I tried to use a 46-year-old ticket to enter Disney World – here’s what happened

A TikTokker managed to gain entry into Disney World’s Magic Kingdom with a 46-year-old ticket.

Matthew Ables used the ticket last January, after a relative bought it for $8 in 1978.

Today, tickets start at $109 per day, plus tax. Typically, a visit costs at least $150.

The dusty receipt was kept as a souvenir and proved sufficient to enter the sacred House of Mouse. Ables recorded the process for all to follow.

At one point, he chalks up the crumpled paper as an inflationary “bypass,” since price hikes at Disney’s parks have boosted profits despite a drop in attendance after the pandemic, when the parks were closed for months.

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“I realized it had never been used and there was no expiration date on it,” he says in the clip, which has been viewed more than 18 million times.

“I got nervous because she aggressively started stamping ‘void’ all over the ticket booklet and then left,” he adds of the moment of truth between him and a ticket seller.

But the employee returns to the park with a yellow pass and is granted access.

With the pass, which he now also has, he has access for a day and can show off the almost free trip.

“I can’t believe this actually worked,” the influencer exclaims in disbelief.

The video shows Ables enjoying the park’s iconic castle and a glow-in-the-dark roller coaster up close.

At one point he zooms in on a kiosk that shows the price we would pay if we used a current ticket. For people 10 and older, that figure runs into the hundreds of euros.

The TikToker — who continues to pull similar stunts on social media — clearly fits that mold. He flew all the way from his home to Orlando to perform the stunt.

After being closed for a year due to the pandemic, Disney World implemented a series of changes to its flagship park, eliminating free perks and raising prices.

This has dramatically increased the cost of visiting not only Disney World, but also places like Disney Land.

The number of visitors to the park fell by 17 percent the year after the pandemic. In the same year, Disney’s profit per guest increased by 17 percent, resulting in a huge increase in profits.

The company’s stock price fell by more than a third, largely due to controversies surrounding Disney’s opposition to Florida’s so-called Don’t Say Gay law, but also due to films like Lightyear being labeled as woke.

But theme park revenue, traditionally the most profitable part of Disney’s business, remains very poor.

Disney earned a whopping $7.4 billion from its parks in the most recent quarter of fiscal 2022, up 70 percent from a year earlier, when the company was still recovering from COVID-19 lockdowns.

Profits also rose to an impressive $2.2 billion for the quarter – a huge jump from the $356 million recorded for the same quarter 12 months earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported.

In March, Ilong time disney fan jake williams criticized the park as “anti-consumer” because the loss of some of the once free services costs a family hundreds of dollars extra for a day at the park.

Like Ables, Jake also visited the Magic Kingdom to document his experience: how much it costs for two people to visit the park, showing how the happiest place on earth is also becoming increasingly unaffordable.

He cited a massive 44 percent price increase since 2017 after visiting the park for a day.

“I got a discount off the $249 a night rate, but it turned out to be $280 a night, including tax, so to start with,” he said of their room, which he called “pretty nice” and in a good location.

The couple started their Disney day in the resort’s dining room.

“We both had the bounty platter, which was pretty good,” he said. “The platter was $22.79 per person, which came to a reasonable $27.24 with tax.”

From there, they could take advantage of Disney’s free bus transportation from the resorts, but the park had adjusted the price points of their annual passes since Jake last visited.

‘[They] “We raised the prices for both the passes and the regular day tickets,” he explained. “We chose to do the classic Magic Kingdom park, which is also the most expensive park, as opposed to the old Disney days, where it now has variable pricing for each park depending on when you go.”

A visit to the Magic Kingdom with full access typically costs $154 per person, almost $50 more than the cheaper version.