We have always bought our military tickets at out local ITT office and activated them once on site. We bought tickets this week for a. Upcoming trip and the receipt says “Your tickets are activated. Simply show your tickets at the turnstile”. I’m confused. I thought only Shades of Green could sell activated tickets. Is there a way to find out if they are active before arrival? It would be great if they were, I just doubt they are. The receipt provided is from Disney’s website.
The tickets are hard plastic, credit card size,, with the Mickey logo in red, white and blue.
This seems to be a point of confusion with ITT offices. I will explain MY understanding of it, which might not be the final answer, but it is what I have gleaned from forums, message boards, and talking to my ITT office.
The plastic cards you received are part of a new process that some, but not all, ITT offices invested in. They have those tickets in stock, as "blanks", and when they sell a salute ticket to a guest, they can scan the blank to load the ticket on it.
ITT offices that do not participate (like ours, Wright Patterson AFB), still order the cardstock blue or green exchange certificates.
In spite of that letter that says they are activated tickets, according to our ITT office and the experiences I have read from several people on social media, they still must be activated at the parks, and exchanged for the usual green plastic ticket.
So they work the same as the exchange certificates, in that they can be linked to MDE to be able to book park reservations, but they must be activated in person when you arrive. The only difference is that the travel office is able to sell it to you immediately, instead of having to order them and wait until they are shipped to the office.
I have yet to hear of anyone who was able to use these new tickets directly at the gate. I will be happy to recant everything I just wrote if someone is able to do that, but again, that is my understanding after lots of research and discussion with our ITT folks.
I don't think calling Disney would help anyway. The phone reps are so often clueless about military tickets, I would not be confident with a response.
As long as it's not too much inconvenience, a stop at any guest services or ticket window (the lines are usually shorter there than GS) at least can't hurt!
Hope that helps!