Half Off Theme park tickets,,,

[hoffmann2828]

I posted a few days ago, and comments were deleted. I reposted, and they were deleted. Then, I got banned.

No wonder all the "likes" for this page. Anyone who tells the truth is banned and only the "thanks for saving us money" posts are kept.

AWFUL!

[Brian Noble]

I have heard the biometric (fingerprint) scanners are not very accurate.

They aren't quite exactly recording fingerprints. The first time the ticket is used, the scanner uses the contours of the fingerprint to compute something else, and the result of that computation is then stored. When the ticket is re-used, the computation is performed again, and matched against the stored result. If the results match, the turnstile unlocks. If the results don't match, it doesn't.

In WDW's system, there are at least three reasons why someone "borrowing" a ticket might not be detected:

1: Tickets bought together in a single transaction directly from Disney are "grouped"---a holder of any of those tickets only needs to match *one of* the computed results from teh set. That way if Uncle Joe and Aunt Mary each grab each others' tickets in the morning, they won't hold up the line.

2: During peak entrance periods, the scanners are sometimes shut off to expedite entrance. The little blue light still flashes, but the turnstile unlocks immediately rather than after a noticeable delay. WDW veterans can probably tell the difference by watching.

3: Because the computation is an abstract of the fingerprint, and lots of information is thrown away, it is possible to have a "false positive"---where two different fingerprints happen to compute to the same result. I don't think I've ever seen hard numbers about the false positive rate, but even if it was 1 in 10,000, the chances that you sold your ticket to someone who happened to match you are low enough that it is probably a sufficient deterrent.

But, the WDW areas of the DIS have a few Ticketing Cast Members who post on them, and they report that the system does in fact catch people, and not infrequently.

[pixiewings71]

DBF has a biometric hand scanner at work, when he clocks in every morning he does it by hand scan.

[bcla]

Originally Posted by korg

My wife and I are getting CityPass tickets for our California trip coming at the end of the month. (Can't wait) I wonder how that would work in regard to printed names on the Disney passes? Hmmmmmmm (I believe we show our city pass tickets at the gate and get our 3 day DL hopper tickets) Still, printed names are not a bad way to stop reselling of unused days.

Of course the Southern California CityPass comes in the form of a gift card like piece of plastic with a bar code on the back and without any kind of magnetic strip. This is not the actual ticket used at Disneyland. It was the ticket used to get into Universal and SeaWorld. Neither issued any other kind of ticket or receipt upon entry, since it was only valid for one day.

A little late, but as of late Nov 2012, for someone with CityPass, the gate issues a ticket that's printed with something like "3-Day Park Hopper CityPass" and a place to print the name with a pen. We were specifically handed a fine-tipped permanent marker to write our names down, as well as being asked to show ID then and every time we reentered, with or without a hand stamp.

Personally I think writing down a name in permanent ink is going to make it tough for the rental brokers to attempt to reuse them. Of course the machine printed name is even worse. However, a few seem to have gone out of business, but others are trying new ways to get around it.

[bcla]

Originally Posted by Brian Noble

They aren't quite exactly recording fingerprints. The first time the ticket is used, the scanner uses the contours of the fingerprint to compute something else, and the result of that computation is then stored. When the ticket is re-used, the computation is performed again, and matched against the stored result. If the results match, the turnstile unlocks. If the results don't match, it doesn't.

I know a little something about fingerprint recognition from a previous job. I'm not an expert, but I've been around enough of my coworkers to understand the basics.

Most of the software out there doesn't actually store the actual fingerprint image. Most of the equipment used does capture an image of a fingerprint. However, what you typically see in commercial usage isn't the super expensive law enforcement machines that capture entire fingerprints and attempt to make exact matches. They're probably only capturing the center of the print. All of this is typically reduced to a series of "minutiae" or features. The locations and rotation of these minutiae are usually what would be stored in a database and not an image (although it could be stored).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerp...nutia_features

So what you end up with is like a key. Given how simplified it is, it may be more like a mechanical key. If you've got something like a Schlage SC1, there are only a finite number of combinations. However, you've only got to match the key to the individual lock you're trying to open. I've bought locks at Home Depot, and typical boxes carry several locksets that are keyed alike (there will be a sticker with a code allowing one to buy matching sets so that only one key is needed for a series of locks). Maybe someone in the same area will have the same key, but it won't matter unless they know where you live. What they've got at WDW is a system that pulls up the number of the barcode and matches the "key" to the set of information in their database that was acquired when the user first used the ticket.

Here's an image showing one kind of fingerprint recognition. This one only appears to calculate "bifurcations" (where two ridges merge into one) as boxes with the rotation in the direction of the single ridge. The result for each box is just going to be a coordinate for each minutiae's location and a number representing the angle. When it comes time to validate, only the coordinates and rotations will likely be available in the database.