The "A" Ticket - Part 3 the 1970's (and 80's)

We start the 70's with an "A" ticket from May 1971 (also the Month and Year Magic Mountain opened in nearby Valencia, Ca.) Looking very much Like the May 1968 ticket from yesterday's post, but Sleeping Beauty's Castle is back from the "B" ticket! Notice now she gets the proper "s" after "Beauty", it always sounded odd without the "s".

February 1974 introduces the smaller size that will remain until the bitter end (1981). I guess there also was some confusion about the vehicles that would be available so for a few years, they were simply listed as "Main Street Vehicles", my favorite Omnibus wasn't deemed worthy of its own ink! Was Eisner around in 1974? OMG, Sleeping Beauty's Castle is gone AGAIN!!!

Last of line, this May 1980 "A" ticket is the latest I can find, they may have printed them after that, but I have yet to find any. 10 Cents is no longer stated, as was the case on all lettered tickets by the late 70's. Main Street got its individual vehicles back, and Sleep Beauty's Castle is once again back on the "A" ticket!

LAWYER ALERT: Notice the asterisk on certain attractions, from the back of the ticket book (shown below). "Children under seven must be accompanied by an adult on most attractions except those marked by an asterisk (*)". So I guess you could let those under 7 roam freely and unattended in the theaters, the castle, Mission to Mars? American Sings? Submarine Voyage?Does this make sense to anyone?????

By late 1981, the end of the ticket books was near. Most tickets printed during late 1981 and early 1982 are the general A thru E one ticket fits all type (a September 1981 book is shown below). To me these are kind of boring and since there seems to be a flood of them still unused, I think there we just for the holdouts as the "passport" had become the ticket of choice, allowing you admission and access to all rides, over and over....

I hope you enjoyed this "A" ticket series, I sure did.

This weekend; Saturday we will have the First Ever TikiRoom tickets as promised, then for Sunday, I'll post some really odd stuff.... Next Week, The "B" Ticket!

The "A" Ticket - Part 2 the 1960's

We start the 60's "A" ticket post with a June 1963 ticket with the same size and style as the late 50's "A" ticket. The Omnibus is now only listed on Main Street. Also on Main Street, the Main Street Cinema is gone, now appearing on the "B" ticket. (How does' that attraction get upgraded to "B" status, come to think of it, I wonder how they determined the letter status of all the attractions? Separate post!)...

Also note Tomorrowland lost the Satellite-View of America, I think the Art of Animation moved into that area by then and was a "B" ticket in 63'. And Sleeping Beauty's Castle makes its debut on the "A" ticket having been demoted from the "B" sometime after 1961.

Notice the "Special Ticket Book Price 8 cents". Some time around 62/63 Disneyland started placing this on the tickets sold in booklets. I guess it was to show you what a value you were getting, seems like a lot of math to me! Anyway this practice stopped by 66'

Here we have a nice "A" ticket from May 1966. Right away you should notice this is not on the famous and standard "globe" paper. I like to refer to this as "Castle Paper" and the subject is a post all on its own (soon I promise - I have some cool ones!) From what I can tell, this paper was used on tickets from October 66 thru May 67', at least those are the samples I have. I don't know why Globe was not used during this period, does anyone????

The "Special Price" is gone. A new size appears in 66, it's 5 1/2" x 2 5/8th's, a size it will keep thru 1973. Attractions remain the same as 1963.

Now we are back to the Globe paper on this May 1968 "A" ticket. Looks like with the "New Tomorrowland" in 1967 there were no more "A" rides! 20,000 Leagues Exhibit being replace by "Adventure thru Inner Space" which was not in ticket books at first, but by 74 was a "C" ticket (another future post subject!) And poor Sleeping Beauty Castle, she is gone again from the "A" back to "B"!

That's it for the "A" Ticket 60's. Tomorrow, the final part (3) of the "A" series, the 1970's (and we will throw in the early 80's as well).

Then next we'll take a little detour before the "B" Ticket series and visit the first Tiki Room tickets, you wont find these in any ticket book!

The "A" Ticket - Part 1 the 1950's - UPDATE

Well, no sooner do I start my blog and we get updated information, how cool!

These December 1955 tickets were sold on EBay yesterday (sadly, not to me), they appear to predate my post of yesterday. It looks like the very first ticket books we not denoted as "ABC" after all. They look like the early ABC tickets, but they have no letters on them. The red "A" is just part of the serial number. Notice there is also one "A" ride ticket book similar to my post of yesterday.

I spoke to the high bidder of these tickets and he agrees, these "non-lettered" tickets must be the first from the ticket books. Probably in use from mid-October to mid-December 55, at which point the "lettered" ticket were introduced. The booklets themselves appear to be slightly longer too, here is the backs of all, plus the "A" book:

The person who won these said he is going to re-sell some of the lose "non-lettered" tickets on e-bay soon, maybe I'll snag one and post a nice closeup scan.

P.s. In case you are wondering, I did bid on these, but, well, lets just say it went out "over my head"...

The "A" Ticket - Part 1 the 1950's

Lets start off today with a look at the under-rated "A" Ticket. It's not to often someone says "Wow, that was an A ticket ride". However, some of my favorite rides are on the "A" ticket.

