Annual Pass/FastPass Situation

[Indy95]

Of course, when they roll out the new update for the turnstyles come January 2, i'm predicting Chaos, confusion and mayhem. Considering that anyone who didnt work on Main Street Ops today didnt realise that the parade didnt start in its usual spot, i'm betting that things are gonna be insane come Jan 2, with nobody knowing anything that goes on....

Hahaha! Ain't that the truth! I don't envy ANY cast members working the turnstyles starting next year! Well, good thing I'm keeping my "old-school" annual pass (that I picked up six months ago) for my next visit. Let's hope that it doesn't have any problems!

 

[DisneyPhD]

You'd be suprised about the magnetic field strenght of the hard plastic tickets. Teh ones you get from The Disney Store and at the TTC are pretty good, magnetic stripe wise, but they still have problems. The room key tickets have the worst times, they get demag'd very easily. If you did that for AP's with the same technology, you'd have the same problem. Except with PO'd AP holders, as opposed to PO'd resort guests.

Let me see if I understand. The reason the AP are on paper, excuse me mylar is because they work better? Why would that be? CC are plastic and work fine.

Very interesting.

 

[Lauriebar]

Let me see if I understand. The reason the AP are on paper, excuse me mylar is because they work better? Why would that be? CC are plastic and work fine.

Very interesting.

I'm not sure but I believe that in another forum this was discussed and the reason that the AP's are not plastic is because so many people lose them, forget them or damage them that it is more cost effecient to reissue them in paper. I can certainly understand this...a year or more is a long time to keep up with the tickets!!

 

[tonypitt]

I took no offense to anyone's response to my post. Just wanted to make sure everyone knew I wasn't a cheater. (As Gail noticed, we were told by a CM yesterday that we should redeem our vouchers "later today or tomorrow." My wife and I discussed this for about 30 seconds and I told her that I didn't feel it was right to extend our pass the extra day by delaying redemption. Disney did right by us by not giving us a hassle because their system was down; I felt they were due the same consideration in return. [Not that anyone at WDW would likely care, but I felt it was the right thing to do.])

This is our first time with Annual Passes. One reason we bought them was for the free parking privileges. I've been surprised so far at how little scrutiny they get from the parking toll takers. When we first tried to use ours we thought that the taker might have to scan it to validate it. But after several uses now, we'e learned that all we get is a glance at the ticket from afar and a wave to proceed. I'm certainly not advocating this, but that certainly seems like it would be open to abuse. There's no way the CM at the gate could read the expiration date etc. off our ticket in the amount of time they've glaced at it. Is there some aspect of the ticket that is easy to see to verify parking privilges? Or do they just run this on a kind of an honor system?

 

[Mission: SPACE]

I've seen some parking tenants give the AP a more scrutinized look, but I don't think I've ever handed one to the tenant... As far as I know, there's nothing on the APs that indicate it's an AP from a distance.

 

[Mission: SPACE]

By the way, tonypitt, welcome to our little piece of magic in cyberspace!

 

[TURKEY]

Hahaha! Ain't that the truth! I don't envy ANY cast members working the turnstyles starting next year! Well, good thing I'm keeping my "old-school" annual pass (that I picked up six months ago) for my next visit. Let's hope that it doesn't have any problems!

I feel sorry for any turnstile, guest relations, guest services, or any other CM that sells tickets. It's going to be nuts from people not getting what they want originally to the biometrics.

It's going to be fun.

 

[bhg469]

Ok when did the AP change from paper to mylar? and what is changing about the turnstyles? i must be out of the loop.

 

[Pixie Duster]

EVERYONE PLEASE READ

The "paper" tickets are used because that is all that is available to print on if you get your tickets / annual pass from any Disney park (as well as TTC, Guest Relations, and Downtown Disney). The printers are loaded with a reel of the tickets, they are not individual pieces of paper that they can switch out. Since any given Disney ticket venue has to sell anything from 1 day tickets to Annual passes they have to have ticket system that is consistent. If they were to have a different printing area for regular tickets and a seperate printing set-up for Seasonal or Annual passes it would be time consuming for the Guest and Cast Member, and it would not be cost effective either.
The plastic tickets that you may see are from Disney Stores, Disney Resorts, or tickets that were ordered online and sent to the Guest's home.

I hope I explained that well. And again if you keep your ticket in a sleeve they generally will last a good while.

 

[Gail Hayden]

Wow!!!!!!! Who CARES!!!! For all I'm concerned my AP could be on toilet paper, just as long as it works!!!!!!!!

Me too!!!! BUT, some people get edgy about it.

