you know, someone that was never elected President. :)
1:03 I LIVE THERE!!!
I remember how wide spread it was & how easy it was to get & spend. We live in Wisconsin & we could go to our local bank & recieve this currancy just like receiving foreign currancy before visiting that country. I loved it! It was when cash was the main way to buy & it helped with a budget at the parks.
One thing bugs me: if the Disney Dollars were exchangeable back to regular dollars... What was really the point? What was Disney gaining from essentially creating one more kind of token for the US dollar?
I could understand it if it was a currency that you could e.g. win in a contest and then spend in Disney resorts, like a coupon. But the fact that it was exchangeable back seems to make no business sense to me.
Well, here's a couple of possibilities. At the end of the trip, many people probably kept a few of their Disney Dollars as souvenirs. Most were probably the dollar ones, but I'll bet a few kept higher denominations as well. When you consider that millions visit the theme parks each year, that quickly adds up. Every one that is NOT turned in is pure 100 percent profit for Disney - which is pretty good indeed. Another possibility is that those spending Disney Dollars might be inclined to spend them all - as opposed to not spending U.S. currency. You have to realize the psychology of it. You've got Disney Dollars, you're in the theme park. You'd probably be more inclined to spend that last $50 in Disney money on a ride or a toy, than if it's the last $50 in U.S. currency in your pocket. Yes, it's true that you could turn the $50 Disney for $50 U.S., but you'd be more likely to say "What the heck," if you had the Disney money in the first place.
As long as people accepted it Disney was esseintly creating their own (USD) money. When someone didnt turn them back in with Disney they would keep the USD money and lose a fancy piece of paper that cost a couple of cents to make. The bills were pretty much worthless and Disney got paid for a piece of paper and got advertisement at the same time. Its actually a really great idea of their perspective since controlling money is OP as hell.
@@cjmarshall0221 Same reason that a casino uses chips, cruise lines charge your Seapass card, etc. When you SEE cash, you're like - wow, that's real money. You see chips, or Disney money - meh...
And Disney didn't probably hold 100% of the issued dollars in cash, but could instead invest that money as soon as people convert their money across.
@@frankpinmtl If casinos let people place real $100's on the table it would be real easy for someone to snatch and dash. Tokens aren't accepted off premises.
Hey, this happens here in Canada too! Canadian Tire, an automotive and all around hardware and housewares store here in Canada, issues Canadian Tire Money (legally, Canadian Tire “Money”) as kind of like a cash back rewards program where when you buy things at Canadian Tire you get a percentage (I think it’s like 5%?) back in Canadian Tire Money. You’d think that it can only be spent at Canadian Tire, and you’d be technically right, but I’ve seen charities accept Canadian Tire Money as donations, I guess so they can use it to buy what they need at Canadian Tire. (Like a pet rescue place accepting it to buy pet food and other pet paraphernalia there)
3:55 er no, I was thinking "so whats the point if they are functionaly real dollars"
Yeah even me too.
North Korea’s goal was always to counterfeit Disney Dollars, not USD. They were planning a class trip to Disney World. Disney Dollars just got discontinued too soon, so they had to switch to boring bucks 😢
1:56 it's okay, in my mind the line will always read "But despite the crazy idea, instead of NotHaus landing in a nut house, he just ended up in Federal Prison"
I actually have one of these, I always wondered why it existed and why my parents had it. I then learned when my parents brought me to Disney when I was little, they happened to use some and brought one home as a mémoire of sorts. Interesting to learn that it used to be its own currency!
Wait, you didn't answer any of the interesting questions lol. Why did this exist? How did you get disney dollars? What was the benefit to all that r&d on uncounterfeitable "money"
My guess: customers bought it at the entrance, like chips in casinos.
And what was the benefit - marketing, kids wanting it and then spending it, i suppose
@@panda4247 Yup. Additionally, if you're spending goofy bills that have a drawing of Goofy's friend on them, it doesn't feel like you're spending actual money, even if the bills have the exact same value as money.
I used to get HAI videos in my feed ALLLL the time. In fact, I haven't seen HAI in my suggested videos for so long that I genuinely forgot this channel existed 😔 ... pumped to binge it 🙌
I had no idea. I’m still wondering the point of having Disney money. Were you only able to buy items at the park with the Disney money? Were they hoping you would buy too many Disney dollars and never cash them back in? I’m not getting the point.
