... minimum wage seasonal employment?
oh, right, that.
While it may be the attitude of the company that Magic is a standard to be lived up to, the reality is that they aren't paying any better for it. It actually says much, much more about disney that the standard exists in the first place when we're talking about (mostly) unskilled entry-level work that pays much worse than comparable work for the personal investment. Presumably everyone who applies for a CM position does know what they're getting into, but they also know it is not likely to be a career. I prefer to look at it from the (probably overtly pessimistic) angle of being impressed by there being any magic at all given the circumstances.
I wouldn't put "disney magic," broadly defined, in the same category as trade secrets like the Coke formula; everything about it is an open secret. Obviously for the 5-year-old who hasn't realized -isn't capable of realizing- the characters are costumed actors, that's a little different, but everything boils down to attitude. If you want to point to a factor, I wouldn't place too much blame on the college kids behind registers. Since the Eisner changeover Disney- Disney the corporate giant- has become increasingly adept at commodifying the Magic, and when you turn something like that into a commodity it inherently loses some of the intangible value.