All You Can Eat

I loved the Disneyland ticket book system when I was a kid. I felt powerful and independent with my ticket book. It was like money given to me to spend on the rides of my choosing. Managing my own coupons was an exciting component of the Disneyland experience. When my Mom deemed me old enough, she handed me a full ticket book at the start of the day, and I was completely responsible for its use. If I lost it, tough luck. My destiny lay in its care and keeping. I will always remember the adult feeling it gave me to possess my own tickets and to make my own decisions about how they would be used.

Of course, ticket books are now a thing of the past. Disneyland stopped selling any kind of tickets to attractions by 1982. If you are a baby boomer like me, you remember those glory days. When I was a kid, paying for a day at Disneyland was pretty simple. If you just wanted to walk through the gates and look around, you paid a mere $2.00 general admission fee. If you wanted to ride any of the attractions, you had to pay extra. In 1972 there were about 42 rides and attractions in the park that required a ticket for admission. Rides were priced according to their relative value. So, a two-minute ride down Main Street on the horse-drawn trolley was a relatively low-cost excursion compared to the highly elaborate Pirates of the Caribbean.

So Disney, in the clear logic of the day, set a price for each ride. Made sense to me. To avoid hair-splitting debates over whether It’s a Small World should cost more than, say, the Jungle Cruise, Disney categorized attractions into five broad “value” groups. Those rides considered to be the cheapest were classified as an “A” ticket ride. In 1972 there were six “A” attractions, including the Main Street vehicles, King Arthur’s Carousel and the walking tour through Sleeping Beauty Castle. The classifications continued with “B”, “C”, and “D”. The “E” ticket category was added in 1959. The “E” ticket rides were considered the most exciting and extravagant, and deserved the ranking, except maybe (in my estimation) the Enchanted Tiki Room. How did that ride get an “E” rating while the Santa Fe & Disney Railroad ride through the Grand Canyon and Primeval World only got a “D” rating? And for that matter, who decided that Alice in Wonderland should be a “B” ride, but Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride should be a “C” ticket? I tried not to over think it, or it would make me crazy.

The lettering system was a little subjective, but thank goodness it wasn’t set in stone. The Jungle Cruise, for example, started out in 1955 as a “C” ride. In 1956 it was bumped up to a “D” ride, and in 1959 it was elevated to full “E” ticket status when the new category was introduced. And demotions have occurred as well. America Sings and the Mine Train Thru Nature’s Wonderland were downgraded from “E” down to “D” before being closed.

You could buy these tickets individually from ticket vendors throughout the park if you only intended to ride one or two rides the whole day, or to save money Disney sold these tickets in books of 10 or 15 for a discount. In 1972 a child’s (ages 3-11) 15-ticket book cost $4.95. That was a good bargain, since the 15-ticket book included 5 “E” tickets, which would cost $3.25 for a child if they were each bought individually.

Now, here’s what I loved the most about the ticket book system. Those tickets did not have to be used on the date of purchase. They never expired. In other words, if you did not use up all 15 tickets in one day (and face it, who could?), you could save your leftover tickets and use them the next time you came to the park. That was pure genius marketing to encourage us to come back another day.

I saved my unused tickets like paper money. I stored them in a little metal kid’s safe in my bedroom, you know, the kind that has a revolving dial in the door that you twirl to enter the combination to open it up. That safe was the keeper of my personal archives, where I stored precious belongings. In its time my little safe was the repository of an old two-dollar bill, a used super bowl ticket from the early years, rocks, keys, foreign coins, a Civil War bullet, and of course, my unused Disneyland tickets.

Usually I had a few unused “A” and “B” tickets at the end of the day, but I might have the occasional “D” or “E” ticket left over as well. Over time I amassed a stack of so many tickets that I could return to Disneyland with only a general admission and my handful of leftover tickets for a full day of fun. On those days I would use up all those “A” tickets riding up and down Main Street on the trolley like a drunken sailor. Mustn’t let those little “A” coupons go to waste.