The point is that people would buy them and never use them. Just like with gift cards.
I do remember that my parents kept one of their unused Disney dollars as a souvenir from their trip, and I suspect that was the major point of them at the time.
Actually yes. Your last point is exactly the point.
That's exactly the point. Also, Disney is volcano-lair levels of evil, so establishing their own currency they could theoretically manipulate and control is par for the course. Reminds me of that town the established.
I'd imagine that in the beginning, Disney didn't have credit card machines at every shop and food vendor. So someone could go to the Disney bank and charge the amount of Disney money they wanted for the day, then use that throughout the park. At the end of the day if the person had any left, they could exchange it back for cash.
There's also Kidzania (available at several countries), where kids simulate real-life jobs to get money in their currency called "Kidzos". Their places are miniature of cities with real companies as Kidzania's partners
Child labour?
@@sirk603 not child labor. It's just roleplay jobs and doesn't like real-life jobs. For example: the fireman job does only extinguish fake flames made of lamps. Pizza-making is DIY or choose your own topping, just like Papa Pizzeria where you can sort toppings into shapes you want
@@tripthongUwU yeah yeah I mostly assumed that. I was kinda joking
How is having food shipped overnight on an airplane in a giant box make you have a smaller carbon footprint than food shipped in bulk by truck to a store? That sounds like a load of malarkey to my
Also I find it really hard to believe that grocery prices are less than Hello Fresh's prices.
And you probably have to go to the grocery store anyway for TP, snacks, fruit, other household items, right?
“Carbon footprint” is a marketing term. No individual is going to affect global warming meaningfully unless they’re a billionaire or something. Also, Hello Fresh is overtly anti-worker’s rights and retaliated against their employees for trying to unionize.
I’m all for creators getting paid more, they deserve it, but some companies should be passed over for solidarity’s sake.
they go through fedex like any other package from my experience
4:14 Not having a Michael's nearby has kept me out of so much trouble!
1:09 Fool, you use that weird dagger after the first asterisk. Do not use more than those two to avoid creating a paradoxically quantum rift in the spacetime continuum
This being made not long after knowing better did his video on company towns. Good combo
Wait... you mean I'm not allowed to pay my cleaning lady with my self-made 'diner' and 'breakfast' coupons?
Tell that to cryptocurrency shills.
Another place that prints/mints their own money, is video game arcades. Which usually create their own coins, very similar to quarters.
Here in Canada, we have Canadian Tire Money, which is minted by the same company that prints real Canadian money. And it fools a lot of non-Canadians into thinking it's real Canadian money, for some reason. It's wild.
See also "hop tokens"; not the new digital stuff confusingly using the same name, but coinage issued from 1767 until the 1940s by farmers in Britain, primarily in Kent; when seasonal labourers would come down from London for a summer family working "holiday", they'd be paid in hop-tokens measured by the bushel, and they were primarily redeemed at the end of the season: in part, to encourage people to stay for the entire season and in part because before cash flow bridging loans etc, it was a way for the farmer to issue an IOU ahead of the farmer selling the crops. Local merchants all took them as tender, and there were various ways to cash out early (I assume at a loss), but today they're just collectors items or held in museums.
"Mickey has not been elected as the president" lol
...yet.
Nothing turns a shitty day around like a few HAI videos. Thank you Sam and uhhhhhhhh Sam’s colleagues (who are probably also friends)
Ily more than I love that monk that studied the genetics of pea plants (and I REALLY love thqt guy. Miss him every damn day.)
0:09 neither has Alexander Hamilton...
Wabash, Indiana during the mid 1800s experienced huge flooding in the Wabash river and canal which where shut down and was the main way of trade. Due to the flooding they where allowed to use wooden coins in exchange for US currency for a while until it subsided.
...I’m not surprised, given the amount of things they’ve pulled off. Reedy Creek is odd.
Edit: it seems this one isn’t even related to that one... the part that I don’t get after watching this video is why. If they were 1:1 exchangeable, and Disney put in the work and cost of actually making them hard to counterfeit, this seems like it wouldn’t really be worth it just to have bills with Mickey Mouse on them.
