I agree that orderly waiting in line is a British trait, I recall once several friends and I went to a theatre i Vancouver BC. When some guy who was not in line started a conversation with a couple that was in line, at least ten people told him to go to the back of the line. In Canada and England, people lined up in clear single file. In the US Midwest, people line up in couples and singles.Here in Miami, people line up in clusters, and cuting in line is rampant.
Disney uses a sort of winding stockade of pipes, as they use for cattle boarding trains or waiting to be slaughtered. No more than two fat people or three skinny ones can stand abreast in a Disney queue. Sometimes, Disney has TV monitors for the people waiting in line to watch, usually nothing of great interest, on a tree minute loop.
I would say that Disney and other theme parks that have copied their style are experts at controlling crowds and getting people to pay to do boring tasks, like waiting eternally for a five-minute thrill.
Long ago, I worked as a sort of accountant for a Disney wannabee, King's Dominion, a theme park near Ashland, VA just off I-95. There were two of these, and they belonged to the Taft family of Ohio, a bunch of real bloodsuckers. They would promise a 15 cent an hour bonus over the minimum wage to any of the HS kids who stayed on until the end of summer, then two weeks before the summer's end if attendance dropped. they would fire over half these kids: sorry, kid, no bonus for you. They advertised the bonus right up to firing day.
By law, they had to have water fountains, but they hid them in the architecture around the restrooms so you could not find them. If you asked for water at one of the concessions, they would charge the same price as a soda for it, but if anyone complained, they would refund the money.
They really raked in the money. Over $1 million a day, and that was back in the early '70's. Their newsletter claimed that the entire cost of the park was covered after a year and a half-- really a summer and a half: they were open from May through Labor Day.
