It amazes me that Disney does not have the capability to assist a guest with this kind of information prior to arrival at a park. People budget and plan their trips around this information and it would be very helpful and useful to have. I mean -you really should be able to have easy access to this information. We all can get a balance on a gift card by calling a number or entering the information on a website, why not a disney ticket?
In the past, the reason that info was intentionally made unavailable except at the parks was to prevent ticket fraud and ticket resale. The reasoning is, if you can't find out whether a ticket is valid or used or an outright forgery, only a moron would ever buy it. Unfortunately, as you can see by looking for WDW tickets and FastPasses on eBay, there are apparently plenty of morons out there willing to lay down hundreds of dollars, sight-unseen, so try to save a few bucks on tickets.
Additionally, the reason it can't be done at the
Disney Store - and probably never will - is that in order to check the entitlements on a WDW ticket, you must have a direct connection to the WDW ticketing computer system. This makes it difficult even for the WDW resorts to check ticket entitlements. Why? Info about the ticket is not stored on the ticket itself. The only thing stored on that magnetic strip is the ticket's serial number; all data about what kind of ticket it was at purchase, when and where it was used, and any upgrades made to it, are stored entirely on the WDW ticketing computer system, making it impossible to access without a connection to the system.
I was personally very surprised when WDW started giving out ticket entitlement info over the phone. If they have discontinued the practice, either as part of their ongoing efforts to prevent ticket resale and fraud or as a cost-saving measure, then I am not really surprised.
I guess we'll all just have to start keeping track of out own ticket entitlements on each trip again. Break out the Sharpies!
