First of all, I want to thank Disney yet again for being so gracious to us military folk for the very reasonably priced tickets we are able to purchase. 6 days at Disneyland for $250 is a steal!

That said, how exhausting the entire ticket process turned out to be!

First day, no problems whatsoever. Purchasing was a breeze, and the CM at the ticket booth assured me using them back to back (one three day ticket, then the other three day ticket in a 6 day period) would be no problem. What he did NOT tell me was I needed to have my military ID with me every day. This is a different policy than WDW. When they asked for my military ID at the gate on the first day, I just assumed that was the initial check they do to confirm I was the one who purchased the ticket. I was planning on bringing my ID with me again on day 4 when I started using my second ticket.

After spending the morning in DCA the first day, we decide to park hop on over to Disneyland. So, I get my hand stamped when leaving DCA, then when we get to the Disneyland gates (2 minutes later ), a CM takes my picture with their iPhone and attaches that to my ticket as well. This is because it's a multi-day ticket.

So next morning, we go to the Disneyland gates, they scan my ticket with their iPhone thingy before the turnstile, see my picture and know it's my ticket. But I am then denied entry at the turnstiles because I don't have my military ID. Yep, you have to show it at your first park entry of the day, every day of use. 15 minutes later they finally let me in, which was kind of them because I definitely got upset. I don't just carry around my military ID. It's a big deal if you lose it, and I wouldn't want to be far from home and not have it. The CM manager told me that everything was outlined on the information I was given at the base when I bought my ticket, but she didn't have a lot to say when I told her I bought the ticket about 100 feet away at the Disneyland ticket booth and wasn't told a thing.

So after learning the process, showing my ID every day, having the CM check my ticket and compare my photo on every park entrance and getting a handstamp and showing it upon every re-entry, I kinda felt like I was going through TSA just to enjoy Disneyland. Sure hope they are catching those who are abusing their ticket system.