How the May Day Ticket Works on 'Animal Crossing'

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been giving fans of the Nintendo franchise plenty of new events and spins on old celebrations to keep players occupied and engaged, and the latest added to the calendar of events is May Day. Rather than a take on International Workers Day — like child labor exploiter Tom Nook would ever be down for that! — the weeklong festival is more about celebrating spring than workers' rights. 

But it will reintroduce a familiar character to longtime fans and add a new kind of off-island excursion to the game. Enter: the May Day ticket. Here's what to expect.

When users log in to the game on Friday, May 1, Isabelle will mention the start of May Day in her morning announcements and players should take that as their cue to speak with Tom Nook at Residential Services. He will give you a complimentary May Day ticket, which works like a Nook Miles Ticket, but the island Wilbur and Orville send you to looks a bit different from any of the other mystery islands you've seen. It has a maze.

The event appears to be tied to the game server, because players who have changed their console's date and time to "time travel" to May 1 were unable to unlock the May Day ticket. It's also not clear whether players will be able to purchase additional May Day tickets from the Nook Stop terminal as they can with regular Nook Miles Tour tickets, but for now it seems like a one-time challenge.

When you take the ticket to the Dodo Airlines counter, Orville will note that you have a May Day ticket and ask if you want to use it. Wilbur will fly you to an island just as he does with a normal mystery island tour, but rather than a typical island, this one will have a hedge maze you'll need to navigate to collect items that you would normally find on a mystery tour, but you'll have to do it without any tools. 

Once you complete the maze, you'll meet Rover, a very delightful cat character who has played various roles in the Animal Crossing series.

Rover is a cat who, in previous versions of the game, got players started at the beginning of the game, and in Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, he hosted an event called Garden Safari. No word yet whether the May Day tour will have rare butterflies or seasonal plants we haven't yet seen in the game, but from some early screenshots of the May Day islands, we can at least determine there are flowering shrubs.

However since you have to give up your tools at the start of the challenge — you get them back at the end, don't worry! — you may not be able to bring the shrubs home with you unless you obtain a shovel while navigating the maze. 

Early spoilers do seem to indicate you will find some tools to help you make your way through the maze, but we won't know for sure until May 1.

Once players navigate their way to Rover, he will congratulate them and tell them to expect a gift in the mail. Reportedly, that gift is just a suitcase with some stickers on it, which is kind of a bummer, but it's better than a wobbling Zipper T. Bunny toy, right?