OK – so much for the history lesson. The point is, for about 25 years when I bought a ticket book at Disneyland, I bought a set amount of rides. Period. And Disney honored the deal for as long as it took me to ride those rides. No deadlines.

Now, I admit, the ticket book system had its flaws and limitations. For example, in the 1970s there were 42 rides in the park and only 15 tickets in a book. On top of that, there were eleven “E” ticket rides in the park, but I only got five “E” tickets in a 15-ticket book. I had to make some tough choices. My brain sounded like a NASA control room: “OK, we have “go” for Haunted Mansion, “go” for Pirates, “no go” for submarines . . .” And if I chose to ride the Jungle Cruise twice, well, that cut just my other rides down even more. Tiki Room never made the cut, and I could live without the Monorail, the Mine Train, and the Pack Mules. It was extra frustrating when I would meet up with a buddy and want to share a ride only to discover he was out of that particular ticket. Oh, my kingdom for a ticket.

In the 1960s Disneyland was the big dog of amusement parks in Southern California. I could go to Knott’s Berry Farm instead, but why? However, by the 1970s real competition emerged about 50 miles north of Anaheim, in Valencia. A new and exciting amusement park called Magic Mountain opened in 1971 and set its sights on taking down the Big Dog. To muscle in on Disneyland’s action, Magic Mountain made three strategic moves. First, it established itself as a family-friendly place by inhabiting the park with Warner Brothers cartoon characters, like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Yosemite Sam, Elmer Fudd, Foghorn Leghorn, and so on. Second, it courted the teenage set by creating bona fide thrill rides like giant roller coasters. Third, it created an admission package that permitted guests to ride all the rides they wanted all day long for one set price. Borrowing the concept of buffet restaurants, Magic Mountain established an “all you can eat” price that revolutionized amusement parks.
The strategy was a winner. No longer did you have to make those tough choices over rides like we did at Disneyland. And if you were looking for thrill rides, forget the Matterhorn – you could ride the Colossus roller coaster at Magic Mountain all day long as many times as you could stand it.

Disneyland was just sick about this new ticketless innovation. Suddenly all the things that chafed us about Disneyland’s ticket book system seemed a thing of the past with the “all you can eat” admission system at Magic Mountain. I went to Magic Mountain to try it out, and I liked it. I didn’t have to worry about running out of tickets before the day was over, or worse, losing my ticket book entirely. And since the park was so new, the lines for the rides were practically empty. I could literally get off a ride and jump back in line in time to take the next car out. Say goodbye to the hour-long wait in the Matterhorn line, I thought.

Disneyland had to fight back. It didn’t want to give up on the ticket book system, but it had to keep pace with the growing popularity of Magic Mountain. And so the short-lived and ill-fated Magic Key Coupon program was introduced to the general public in the late 1970s. One day as I was at the Disneyland ticket booth to buy my tickets for the day, I was told that I could now buy a new kind of ticket book called Magic Key. I had heard of this special kind of coupon book, sold only to Magic Kingdom Club members who paid an annual fee for park discounts and other benefits. This special coupon book contained tickets with a large decorative key printed on the ticket, making the coupon good for admission to any ride of your choosing, kind of like getting the key to the park.

The once elite Magic Key program was now being offered to the general public. While you could still use your old unused A-E tickets, you could now buy this new kind of ticket. The book eliminated all worry over running out of the kind of tickets you wanted, since each Magic Key coupon was good for any ride. I am sure this was designed to approximate the “all you can eat” system at Magic Mountain, but unintended consequences soon occurred.

The Magic Key books came with 10 coupons per book for $4.00 for adults ($3.50 for kids 12-17). It didn’t take long for me to realize that I had just been sold the equivalent of 10 “E” tickets. Sure, I could use these tickets for any other ride, but why would I waste them on anything but a premium attraction? It would be silly to use the coupon for the Main Street Trolley when it could be used for the Haunted Mansion or Space Mountain.

You can imagine what happened under the Magic Key system. The old A-D ticket rides saw a sharp drop in ridership while the “E” ticket lines became even more oppressive. I wanted to go on some C and D rides, but just could not justify the waste. I was not alone. Many park guests were reacting the same way.

