Magic Bands

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alicemouse's picture
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Jan, did you have special circumstances or a particular reason why you won't receive your bands until you get to Boardwalk? Just curious as we'll be staying there in April and I know there are still many experiments going on with the magic band implementation.

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alicemouse wrote:
Jan, did you have special circumstances or a particular reason why you won't receive your bands until you get to Boardwalk? Just curious as we'll be staying there in April and I know there are still many experiments going on with the magic band implementation.

It's just because we are in Canada and they only ship them to addresses in the U.S. I'm a little disappointed we won't have them to use for the Magical Express.

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Aw that's a bummer! Seems like they could at least include Canada. I mean, all the money they're shelling out on little Incredibles boxes with flash drives and personalized "your vacation's coming soon!" books...doesn't seem like a little extra postage would break the bank!

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December 2013: 10th Anniversary, 1st DVC Stay | April 2014: Birthday on the Boardwalk | May 2014: Star Wars Weekend, Navigating WDW with a wheelchair | August 2014: Villains Unleashed | September/October 2014: MNSSHP, F&W, Tower of Terror 10-miler | March/April 2015: Disneyland and California Coastal Cruise | November 2015: Wine & Dine Half, Food & Wine, 1st Disney Cruise | February 2016: Presidential Classic Gymnastics Meet | March 2016: "Work" Trip, Tours, F&G Festival | April 2016: Conference at Disneyland | Fall 2016: Festive Fall Fun | January 2017: Festival of the Arts | May 2017: AbD Backstage Magic | July 2017: AbD San Francisco | Sorry I had to give up doing trip reports. Too many time commitments right now.

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Well, we're exactly at the 3 week mark until we check in at the Boardwalk and we can still make changes to our Magic Bands online. Does it actually give you a cut off message at some point? Or do the changes just get ignored? We did get the "This is your last day to customize your Magic Bands" message a few weeks ago. Then the warning just went away and we can still customize.

Interesting.

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I was actually surprised on Christmas Day. Over the years read some horror stories , but it really wasnt that bad. Dont get me wrong , it was crowded , but not shoulder to shoulder , cant move crowded. My wife & I remarked to each other several times during the day that we had experienced worse crowds there several times. We did plan ahead w/ Fastpass plus to get on our favorite rides , but honestly , Epcot the next day on Dec 26th was more of a zoo.

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I customized my band for February. I'm going with blue this trip.

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So I am sorry, I didn't read the whole thread. So I apologize for possible repetitive questions. But as a soon AP holder, I know these will be given to AP holders... Is it safe to assume that the band will become the AP card? (I really want a pink one)

Also, and you may or may not know any information about this, but do you have any idea how this affects Cast Members? My Brother will start working for the Company on January 18th, and I was just wondering if these bands are replacement to the Main Gate Pass.

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Hi Melli and if I haven't said already, welcome . Now, regarding your questions, we are AP holders and we have the bands already. Have since last October.

About CM's & there passes, Mandy would probably be able to answer that one. She is the only active CM on here right now I think.

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Rock712 wrote:
I was actually surprised on Christmas Day. Over the years read some horror stories , but it really wasnt that bad. Dont get me wrong , it was crowded , but not shoulder to shoulder , cant move crowded. My wife & I remarked to each other several times during the day that we had experienced worse crowds there several times. We did plan ahead w/ Fastpass plus to get on our favorite rides , but honestly , Epcot the next day on Dec 26th was more of a zoo.

That's great to know. I remember MK being full to capacity on Christmas Day when my kids were young. We just headed back to our RV in Ft. Wilderness. mickey

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Melli wrote:
So I am sorry, I didn't read the whole thread. So I apologize for possible repetitive questions. But as a soon AP holder, I know these will be given to AP holders... Is it safe to assume that the band will become the AP card? (I really want a pink one)

Also, and you may or may not know any information about this, but do you have any idea how this affects Cast Members? My Brother will start working for the Company on January 18th, and I was just wondering if these bands are replacement to the Main Gate Pass.

mrhub wrote:
Hi Melli and if I haven't said already, welcome . Now, regarding your questions, we are AP holders and we have the bands already. Have since last October.

About CM's & there passes, Mandy would probably be able to answer that one. She is the only active CM on here right now I think.

From my understanding (since I am now in the middle of the whole mymagic+ testing) that magicbands will replace all tickets sometime this year. That also includes AP holders and cast members. But I don't know when this will actually take place since everything is still in the testing phases. Some think that magicbands will roll out for AP holders and cms around March. Not sure though since they are keeping a lot of it hush hush for now. Maingates are still being used and can't be linked up to the my Disney experience website.

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Thanks for your answers. I guess in my Brothers case, it will be a game of wait and see Smile I am just excited at the thought of getting a pink band xD (hopefully)

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NHShorty and I are AP holders and used our Magic Bands during our recent stay in the world (12/29 to 12/31, a report will be forth coming) and didn't have any problems until we checked out of the WL on the 31st. They didn't work cleanly when we tried to get into the HS after check out. A couple of iPAD carrying CMs had to intercede. They basically waved their magic wands over our Magic Bands and asked me a couple of "security" questions like what park I had visited the day before. There were no problems with the Fast Pass+s we had, just trouble getting into the park.

As a side note, entry to the MK was shut off at 10:30 AM on the 31st due to the size of the crowd.

