So, it looks like two dozen people have been arrested over the past few weeks for reselling park tickets:
From the Orlando Sentinel on 7/6/2011 and from WFTV on 7/22/2011
Here’s a passage from my book about how the scam works:
“A departing vacationer is offered a decent amount of cash ($20-$50) to sell any ticket with unused days on it to one of these illegal reseller operations. Maybe the tourist accidentally bought too many days and can’t use them all, or maybe their vacation got cut short; the reasoning behind the confused mind of a tourist is unimportant to the scammers. So now the reseller has a ticket with (for example) two days left on it, and those two days expire in 10 days (Magic Your Way passes are good for 14 days after first being run through a turnstile). The scam reseller can turn around and sell this as a two-day ticket to unsuspecting tourists looking for a big discount over gate prices. Furthermore, they actively encourage people to add days to the used Magic Your Way ticket (which can be done at greatly reduced rates, as low as $5/day) so that they can come back to the booth at the end of their vacation and sell back any unused days for an even bigger overall discount. Brilliant!”
However, like all scams, there are obvious downsides (again, from the book):
“1. It’s illegal. It specifically says on the tickets that they can’t be resold. In fact, it’s a felony. However, it’s not necessarily illegal to buy used tickets, just to resell them, so from the tourist’s point of view, it’s a legal gray area.
2. There’s a signature on the back of the ticket. No biggie, the resellers usually get these off prior to selling them by applying a special acid to the signature strip, although observant CMs can spot this a mile away.
3. All of the parks in WDW use biometric finger scanning. This measures the length of your fingers from knuckle to knuckle. If your finger isn’t the same size as the one already recorded on the ticket, chances are you’re not getting through the gate.
4. This is the real kicker: There’s no way of verifying how many days are on the ticket until you’re actually on Disney property. So you might get there and find that there aren’t any days left on the ticket, and you got totally scammed.”
All that said, there is a way you can work these scams to your advantage without getting arrested, literally saving yourself hundreds of dollars off the total cost of park tickets…. But you’ll have to read the book to find out how!