The Disney Parks Blog just announced a new service that will allow you to purchase one-day tickets (one-park or park hopper) directly from your smart phone.
This is just the latest in a series of initiatives introduced in the past three years to help ease the huge lines at Disneyland Resort ticket booths. Previous tests have included selling certain tickets right at the turnstiles, adding ticket kiosks to the Toy Story parking lot, and placing additional ticket kiosks in the main esplanade to increase capacity. Disneyland also offers a same-day, print-at-home option for those purchasing tickets online.Disneyland Resort guests have a new way to purchase theme park tickets from their smart phones! Starting today, the Disneyland Resort will begin testing this technology at the Main Entrance during busy times, all in an effort to help guests get their tickets and get into the parks faster to start enjoying their day. This is just one more option for guests, in addition to purchasing tickets at Resort ticket booths or from Disneyland.com.
From your smart phone, go to m.disneyland.com and select Buy Tickets from the home page. Right now, only 1-Day 1-Park, and 1-Day Park Hopper tickets are available, but 2-Day tickets will be added to the service later. After entering the number of tickets you want (up to a maximum of 15), and your credit card information, you will receive a confirmation with a barcode that will be scanned as you enter the park for which youve purchased your ticket. From there, you will be given a paper park ticket, which is still needed for park hopping or re-entry if you should leave the park and return later.
It will be interesting to see how Disney communicates this offer to people standing in line at the ticket booths - those are the folks who clearly don't follow Disneyland-related social media closely enough to know that they had a half-dozen options to buy their tickets before they parked.
It's also interesting to me to see how the two domestic Disney resorts are developing technology to address the most pressing issue at their parks. Walt Disney World launched a mobile platform for dining reservations two years ago, but Disneyland's most recent development on that front was to allow you to make a reservation by email. On the flip side, Walt Disney World hasn't yet developed a mobile ticket option. Yet in an informal poll of our Twitter followers, everyone who responded said they'd rather be able to make a dinner reservation on their phone than buy a park ticket.
Maybe this is a situation where we need a little more One Disney...
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