This is just plain silly.
Guests are not being rude and taking advantage of anybody. Nobody is pushing the limits. This is how Disney runs their business. You are not showing them any special courtesy and being a kind minority. LOL
Disney has the expectation that guests will shop at closing, linger to take photos at closing, schedule meals late, etc. Their employees are scheduled based upon this.
Disney is fully aware of what they are doing when a park closes at 9 and CMs are scheduled to come into work at 5 or 6.
Why do you think they have dining reservations available up to 5 minutes before park closing? Surely you do not think Disney expects guests to have a meal in a matter of 5 minutes?
In actuality, very few of us know the real rules WDW follows when it comes to its employees. There are a lot of assumptions made that may or may not be accurate, or may have been true in the past but are not true now. We as consumers don't need to concerns ourselves with the way WDW treats its staff, but I do think we know much less about the way CMs are actually treated than we think we do. So when you make statements like that, you're just guessing. You may be right and I may be wrong, but you're making the statement based on innuendo and supposition, not actual facts. Or, in some cases, reasonable expectations.
For example, do you think CMs have an unlimited amount of time to finish their responsibilities at the end of the night? Or do you think they have to get things done by the end of their shift? I don't know the answer, but I've rarely, if ever, known a company that gives its employees an open-ended time allotment, and I doubt WDW has 15 or 20 (or 60) minute cushions built into the end of everyone's day.
WDW may schedule for X hours after closing, but a CM still has a time limit to finish their nightly responsibilities, and I'm guessing that time allotment is pretty close to the actual time required for the task. So if they're late in leaving a ride because people show up late, there's a good chance they have to rush (ie work harder) to get the things done that have to be done. Or they have to stay late to get things done, which may or may not be paid. If they are taking reservations until closing then they've scheduled the appropriate staff for that meal -- but they've no way of knowing how many people will end up in a line, so the CMs on duty are there until the end, regardless of when their shift was supposed to end. The idea of line-lateness being inconsequential to anyone isn't accurate, because someone either has to rush, or to stay late, or get reprimanded in situations where jobs aren't done in time because the line was too long at closing.
But that's not really the point. As I said early on, WDW allows it so there's no question as to whether it's within the rules. Of course it is. What I'm saying is that this is another example of a nice little perk WDW offers its patrons that eventually gets strategized for -- and as that happens more and more, expect WDW to eventually make some kind of change to mitigate it because they always do.
So, to be clear, I do not think it is cheating. i do not think it is wrong. I do not think it is an abuse of the system. But I do think the more people who plan on it -- the more people who take a perk and use it to an advantage -- the more likely it is that WDW alter its procedures to minimize the impact of the behavior.