Disney is all about the experience- they probably figured Disney dollars would make you feel like you weren't in the real world and further immersed in park. Also while they have to be redeemable for USD, there is nothing to say they couldn't print more, give them out with promotions or ticket sales, and then expect to get most of them back from gift shops or resturaunts, making their value for a customer a dollar, but their cost to Disney to be somewhat less. Just speculating anyways
Except it is. It costs the Bureau of Engraving and Printing about 5 cents to produce a $100 note (slightly less ... about 3 cents ... to produce a $1 or $2 note, since those have fewer anticounterfeiting features). There are probably slightly fewer anti-counterfeiting measures in a Disney Dollar than in a US banknote, but there's also less of an "economy of scale", so let's assume it costs Disney around 5 cents per note regardless of denomination. If someone buys a Disney Dollar and exchanges it back for US currency, Disney has lost 5 cents. If someone buys a Disney Dollar and SPENDS it at Disneyland Disney has "sort of" lost 5 cents, but they also made whatever their normal profit on the item was (and if you think Disney's profit margins are as low as 5% can I interest you in some prime Disney-adjacent vacation land in the Everglades?). If someone buys a Disney Dollar and keeps it as a souvenir, Disney has made 95 cents. All Disney requires to break even is that one person in 20 keeps the Disney Dollar instead of exchanging it for US currency at the end of their trip. The number of people that need to keep the $5 or $10 notes instead of exchanging them is far smaller for Disney to break even or make a profit. There's also a psychological effect ("Oh, my trip's almost over and I still have some Mickey Money; I should spend it." and "It's not REAL money, after all, why not splurge?") Also, at the volume Disney is doing this, you can't entirely ignore the interest effect; if you buy Mickey Money when you book your trip (not an unreasonable scenario) and exchange it for cash at the end, you've effectively given Disney an interest-free loan for that length of time.
I remember getting Dinsney Dollars from my local Disney store before family trips to Disney World. Disney Dollars were fun for kids to get and use.
the fed is also a private enterprise.
Disney money is just as official, and even more transparent than fed money.
I remember when the Disney properties in Orlando and Anaheim had the "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire - Play It!" attraction. That would've been fun to play for Disney dollars, even at a 1% payout compared to the TV game, a $10,000 top prize. (The actual top prize was a trip to New York or a Disney cruise, the value of which was around $3,000 in the early 2000s)
Wow, I wish I kept those Disney Dollars I bought my kids to use as spending cash at the park back in 2008. I might have enough money now for one day at the parks 😝 😂
Who's the girl at 0:45
It's a Storyblocks stock footage called Young Woman Is Touching Her Chin Thinking About Something While Posing Against Pink Studio Background
Okay so I knew what Disney Dollars were before going into this video and I have an interesting story to share about them. Both my parents worked for Disney in the 90s and while yes they were given real money for their work, they would also sometimes be paid in Disney Dollars and part of the reason why they left the company was because my Dad’s raises were ONLY Disney Dollars and that was not sustainable for raising a family, though from the stories they told me that money was not easily exchangeable for real currency🤔 I don’t know I’d have to ask them again but that would go against some of those guidelines set up in a way, but there was probably a loophole with it like, “But they get paid an average wage on top of that”
But if Disney dollars are a 1:1 exchange, then why go through the trouble?
The only thing I can think of would be that it avoids sales taxes but I also don't know if sales taxes do or don't apply.
Not every Disney Dollar handed out will be spent. Souvenirs. People die. All those dollars are 100% profit for Disney. Even if 99.8% of people spend every Disney Dollar they get, think of how many people 0.2% of Disney patrons is. A lot of people.
Its one of the reasons companies sell gift cards, as well.
And I bet handing in Disney dollars to exchange back to USD was rare.
I think he means what’s the point of the consumer switching to Disney dollars if there is no tangible difference between that and regular money. Seems simpler to skip the step of exchanging the currency and use normal cash instead to me.
Why buy gift cards? Those are worse, you can't exchange them back to dollars.
