Splitting Disneyland Tickets?

April 25, 2011 3:46 PM

Can two people split up a two-day Disneyland ticket?

A friend of mine mentioned to me that he's going to be going to Disneyland next week. I had been wanting to go for a while, and when I told him this, he said that we should purchase a two-day ticket; he could go one day, and I could go the next. This seems like a good way to save some money, but I have no idea whether or not it will work. Does Disneyland have any sort of system in place for preventing people from doing this? Do they require an ID check or anything like that to prevent people from splitting multiple-day tickets in this way?

posted by anonymous to travel & transportation (10 answers total)

At Disney World, they scan your fingerprint on the way in. Presumably it's to avoid exactly this kind of thing.
posted by Andrhia at 3:47 PM on April 25, 2011

All passes are marked "non-transferable."

Having said that, looking at photos more recent than from when I worked there (which was some time ago now,) it doesn't look like they've got the same ID-verification setup that WDW has.
posted by SMPA at 4:06 PM on April 25, 2011

It says right on the ticket that you're not supposed to share it, but we did it last month at Disneyland California Adventure and didn't have any trouble. There's no fingerprint scan or anything. - I believe they do keep track of which tickets are being used inside the park at a given time though...so don't try to like...enter the park, then pass the ticket out the fence to your buddy and have him go through the line....your ticket will be flagged as already in the park and will most likely get confiscated/voided....but that last bit is just a guess.
posted by AltReality at 4:07 PM on April 25, 2011

I've done this with those 3-day summer passes they sometimes have (my family went twice, then I went with friends for the last day). They never checked and it seems like they usually don't bother, but you never know. I say go for it, but know that you risk getting caught if they somehow check. I don't think they will, though.
posted by sprezzy at 4:20 PM on April 25, 2011

Even with the finger scan, a family that I know does exactly this at WDW with a 10 day pass. Our theory is the finger scan is either to avoid multiple people coming in on the same ticket in a single day or as a way to identify passes that are being abused on a larger scale. You'd probably be fine.
posted by parkerjackson at 4:24 PM on April 25, 2011

I've had the same experience as others here, but at WDW. Had a multi-day pass, my mom used it for a few days, my then-girlfriend used it for a few others. No big deal.
posted by SNWidget at 5:22 PM on April 25, 2011

It would be a big deal if the fingerprint technology worked well enough and Disney used it consistently. Apparently there is a lot of false positive/negatives with the technology and they choose not to use it at other times to help speed up the process of getting large numbers of people into the park.
posted by mmascolino at 6:11 PM on April 25, 2011

The fingerprint scanner doesn't work -- we had multi-day tickets for bigger group in one pile and just randomly picked one for each person when we entered.
posted by zeikka at 6:46 PM on April 25, 2011

Your plan will work. The safeguards are against people passing the same ticket between the gates so two can get in for the price of one on the same day, not against handing off the ticket to somebody else at the end of the day.

Once you're in the park itself, don't forget to always turn left. We have followed this advice often and it totally works.
posted by lilac girl at 6:52 PM on April 25, 2011

(Just to jump on that, you should also go left in stores. Same reasons.)
posted by acoutu at 7:53 PM on April 25, 2011