Disneyland's Most Wanted

"Chris Ruiz", a counterfeit-ticket
seller who is currently under
police investigation as of 4/25/13

In the past year or so, Disneyland has been cracking down hard on counterfeit tickets and fraudulent parkhopper use. Non-annual pass holders who visited the park in late 2012 may remember having to wait an extra 20 minutes to enter the park, due to extended security checks. This is the result of a surge in ticket fraud, most commonly the abuse of a parkhopper ticket, wherein two separate parties would purchase scalped 2-day parkhopper tickets for a discounted price, allowing multiple parties to visit the park on the same ticket. Clever as it may seem, this scandal has resulted in heightened security and more extensive background checks at the gate, eliminating ticket-sharing as an efficient way to gain access to the park.

But some Disneyland con-artists are just flat-out lazy, and sell counterfeit tickets -- a sure way to empty your wallet and still not get in to the park. If someone is selling Disney tickets on the street for half their original value, it's probably too good to be true. Anyone can take an expired ticket and photocopy it as many times as they like, effectively stealing money from countless families.

I say this as a warning. Unfortunately, the only ticket-sellers you can trust are the ones in the ticket booths. Perhaps this uprise in ticket fraud may act as a catalyst that gets Disneyland to make park admission more affordable to lower-income families, or allow more frequent visits, in order to take crime off the streets. More likely than not though, we'll see ticket prices continue to rise over the coming years.