Finally in 1982 Disneyland gave up entirely on any ticket system at all, including the Magic Key coupons, and officially retired the ticket book system in favor of the one-price “all you can eat” format, just like Magic Mountain.

Was that good news or bad news? Well, the ticketless system definitely has its pluses and minuses. The pluses I’ve already mentioned. On the downside, consider this – under the ticket book system you were paying for a specific number of rides at Disneyland, but under the ticketless system you are buying “time”. Disneyland now sells you 12 hours of park use (when the park hours are 9:00 am to 9:00 pm), or 16 hours on Saturdays when the park is open from 8:00-midnight. Once you walk through the gates, the clock is ticking, so you better go for it. If you only manage to ride on three attractions the whole day, tough luck. You cannot come back to the park at a future date to make up the difference at no additional cost, like you could with the ticket book system. It made me not want to stop for lunch. I felt that every minute not in line or on a ride was a minute wasted. I even started running from one ride to the next. I was making myself crazy.

So, who wins under the “all you can eat” system? You are definitely getting the better deal the more rides you can squeeze into the day. If you can hit 15 rides in one day (which is only one-third of the total rides in the park), I salute you – you’re a better man than me. If the park is unusually crowded, the long lines will quickly reduce your ride time, and you are not going to get your money’s worth. My brother-in-law told me he and his granddaughter recently waited in the “Finding Nemo” submarine ride line for a full three hours. What a time-burner. There has to be a better way to die.

When the park hours are shortened from 8:00-midnight on Saturdays down to 9:00-9:00 on weekdays, you are not given a discount to offset the smaller amount of “time” you are being sold. If I am buying “time”, why should I pay the same price for a 12-hour day as for a 16-hour day? I’m getting jipped out of four hours.

There is the FastPass system now, but they only let you sign up for one FastPass at a time. Even so, I am amazed that some of the popular rides still have lines over an hour and a half long when the FastPass line is virtually empty. It’s like refusing to use the diamond lane on the freeway during the rush hour when you’re entitled. Do they just like crawling through pitiless lines, or are they so intimidated by the complexity of inserting their ticket into the FastPass machine that they would rather squander their day waiting and waiting and waiting? Let’s see – would I rather wait for an hour and a half or ten minutes to ride Splash Mountain? Give me a minute. I need to think about it.

Right now only the high demand rides utilize the FastPass system. After all, the Sleeping Beauty Castle self tour is not exactly straining from the press of people. I have used the FastPass system, and I like it. It’s a great antidote to the brain damage of long lines. You have heard of “road rage” – I believe there is an equivalent “line rage” that can make you crazy. I do not exaggerate when I say that in “the old days” the Matterhorn line literally wrapped around the mountain, with waits up to two hours for a two-minute ride. At that rate I used to think I would only get to five rides before the park closed.

I do feel a bit of melancholy at the passing of the ticket book system. I liked the option of just paying a general admission price to walk through the gates. That is what I did when I took my girlfriend (and future wife) on a dinner date to the Blue Bayou Restaurant years ago. We didn’t want a whole ticket book – we just came for a romantic dinner. You can’t do that now. I also miss all the little rituals that surrounded the use and care of these coupons. They were like money, and we learned to protect them for future use. They had trading value, taught lessons of choice and frugality, and the unused coupons made cute little souvenirs to remember our day at the park.

For you nostalgia and memorabilia buffs, you can still buy vintage Disneyland ticket books on e-Bay. For Disneyland devotees, they are great collectibles from a bygone era. Right now a complete unused 1960 ticket book in mint condition sells for $200 - a far cry from its 1960 asking price of $5.00. I am actually amazed that these unused books still exist. Do you mean that somebody bought a whole book and never used it, but instead vacuum sealed it for posterity? Who is this person? I want an explanation. And who knew that a modest paper ticket book would one day be a serious collector’s item worth 40 times its original price? It makes me wonder what other pop culture artifacts I should start collecting today for its investment potential 40 years from now.