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!

From the Orlando Sentinel:

Disney World to Test Software to Limit Refillable Mugs

And analysis (i.e., ranting) from Disboards:

Disney Testing New Resort Mug Technology

Here’s a video of the machines in operation from Jeff Lange:

And finally, here is the company providing the technology:

ValidFill

If this is rolled out the scam described in the book would essentially be halted, which is fine since a) there are plenty of other ways to get free soda at WDW, and b) I’m sick of people on message boards foaming at the mouth every time someone says they re-use their refillable mugs every trip.

That said, I’m sure this will be hacked, too. There will either be a manual override for the dispensers, or there will be an easy way to reprogram the RFID chip. For example, here is the info stored on the RFID, according to Validfill:

Cup Type (Hot or Cold)
Cup Size (in Ounces)
Company
Location
Date Purchased
Location Purchased
Number of Times Used
Number of Refills Remaining (Date or Specific #)
Time of Last Use

Here’s my suggestion for a new scam: some enterprising person could download the RFID info from a new mug and modify it using a program such as RF-Dump. Then, brand new RFID tags could be programmed with 1,000,000 refills (or whatever – essentially a limitless amount) and sold on eBay for dirt cheap. Consumers could buy this new RFID tag and affix the new tag to the appropriate place on the cup of their choice. You could probably sell the tag for under $10, which would be a bargain since the mugs are $14 and only good for the length of your trip. In fact, Validfill themselves sells a “cup programming station” and programmable, disposable tags!

However, I’m not sure this will ever be rolled out across all of the WDW resorts/parks, simply because replacing all of the soda machines throughout the entire property would have to be quite expensive. Justifying that cost to management would be a pretty hard sell, and I just don’t believe that the promise of long-term profits is enough to make the bean-counters spit out the likely massive short-term expense. The percentage of people who abuse the system is relatively small, and they can’t be losing TOO much money to scammers.

Then again, Disney might be able to connive Coke into fronting or splitting the cost of the new machines as part of extending their exclusive contract as the sole on-property soda provider. In which case I can guarantee that we WILL see hacks/scams arise, and those hacks/scams WILL be posted here!

http://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/mc-disney-tattoo-arrest-20110708,0,5444210.story

Dude tried to hold his fiance hostage in one of the Resort Hotels (article doesn’t say which one). Walt would be proud… or not.