Disneyland tickets are expensive, and they’re not getting any cheaper. As somebody who just bought tickets to the park, I know just how expensive a trip to the Happiest Place on Earth can be. So if somebody handed me a ticket for free, I would certainly try and use it, even if the ticket was almost as old as I am.
Such was the case of the free Disneyland Passport won by Scott King 39 years ago. The So Cal resident told KTLA that he won the ticket simply by walking through the turnstiles during Disneyland’s 30th anniversary. The park gave away lots of prizes to random guests during that celebration, including a car. King’s prize was significantly less valuable, as tickets to Disneyland were only $16.50 in 1985.
Rather than use the ticket, King put it in a scrapbook as a memento, but decades later, his daughter Sabrina graduated from high school as her class valedictorian, so King gave her the ticket to see if she could use it. If it worked, it was a free day at Disneyland. While Sabrina said trying to use a ticket that old was “a crazy idea to me,” she gave it a shot, and it worked.
Sabrina King isn’t the only person to attempt to use a decades-old Disney Parks ticket, even just within this year. Anybody who might have a really old Disneyland or Walt Disney World ticket should keep an eye out, because we’ve all learned that the parks will absolutely accept them.
A free ticket to Disneyland is a pretty amazing graduation gift. If nothing else, it frees up your funds to spend money on other things. Not having to spend $100 to get in means more cash for the best food at Disneyland, or having the money to spend on Lightning Lanes so you don't have to wait in as many lines.
Modern Disneyland tickets have expiration dates. If you don’t use them within a certain amount of time, they will not be accepted. However, Disney World tickets didn’t have expiration dates, and the prize won by King at Disneyland also didn’t have one. If the ticket doesn’t specifically state when it becomes invalid, then it remains valid forever, and Disneyland and Disney World will both accept them.
Disneyland won’t give too much away, however. While not specified in the story, it’s more than likely that the ticket only gave the girl a day at Disneyland Park. Disney California Adventure didn’t exist in 1985, so a park hopper probably would have cost the same amount it does today.
Of course, in using this old ticket, Scott King did lose a keepsake. I’d be curious what a piece of memorabilia like that would be worth. There are a lot of people who would probably pay good money for a special Disneyland anniversary prize. Maybe they could have sold it and had enough to buy a new ticket and then some.
