My friends’ boy, Daikichi, has been wanting to go with me to Disneyland for what seems like years now. To be clear, we go once or twice a year with the whole family, but he wants to go with just me, which is very sweet.

But Daikichi has been so busy, studying for his upcoming entrance exam for junior high. Evenings and weekends are jam-packed with cram school. The only days he’s free are public holidays, which are among the busiest at Disneyland.

I schemed with his parents, and we decided for Christmas, I could pull him out of school any day after his exam, and we could go to Disneyland that day. I thought that was a really cute idea, but it’s an intangible gift. Compared to the big LEGO set I got for his sister Nikki, just saying that we can go to Disneyland would not be enough.

So I set out to make him a ticket book. Besides Disneyland in California and Magic Kingdom in Florida, Tokyo Disneyland also had ticket books! Some of them were marketed as “Big Ten” with standard ABCDE-tickets inside, with a promo ticket for a new attraction like Meet the World.

The goal here was not to make a replica of any real ticket book, but rather make something reminiscent of a real one, something he never got to experience. Honestly, I never did either. To me, it was important to recreate not individual elements, but the vibe of having a ticket book. To that end, I started by measuring out ticket sizes and making a pattern. I took every opportunity to make fun details.

Apart from the design, I also needed to determine what the tickets were good for, in a ranked value like the originals. Since nowadays park admission includes all attractions, the modern equivalent to an E-ticket is not really admission to an E-ticket attraction, but maybe the paid Fastpass option, Disney Premier Access. The D-ticket could be a normal free Fastpass, Priority Pass. Other things we’d purchase like dinner, lunch, and a snack could be C, B, and A tickets.

I used Hoefler’s Tungsten for the big ticket letter and HEX Franklin for most body copy. I got to use Mark Simonson’s incredible Bookmania for the slightly frilly “Big Day” and “Main Entrance Admission” titles. Hoefler’s Claimcheck Numbers for the date, and my own Urayasu font (unreleased 2.0) for the Tokyo Disneyland logo. I drew everything else I needed.

Meet the World is long gone, so I needed a different promo ticket. And then it hit me. The Disney Resort Line (monorail) has these really cute souvenir day passes. So Daikichi can exchange one of my tickets for one of those tickets. To fill up the space, I drew the iconic hand straps hanging on the headline rule.

Yes, this is all fine and great, but to make this into a reality, I didn’t just have to print them. I needed to cut them to size so they overlapped each other perfectly. Staple them with bookbinding tape to finish the edge. I needed a little thicker cardstock for the back to hold it all together. Oh, and what good would all this be if you couldn’t easily tear them out? So I needed to figure out how to perforate the pages too.

I don’t make physical things very much. I’m not very crafty. Almost everything I make, I make digitally.

I went to Yodobashi Camera’s stationery section and picked up everything I needed, even the exact color of bookbinding tape I could’ve ever hoped for, a baby blue, with the right kind of linen texture the original ticket books had. I got a rotary blade with an interchangeable perforator blade. And y’all, it’s my new favorite thing. It really makes you want to perforate everything. It’s so easy. Just pizza-cut your way to ticket-tearing heaven.

Everything was printed at 7-Eleven, double-sided of course. I delicately cut them all to size, perforated them, stapled it all together, applied the tape. And I was done!

Right? It’s cute! It’s done!

It was not done. I can’t just hand over the ticket book like this to Daikichi. What kind of presentation is that?! It should be in something, but not a gift bag, a box, or wrapping paper. An envelope! Of course, an envelope. A Tokyo Disneyland envelope. That I also have to make.

This is just who I am. I looked at some actual envelopes that once existed and there was this one castle illustration on a Tokyo Disneyland gift certificate envelope that appeared to be the same as one I’ve seen in the Tokyo Disneyland brand book, that I haven’t seen in use all that much.

I carefully recreated it. Not exactly, but in the way I would draw it if I was drawing it, like everything else I was doing. I figured I probably would like to have this shape anyway, so it was worth drawing rather than auto-tracing in Illustrator, which probably would have sufficed.

I designed the envelope such that when the ticket book was placed inside, only the words “Big Day” would be visible, with “Kingdom of Magical Dreams” underneath it, which is not the real tagline, but might as well be.

Upon gifting it to Daikichi last night, I got every reaction I could’ve hoped for. He was so excited, though we also kinda had to explain what ticket books once were. As he inspected it closely, he said something to Nob, which Nob relayed to me. “He says you’re smart.” Daikichi pointed out the circles in the pattern that aligned across tickets. The whole process, I thought I might have been making it more for me than him, but I’m glad he appreciated every detail as I did.

You might not be surprised to discover that it wasn’t the end for me. I had already spent days making this exactly right, but now I felt like I had all these pieces to play with. The castle, the logo. Why not make my own little brand book?

Anyway, Merry Christmas, fellow nerds.