 

[Gail Hayden]

EVERYONE PLEASE READ

The "paper" tickets are used because that is all that is available to print on if you get your tickets / annual pass from any Disney park (as well as TTC, Guest Relations, and Downtown Disney). The printers are loaded with a reel of the tickets, they are not individual pieces of paper that they can switch out. Since any given Disney ticket venue has to sell anything from 1 day tickets to Annual passes they have to have ticket system that is consistent. If they were to have a different printing area for regular tickets and a seperate printing set-up for Seasonal or Annual passes it would be time consuming for the Guest and Cast Member, and it would not be cost effective either.
The plastic tickets that you may see are from Disney Stores, Disney Resorts, or tickets that were ordered online and sent to the Guest's home.

I hope I explained that well. And again if you keep your ticket in a sleeve they generally will last a good while.

Well, that certainly explains it well. Thank you!!!!

 

[Gail Hayden]

Ok when did the AP change from paper to mylar? and what is changing about the turnstyles? i must be out of the loop.

Mylar has been in use for a long time. There is a thread about the turnstyles, but, I cannot link it.

 

[bhg469]

thats odd cause my AP 2 years ago was straight up paper

 

[Gail Hayden]

thats odd cause my AP 2 years ago was straight up paper

Mine for the last 4 years has been mylar.

 

[Pixie Duster]

wait, what?

Mylar is the stuff the shiney baloons are made out of...

Again as I said in my original post unless you buy your annual or seasonal pass from Disney Store or on-line and have them send it to your home, your pass will be a regular paper ticket. If you want to know why that is please scroll back up and reread the post.

 

[bhg469]

wait, what?

Mylar is the stuff the shiney baloons are made out of...

Again as I said in my original post unless you buy your annual or seasonal pass from Disney Store or on-line and have them send it to your home, your pass will be a regular paper ticket. If you want to know why that is please scroll back up and reread the post.

thats what im thinking

 

[Gail Hayden]

wait, what?

Mylar is the stuff the shiney baloons are made out of...

Again as I said in my original post unless you buy your annual or seasonal pass from Disney Store or on-line and have them send it to your home, your pass will be a regular paper ticket. If you want to know why that is please scroll back up and reread the post.

It is also the stuff the passes are made of, Disney uses Mylar paper stock. Mylar is an amazing product. It has many uses, not just balloons and tickets. It is also used for laser imaging, inkjet printing, packaging film( IE: puparoni's are packaged in Mylar), comic book sleeves and a host of other products.

If you are interested, just do a search on Mylar. It makes for interesting reading.

You might also see Deb's page, where she mentions just what the passes are made of. Your explaination was the first one that made any sense as to the why all the passes are of the same material.

I purchased my Annual Passport from The Disney Store. Is this the real passport or a voucher?

Though it may be printed on hard plastic credit card material, what you receive from the Disney Store is a voucher and not an AP itself. Once you get on property, you will want to activate your Annual Passport (and therefore start the one year from *that* time). And don't get too used to the hard plastic card. You will most likely get the mylar paper ticket stock for your activated AP.

http://allearsnet.com/pl/apass.htm

The only reason I even brought this up is because people get totally on edge when you mention paper. They see it as a ticket made from paper like from a printer. Very flimsy and not at all durable, and I can see their reasons. The passes are anything but flimsy, as you pointed out in your first post.

 

[Gail Hayden]

thats what im thinking

Like plastic, mylar comes in many shapes and forms and functions.
Plastic is used for coke containers & also for parts on cars. It does not have just one use. Mylar's uses are many and very varied. Disney uses a Mylar/paper for their tickets. Perhaps if you do a search on Mylar it would ease the confusion you seem to be having.

 

[bhg469]

then why am i able to tear up my ticket when i was done with it, the magnetic strip is the only part that is mylar. although i do confuse easily.

 

[markc]

While I'm not advocating using the "special" button to get additional fastpasses, I will say that by using it you will NOT get kicked out of the parks or even reprimanded. One of my friends, who worked there a year ago, had said that Disney's policy was to "look the other way" unless of course a guest was printing out about 50 of them and were holding up a line. The amount of guests who even know about the button is so little that it's never been an issue (however once they figured out that some people knew about it, they did decide to utilize a "lock" feature on the button about a year after fastpasses were first introduced). Additionally, even if 10 guests use the button to get passes per hour, often that number is offset by another 20 who elect not to use their fastpass, so there is little to no effect for the rest of the guests who are playing by the rules.

Lately CM's have been rather lazy about locking the buttons, and some of the machines are even offline from the main ticketing systems so the chance to get multiple fastpasses is there (which is why the original poster was able to get tickets from the Splash Mountain FP machines with an "invalid" form of ticketing, and often this is the case with the Jungle Cruise as well).

As for "helping yourself" to fastpasses because the CMs are fixing another problem, I very much suggest not doing it. First of all, rarely are the buttons turned. Usually the CM has a key for it. And second, if you get caught, you can get kicked out of the park. And that's not good at all. We certainly wouldn't want that to happen to anyone!