Here is the very first "A" ticket. Notice it is for an "A" Ride, the term Ride only lasted a few months. As I hear it, Walt thought the word "ride" was too closely associated with Carnivals and those dirty little corner playgrounds. Side note: I assume this ticket is authentic, however, it is NOT on Globe paper so I can not be 100% sure, but here is my theory. The serial number on this ticket is A08665, that means it the 8,665th booklet sold. With an average daily attendance higher than 8,665 (even in late 55') that would make this one of the first books sold, maybe the first day ticket books were sold (some day in October 1955) Possibly Globe wasn't the paper of choice at the beginning? Anyone know anything on this please share.

As you can see on this next "A" ticket (from Early 1956) they changed the word from Ride to "Coupon" sounds more classy doesn't it? Don't you just love these fonts? These specialized fonts for each land will only appear on these early tickets, by late 56' they are gone. These first generation little tickets were smallest of the "A" tickets and measured 3 1/2" x 2".

The back of this ticket read: "Good any time during 1956" Disneyland dropped the expiration dates on the lettered tickets sometime in 1957 I think. From 1958 on, the backs read: "Good at any time"

Here we have the "new" sized "A" ticket from Late 1956. This is 4" x 2 1/2" and notice now we have a few more attractions listed; "Street Car" changed to "Main St. Horse cars" and "DMC Horseless Carriage" back still reads "good at any time during 1956". Also, "or any other A attraction" now appears, already planing for future expansion.

Last up we have a 1958 "A" ticket. Same size as the late 1956 ticket, but a little cleaner style (no more brackets for the attractions in each land) and it's starting to get the familiar blue shade that will stay with the "A" tickets all the way to the end.... Also note the addition of the Omnibus both in Main street and Fanstasyland. Boy would I love to take the Omnibus all the way up to Fantasyland! Here is a great 1958 Omnibus photo from Davelandweb. The back now reads "good at any time".

Also, notice by 1958 the wording "void if detached" no longer appears on the tickets. That must have been a hard rule to enforce, and what was the point I wonder?

That's it for today, next, the "A" Ticket - Part 2 the 1960's!

First Post on my new Blog

To all who come to this happy blog, Welcome.

I am an avid Disneyland fan; I collect all kinds of things that are “Disneyland”.

However, my passion is Disneyland tickets. I have been collecting Disneyland Tickets on E-bay since 2000 and have some from my own past trips to Disneyland. I have a fairly large collection, enough that I felt it was time to share. I want to try and document some of the history of the Disneyland tickets that brought so many millions fun and joy!

All tickets shown on this blog will be from my personal collection unless otherwise noted. On that note, I welcome any and all contributions from other Disneyland ticket fans. I know there are a few of you out there that have collections that put mine to shame, and I welcome your comments and contributions to this blog as well.

Soon I plan to start an actual website and attempt to fully document the history and evolution of Disneyland Tickets. So far I have only found scattered information on the web on this subject; it is my dream to create a full and comprehensive Disneyland Ticket website. However, I need to get my feet fully wet here on this blog first!

I hope to present my blog daily, but don’t hold me to it. Expect every other day or so. I have no idea how some of the great Disneyland bloggers out there do it, but I am ready for the challenge.

In each post I will try to keep on some kind of theme, but expect some “one off’s” or odd collections, it’s just the way my mind works.

So with out any further delay, here we go….

MAIN GATE ADMISSION TICKETS

“It's always best to start at the beginning” so lets open with some nice Main Gate Admission tickets. These are all from complete ticket books, rare indeed with the admission ticket still attached. I hear from several sources that these are still valid for admission to Disneyland since they have no expiration date. (1) I would never waste one to get in, each of these is worth more than the $66 it currently costs for admission. (2) I have also heard they just give you credit for the face value, not much in the case of these, just a few dollars, and (3) if anyone has used one of these old tickets to get in, please share your experience with the blog, I can only imagine what the caster member at the main gate would do when you hand them one of these babies!

Up first, from March of 1972, a nice low serial number "Admit One Child" & 15 Adventures for $4.95, plus Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln... Wow, you can't even get a Churro and Coke for $4.95! - These are the larger style tickets, replaced in early 1974 with the smaller size (exactly when, we'll get into in a latter post).

The back even has nice art work and two colors of ink:

Next is an "Admit One Adult" & 15 Adventures for $8.50 from September 1979 (The new Big Thunder Mountain Railroad had just opened on September 2nd, check out this great commercial for BTMRR: 1979 Commercial) These are the smaller size books.

The back is now a single ink color, but still a good value:

Here is a rare and low serial number Military Weekends ticket book, this is from September 1977. This ticket book included two entry tickets, but for weekends only:

Check out the deal on the back, a $21.80 value for just $6.50!

Lastly today, and sadly, one of the last Admission tickets from a ticket book, this is a Courtesy Book from September 1981. Ticket books and individual ride ticket sales stopped in 1982 in favor of the "passport" one price gets all ticket. Exactly when in 1982 the switch occurred I am not sure, this is something I intend to post and research about in the near future.

Back side: Courtesy Guest Tickets didn't always list the value, but I guess by 1981, they wanted you to know what you were getting for free!!!

Since the ticket books and A thru E tickets were phased out in 1982, the "New Fantasyland" was able to be reconfigured with no ticket booths, making a cleaner look IMHO... Check out this sweet commercial from 1983 for the "New Fantasyland" listen for the voice at the end, it's Paul Frees.... I love this stuff!

Alright, that's it for my first post. I hope you liked it. More to come.....