I've always wondered about this at WDW too but they do seem to like you to have a hand stamp though I've never worked out why. Oh well, it only takes a second but it would be interesting if anybody knows the reason for it.
I think the reasoning behind it is so that you can't share tickets. For example, I could buy a ticket in the morning, leave the parks in the afternoon, and sell my ticket to someone else on the way out, but with the hand stamps it stops people from doing this.
What happens if you leave the park multiple times? Do you get stamped multiple times? Also, what happens if you leave Disneyland Park and then leave WDS? Do you get a different stamp on each hand? I'm worried mine will wash off even though it's not supposed to!
We wandered in and out between the parks all through the stay and only had our hands stamped once, that was only because we could not avoid the enthusiastic stamper
You just stick your ticket in the machine at the gate with no problems, it accepted it every time.
There is also a separate gate for readmission with hand stamps, so just go to the normal entrance gate
In all the times we've been we've never had our hands checked for a stamp on re-entry even though our hands have been stamped every time. We've just put out passports through the machine and gone through as normal - strange!
I don't know if they will start, or have started, the finger scan thing at DLP? But I was talking to a CM as I left the MK at WDW and she said that the hand stamp wasn't really necessary anymore and it would probably be phased out. We'll see if she was right!
I've never understood the need for hand stamps either, but using them to stop ticket sharing sounds like the most probable reason. I'm sure I have been checked for them in the past.
One handstamp is sufficient. THe stamps last a while, through several washings and even swimming pools. When you're on a ride with black lights (Peter Pan's an example), you can see your stamps glowing. Through this, I've been able to see stamps from several days back. We've never had our stamps checked at the park gates either, though.
There used to be blacklights at every turnstile in WDW...when you grabbed your pass back from the machine, you could see the handstamp briefly. I don't think they've used it in a long time, and maybe they didn't even check back then, but I know that I saw my stamps after re-entry. I've always wondering about the fingerprinting too...sometimes the fake is better than the real technology.
They don't actually take fingerprints, but the dimensions of your fingers, width, etc. As far as I know they do work. It didn't for me when they were trialing them years ago, they still let me in, worked every other time though.
This is how the biometric fingerscanning at WDW works....
"This admission system has nothing to do with your fingerprints. It scans your index and middle fingers and uses a geometric formula to come up with a number that will identify your fingers. The calculated number is apparently something that is not totally unique, but is statistically significant in identifying you."
And yes, it does work. Our younger DD's did not have to use it with their passes but eldest DD did and we deliberately used each others ticket to see if it did work. It did, it wouldn't let either of us in until we had swopped back!
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