DISNEY had them in the 50s-70s at DISNEYLAND IN CA
I’ve never been this early to anything!!! I’m usually not invited but still!!
This video made me instantly remember that episode of the Simpsons "Itchy and Scratchy Land" where Homer spent thousands on their "Scratchy" bucks.
"mickey mouse has not been elected president" YET
0:32 oh I dunno, seems like Washington DC hasn't gotten bored yet
Company scrips: NOW I get refference for "Malcolm in the middle" episodes when Francis and others have to pay gazillion dollars for sweets in Alaskan loggers shop.
The Central Mining Company wasn't a coal company; it was a copper mining company from Da Keweenaw; so too is the picture you showed of the proletariat, that's the olde Tamarack Mine, I believe~
Ironically Disney being a ‘nuclear power’ is not a joke. Disney has the right to do so, granted by special permission.
Holy fucking shit
@marvin: agreed. Florida and the county Disney is in, made a lot of concessions to/for Disney , to get them to come to Florida. It’s almost obscene. Money corrupts in so many ways.
When people say a country is a "nuclear power" they generally mean it has nuclear bombs, not that it has nuclear power plants. Japan and Spain have nuclear power plants, but aren't usually considered "nuclear powers."
A couple of towns in western Massachusetts Berkshires do something similar called the Berkshare, posted right before he mentioned it
0:20 Thank you Sam for making Republicans aware of this. - REVOKED.
There is another fun land named kidzania called “kidzos” you get them by doing jobs but in a kid level way, like fire firefighters, cleaning, and getting your own kidzania driving license, working on the kidzania radio, there is more but I can’t cover them now, you can use these “kidzos” to buy toys or maybe other stuff, that all I know about kidzos and kidzania, best childhood in the UAE
"I sold my soul to the company store"
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don’t ya call me, cuz I can’t go…
Can someone explain the purpose of Disney Dollars? Why would a person want to exchange US Dollars for Disney Dollars when US Dollars are accepted at the same places Disney Dollars are?
I got Disney dollars at a timeshare presentation. For sitting thru a 3 hr tour, presentation, pressure sell I got $50 Disney dollars which wasn’t too bad.
Von Nothaus did not end up in Federal Prison! The judge realized it was a Fed witchhunt. Though he was convicted, On December 2, 2014, he was sentenced to six months house arrest, with three years probation.
Damn Sam, coming right out of the gate with an immediate fail lol
Benjamin Franklin has never been elected President either.
He was apparently president of Pennsylvania.
Never been elected president YET.
Give it time, he's managed some remarkable accomplishments.
Benjamin Franklin: The only President of the United States who was NEVER President of the United States.
The law says the fake money has to be able to be exchanged for real money but what's to stop the company from doing a terrible exchange rate?
Last time I was this early, Disney dollars still existed
HAI should do a similar video...but on banks. They issue their own currency all the time. They just instead call it "deposits". Banks used to issue literal currency called bank notes though. Either way, it was (and still is) very suspect. Banks issue more claims on reserves then they have. This means the bank will either create money and steal through inflation or suffer a bank run.
Weird, good thing we have actual non made up/legit currencies like Bitcoin and all the other cryptocurrencies on the market.
Short, Sweet and Informative. Thanks for the vid!
We should change our currency to have mickey mouse rather than old, dead, men with a complicated past. Less controversial.
hmmm,don't look up what mickey did between 1933 and 1945
2:40 'i owe my soul to the company store"
Hello Fresh is glad to continue to let there employees suffer and would rather see them gone than organized and asking for better working conditions and livable wages
theres even a workaround to the laws: just oficially sell them as paper tokens and youre not even obligated to refund them as far as i know (at least where i live)
Hahahaha they aren’t a government anymore
Because they own the us government
I bought some Disney dollars for a family member that was going to Disney World. I thought it was kind of a cool present! I don’t think they kept any for souvenirs but they may have spent more than they would have without the fake money?
Not sure I would joke about other people exploiting the proletariat and then do a sponsorship for hello fresh
These Disney dollors might be valuable one day in the future. Might be a smart idea to buy them now since there still kinda cheap
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Thanks
So they are basically a gift certificate, but one that is refundable for cash. Which makes it better than most other gift certificates and cards. Nice.