Dropp,
Its also been a while since I baled out, but I believe that the the Retired Staff ID card is issued when you hit "Normal Retirement Age", which for those of us who joined many years ago was 60;I seem to recall that it was subsequently changed to 65 at some stage, but I'm open to correction about that.
I don't want to put a dampener on your expectations of hotel discounts, but I've yet to find a hotel or major hotel chain which will give the travel industry discount with a "Retired Staff" ID. I've tried most of the majors - Sheraton, Hilton, Marriott, Intercon etc with no luck. In one case (Hyatt in Melbourne), the reservations agent on the phone gave us the discounted rate, but the Receptionist on check-in called the Duty Manager when she saw "Retired" in big letters on the ID card and he politely refused it - current staff only eligible, which is the usual response. We had to pay the best available public rate. I'd be very interested to hear other retirees experience with this.
Never tried it for car rental. It does work very well in getting sometimes huge discounts for cruises - visit dargal.com or vacationstogo.com , both of which also offer limited hotel discount deals to retired staff, but these tend to be north America resort oriented in my experience - Mexico, Vegas etc
The ZED Fares access kicks in after reaching both normal Retirement Age and the anniversary of date of leaving, if I remember correctly. Its all in the staff Travel Manual somewhere - maybe a buddy still in EK could look it up for you to get chapter and verse.
7B