E-ticket
The 5 bisects Anaheim, skirting right by Disneyland as you drive north towards LA. If you look back as you pass it, you can catch a glimpse of Disney’s Matterhorn mountain, home of the Bobsleds water ride. Seeing it was a thrill that never waned, eclipsed only by the times we actually visited Disneyland.
Disneyland is where I had my first bag of corn chips—Fritos omg.
Back in the day, there was no park hopper, no fast pass, no genie—you paid $6 to pass through the turnstile where they handed you a book of paper tickets. About the size of a candy bar, it was bound on the side and each page was one ticket. Every ride, you fished it out of your sweaty pocket to see if you had the right kind of ticket left. The tickets were perforated, so once you got through the hours long line, you oh-so-carefully tore off the right one and handed it over.
The rides were categorized A-E, each with a matching ticket and a color. An A ticket was pink and good for a warmup ride like the tram down Main Street. The Mad Tea Party aka Teacups (with the allure of post-lunch barfing) was a good deal as a B ticket. Jungle Cruise was a C, Swiss Family Treehouse a D.
The ticket book had 11 pages: 1 A, 1 B, 2 C, 3 D and 4 … E-tickets.
You came for the E-tickets: Pirates of the Caribbean, The Haunted Mansion, the Matterhorn Bobsleds (with jump-scare Harold the Abominable Snowman).
E-tickets were orange. They were your face cards and you played your hand carefully—you only had 4.
Now, every time we’re out and about and find a magical place:
E-Ticket!
Last week we lucked out in the Redwoods, scoring two sites that backed up to rivers, full with snow melt, burbling happily just feet behind us.
The first site was just off the coast, nestled under big trees, where Marbled Murrelets (chonky birds descended from penguins) squawked at us every morning, chirping like a family of angry R2-D2s1 from nests 100 feet above us in the forest canopy.
The second site was further inland, where the river got wide and deep enough to swim, and there, we got strafed by the same Murrelets, coming back from the ocean with gullets full of fish. They flew just feet above the water, like an X-wing fighter looking for the exhaust port.
We brought Fritos.
E-Ticket!
Every year before summer, Disney hosts Grad Nite, where graduating seniors across California get the run of the park after it closes.
That was the first time I stayed up all night. By the time the buses dropped us back at school it was nearly 5AM, so we walked down the street to IHOP and got pancakes.
Grad Nite required formal attire. I guess the logic was so we’d behave; no fighting with ties on.
You might think Disney makes most of their money from the blockbusters and sequels they spit out across franchises that now include Star Wars, Marvel and Pixar. Nope, 60% of Disney’s bottom line comes from parks and related experiences.
‘Related experiences’ are merch and cruises. When Disney was my customer, designing systems that would work on massive cruise ships in the middle of the ocean with spotty networks was always a trick. Cruising is serious business—Disney nets triple per person on a cruise versus someone munching Fritos on Main Street. Disney is building more ships—the seventh, Disney Destiny, sails in the fall.
More parks are coming too. I mentioned the Disneyland in Hong Kong before, and there’s another, Shanghai Disneyland, in mainland China. Shanghai is Disney’s largest park outside the US, at over 300 acres it’s triple the size of my grad nite shenanigans. Disney just announced its seventh global park—in Abu Dhabi, UAE.2 The Middle East is booming—Disney & AI. UAE is silly hot, so this park will be completely indoors.3
I’m sure lots of folks will get their E-tickets punched, dining with superhero’s on the Destiny, or in acres of air conditioning in Abu Dhabi, but you gotta choose.
After all, you only get so many E-tickets.
They really sound like that. Odd birds.
Disneyland in LA turned 70 this year; they have a whole thing with 7’s going on.
How does that even work?
Nice!
Awesome article!