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An e-ticket ride is an advanced and thrilling amusement park ride, named after Disneyland’s former ticket pricing system. Disney now uses the FASTPASS® system to avoid long lines, and fans still rank rides by ticket status. The phrase has also been used in popular culture to refer to extraordinary experiences.
An e-ticket ride is a particularly thrilling or advanced amusement park ride. Deriving its name from the original practice of pricing ride tickets in relation to how exciting the ride was, the term can now refer to anything extraordinary. What sets this apart from any other ride is the level of detail, technology and entertainment value.
From 1955 to 1982, the Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California sold individual ride tickets with park admission. In 1972, simple rides like the King Arthur Carousel got A tickets, while Alice in Wonderland and the Swiss Family Treehouse were B tickets. C and D ticket rides were a bit more advanced, including Peter Pan’s Flight, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride and Flight to the Moon. The biggest, best, and newest rides in the park were reserved for the 85-cent e-ticket. In the 1970s, this list included Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion and Matterhorn Bobsleds.
An interesting thing about tickets is that Disney officials consistently called them coupons, while guests insisted they should have been called tickets, as they were sold in ticket booklets. Guests have won this particular battle, with the terms becoming jargon for a ratings system. In 1982, tickets – or coupons – were phased out of the world of Disneyland, as the park introduced paid admission.
As a replacement for the ticketing system, Disney has introduced FASTPASS® for some of the rides. This system allows guests to avoid long lines at popular attractions by getting a free ticket back to the ride at a specific time. Experienced park-goers have developed a number of FASTPASS® strategies to minimize wait times when lines stretch as long as 90 minutes. Generally, the FASTPASS® is used on the most popular rides, but some top-rated attractions, notably the Pirates of the Caribbean, don’t have it. Rumors frequently circulate suggesting that Disneyland is planning to stop using this system in favor of VIP tickets, outraging some fans.
From 1997 to 2004, Walt Disney World Resort in Florida offered an experience called E-ride Nights. This popular, albeit expensive, extra allowed ticket-holding visitors to stay in the park three hours after it closed and ride some of the more popular attractions. Today, this has been replaced by Extra Magic Hours, in which the parks stay open late at no extra cost to visitors staying at the resort.
Today, although tickets officially no longer exist, Disney fans still rank rides by ticket status. In the 2007 announcement of the California Adventure Park expansions, at least two new e-ticketed attractions were announced, the Little Mermaid ride and a test track ride based on the Pixar film Cars. Recent criticism of the reopening of the Finding Nemo submarine ride suggests that some fans think the ride has been downgraded to a D-ticket from its former glory.
In popular culture, the phrase has been used to refer to an extraordinary experience. American astronaut Sally Ride famously referred to riding the space shuttle as an e-ticketed experience. The phrase has appeared in several movies, songs, and video games. Disney park fans have also produced a ride-based fan magazine called The “E” Ticket since 1986. While the term no longer applies to Disney’s method of ride admission, it remains consistently popular as a rating system and a phrase popular.
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