Military ticket activation

[jthornton94]

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.

 

[BridgetBordeaux]

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.

I understand your confusion.

Covid changed a lot of procedures.

You should be able to call or chat with Disney and they can give you the present status of the ticket you are holding in your hand.

Good luck and please report back!

 

[dmband]

Can you add them to your MDE account?
If so, I wouldn’t worry about it enough to wait on hold for very long

 

[jthornton94]

Can you add them to your MDE account?
If so, I wouldn’t worry about it enough to wait on hold for very long

I can add them, which isn’t the issue. The issue is knowing whether I have to plan for to activate them or if we can go straight to the turnstiles. i have time to find out, just curious if anyone else has used military tickets recently and been told they were activated.

 

[subtchr]

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!

 

[BridgetBordeaux]

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.

I am going to express a different viewpoint.

If you are able to talk to a CM that can actually pull up your ticket status, you can trust what they tell you.

This is not really a "military ticket" question, but a question of whether a ticket with a known "serial number" from the back side of the plastic card is active and ready to be used at a turnstile.

Call, be patient..........and make sure you are talking to someone who can pull up your particular ticket on the WDW system.

 

[jthornton94]

So, just chatted with Disney. i know they aren’t the most versed with military but here goes. They said tickets that need to be activated show as “certificate” in MDE. If they don’t show as “certificate”, that means they are active and ready to go. Attached it the wording of the receipt we received, which is different than what we received before. maybe this is something new?

 

[BridgetBordeaux]

So, just chatted with Disney. i know they aren’t the most versed with military but here goes. They said tickets that need to be activated show as “certificate” in MDE. If they don’t show as “certificate”, that means they are active and ready to go. Attached it the wording of the receipt we received, which is different than what we received before. maybe this is something new?

So.............when you entered your tix on MDE, does it now have the word Certificate?

 

[Piglet99645]

So, just chatted with Disney. i know they aren’t the most versed with military but here goes. They said tickets that need to be activated show as “certificate” in MDE. If they don’t show as “certificate”, that means they are active and ready to go. Attached it the wording of the receipt we received, which is different than what we received before. maybe this is something new?

Can you make a park reservation with a certificate? (Sorry if this is asked and answered)

 

[jthornton94]

Sorry, posted too soon.
Meant to add they checked my account and said ours are NOT listed as certificate so they are good to go. I wish we had time to check before hand but we will get in about 10pm and plan to hit rope drop the next morning.

Also, our ITT folks are the ones who said they were active and good to go, which I didn’t believe. Hence me trying to confirm.

Really hoping someone using military tickets going soon can confirm or deny. Or even if anyone can Confirm it says certificate anywhere if they are using military tickets.

 

[subtchr]

Can you make a park reservation with a certificate? (Sorry if this is asked and answered)

Yep.

Sorry, posted too soon.
Meant to add they checked my account and said ours are NOT listed as certificate so they are good to go. I wish we had time to check before hand but we will get in about 10pm and plan to hit rope drop the next morning.

Also, our ITT folks are the ones who said they were active and good to go, which I didn’t believe. Hence me trying to confirm.

Really hoping someone using military tickets going soon can confirm or deny. Or even if anyone can Confirm it says certificate anywhere if they are using military tickets.

I keep watching for those reports, too. Please come back and let us know how it goes!

 

[subtchr]

Adding for the “for what it’s worth” file…

I do not have any current WDW salute tickets in my account to check, but I do have Disneyland salute tix linked for a trip in a few weeks. Those DO need to be activated, and they are showing in the app as 3-Day Park Hopper Tickets, not certificates. May not be relevant at all, of course.

 

[interstate70s]

I had some similar confusion with our Salute tickets purchased from the base itt. They are also hard plastic. There was nothing to indicate that they had to be activated like in the past, and nothing showing that they needed to be activated in the app. However another poster in another thread noted that on the back of theirs, it indeed said they needed to be exchanged at guest services. I checked the back and in the second paragraph it did say that were vouchers and had to be exchanged, so you might want to check the back of the cards.

 

[jthornton94]

So I posted in our local military spouse page and those who received the hard plastic cards from our local office said they did NOT need to activate them.

 

[BridgetBordeaux]

Glad a "local" was able to help.

 

[jthornton94]

Glad a "local" was able to help.

I’m sure at this point it may vary by what each base is handing out.

 

[subtchr]

So I posted in our local military spouse page and those who received the hard plastic cards from our local office said they did NOT need to activate them.

To add more confusion…this thread prompted me to ask for experiences on one of my military Disney Facebook pages about these tickets.

So far about a dozen people have responded, and all of them needed to activate and exchange for the usual green tickets (or continue to use MagicBands, but the white tickets could not be used at the gate). Several had thought they’d be able to enter without doing anything, because their ITT told them that was the case. But they had to take time to go to a ticket window or guest services to activate them.

The mystery deepens…

 

[dmband]

I can add them, which isn’t the issue. The issue is knowing whether I have to plan for to activate them or if we can go straight to the turnstiles. i have time to find out, just curious if anyone else has used military tickets recently and been told they were activated.

I understand but what I am saying is if you need to call, don’t wait on hold for 2 hrs or something crazy.

non of ours from bases came activated but we never got them post covid either

 

[subtchr]

One insightful post to the thread I started on a military Disney facebook page:

We were not able to enter through the turnstiles. In a previous discussion we think it’s because Disney uses the term activate when they load a valid ticket on to a blank. ITTs are loading Salutes onto the plastic card and activating the card. Salutes just need that extra step to verify (activate) with the military ID. Shades has the ability to do that whereas bases don’t. It’s an unfortunate use of the same word.

FWIW, not one person on that thread (to which there are dozens of responses) has been able to enter the park with one of these tickets, without stopping to activate/verify by showing eligible military ID at a ticket window or guest services.

 

[interstate70s]

After relooking at the paperwork and tickets. They literally say conflicting things.

The confirmation from Disney says,

"Thank you. Your tickets are activated. Simply show your tickets at a Walt Disney World park turnstile and enjoy your visit!"

The back of the plastic card says,

"... This exchange certificate is not a ticket and is not valid for admission after purchase. Please redeem this exchange certificate at any Walt Disney World ticket window or Disney Springs guest relations."

I'm going to go to guest services. Its not worth gambling. But we are not going to the parks on our arrival day. I don't trust what any CM says on the phone in this scenario.