The hard tickets are credit card size and semi-durable (better than normal paper, not waterproof plastic though).
You may want to ask what the actual gate price is. It's usually about $20 more than Universal's online price, so you may need to do math to figure out if there is actually a savings using the AP discount vs buying online.
Note if you buy online, you can also stop by the ticket counter and get an actual physical ticket, for convenience. Though you don't have to.