I don't understand though - why the fingerprint? So that you can exit and re-enter the park?
Disney first started using the biometric turnstiles about 10 years back to stop people from sharing season passes, and then a few years later they added it for plain old multi-day tickets.
It used to be that there were folks lingering in every Denny's and IHOP parking lot on International Drive in Orlando, buying and selling partially used multi-day theme park tickets. The marginal price increase for adding an additional day drops quite a bit for every day you add to a ticket - so you could have bought a 10 day ticket for not all that much more than a 5-day, used half, and sold the rest to someone else.
The fingerprint scan is done so that the ticket is biometrically locked to the person who first uses them, thus killing that secondary market for partially used tickets.
It might be easier to spoof an ID reader, but I bet it would be hard enough to seriously hamper the second hand market for day passes at least.
I'm sure he thought about this question the entire visit before rushing home to write an urgent blog post, which is sad because it probably ruined his trip a little.
Also, he was clearly startled the first time, and then mad the second time. The blog post may have only occurred to him later.
Also, the front line staff was pretty clueless (IMO). I was told it's for our 'guest's convenience'. However, I didn't really engage in a deep discussion with them because my family was waiting to have the fun I promised.
They don't really care who you are. They do care that one multi day pass stays with one person. Making sure the same thumbprint is used every time the pass is used accomplishes that; somehow registering ID might, too (but then they need to either print it on the pass, or have a database of pass serial # to ID, in parallel with their fingerprint database).
An interesting option might be to do ID one day, thumbprint the next. But I guess they're smart enough to require the choice on the first use, and then not allow it to be changed.
I was there last month. My young children in strollers were NOT scanned.
> We had a 1-day pass, and got scanned.
The parks are open until 9 or 10pm. If you leave at 5pm, Disney doesn't want you selling your ticket in the parking lot on your way out.
I used to see this at ski mountains. People with wire cutters would ask to 'clip' your lift ticket in the parking lot for a few bucks if you were leaving the mountain early.