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I may have mentioned this elsewhere, but it seems like this thread is a more appropriate location. We really loved our Magic Bands on our December 2013 trip. Everything that we used them for (PAP, room key, charging, park entry, FP+) worked like clockwork except for MVMCP and photopass. awesome

We were told by a CM when we activated our PAP that they were having problems with linking MVMCP to the My Disney Experience account and that when they were linked, people were having trouble getting into MK prior to the start of the party on an annual pass because it would kick out an error message that entry for the party was not yet available. SO for that, we just used our paper tickets and it was fine. It was no extra hassle for us because the very attentive cast member who we spoke with at the ticket window knew what she was doing, but surely this is a glitch that will have to be worked out at some point.

For photopass, there are two specific instances (Rapunzel at Fairytale Hall and Merry Poppins w Bert and penguins at MVMCP) where I am quite certain that we took photos and I'm 99.9% positive that our bands were scanned, but the photos aren't on either of our photopass accounts. Fortunately, we keep our point & shoot and iphone ready, so we have the pictures, but they never showed up on photopass. All of the others we took were there including the 7 dwarfs picture from MVMCP (taken roughly an hour prior to the missing Mary Poppins photo) and the Snow White photos (take roughly 4 minutes after the Rapunzel photos.) It could just be a fluke or maybe out bands didn't scan properly because I wasn't paying very close attention to the scanning procedure, but all of the CM's who were running the photopass stations seemed to be very conscientious, so I'm leaning more toward technology glitch than toward human error.

One funny thing about Magic Bands that I hadn't considered were the constant "oh crap!" moments when I would lock the car and we would be walking toward the tram and every morning I would momentarily freak out because I couldn't remember what I did with my ticket. Because it was on my arm. Doh! So it's super convenient, but old habits die hard! rolling

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Trip Reports:
December 2013: 10th Anniversary, 1st DVC Stay | April 2014: Birthday on the Boardwalk | May 2014: Star Wars Weekend, Navigating WDW with a wheelchair | August 2014: Villains Unleashed | September/October 2014: MNSSHP, F&W, Tower of Terror 10-miler | March/April 2015: Disneyland and California Coastal Cruise | November 2015: Wine & Dine Half, Food & Wine, 1st Disney Cruise | February 2016: Presidential Classic Gymnastics Meet | March 2016: "Work" Trip, Tours, F&G Festival | April 2016: Conference at Disneyland | Fall 2016: Festive Fall Fun | January 2017: Festival of the Arts | May 2017: AbD Backstage Magic | July 2017: AbD San Francisco | Sorry I had to give up doing trip reports. Too many time commitments right now.

Allie's picture
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Wow, good thing you had those pictures on your camera as well! That could make for some big disappointments if a little kid's favorite character was missing or something sad

MrHub's picture
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Hey alicemouse, did you buy Photopass or Memory Maker? Just trying to think this out. You sure you don't have another account out there thats not linked?

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You can buy Disney "sliders " and bling them put. Or even a different band cover. I saw them online and I understand that they were selling them at AKL.

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BuffaloBill wrote:
As a side note, entry to the MK was shut off at 10:30 AM on the 31st due to the size of the crowd.

Yeah, I have a friend who works at Liberty Tree Tavern and she was tweeting about it being at capacity by 11. Craziness!

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This seems to be a common occurrence on New Year's Eve. We were in MK on our Honeymoon in 2003 and the park was at capacity at 10-10:30 in the morning. We were going to try to make it to midnight, but when the noisemakers were handed out at 4:00, we quit! eek Our plan was to hop to EPCOT since its a much larger park, but I fell asleep and missed everything! sad

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Trip Reports:
December 2013: 10th Anniversary, 1st DVC Stay | April 2014: Birthday on the Boardwalk | May 2014: Star Wars Weekend, Navigating WDW with a wheelchair | August 2014: Villains Unleashed | September/October 2014: MNSSHP, F&W, Tower of Terror 10-miler | March/April 2015: Disneyland and California Coastal Cruise | November 2015: Wine & Dine Half, Food & Wine, 1st Disney Cruise | February 2016: Presidential Classic Gymnastics Meet | March 2016: "Work" Trip, Tours, F&G Festival | April 2016: Conference at Disneyland | Fall 2016: Festive Fall Fun | January 2017: Festival of the Arts | May 2017: AbD Backstage Magic | July 2017: AbD San Francisco | Sorry I had to give up doing trip reports. Too many time commitments right now.

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alicemouse wrote:
This seems to be a common occurrence on New Year's Eve. We were in MK on our Honeymoon in 2003 and the park was at capacity at 10-10:30 in the morning. We were going to try to make it to midnight, but when the noisemakers were handed out at 4:00, we quit! eek Our plan was to hop to EPCOT since its a much larger park, but I fell asleep and missed everything! sad

I had friends that were at Epcot on NYE. They just got back yesterday so I haven't gotten the low down yet on how crowds were.

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I saw this and just wanted to inform you guys! More resorts are going to do the no KTTWC test this year.

http://www.orlandoparksnews.com/2014/01/all-walt-disney-world-hotels-testing.html

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mrhub wrote:
Jan, you may not be able to make changes to them still. They send them out at the 30 day mark, and that has passed. They may have sent yours to the resort already, but I'm not 100% sure about that. Did they give you another deadline? I know it doesn't take long for them to ship, ours were shipped and at our door in less than 24 hours, but they make them in Kentucky, not in Florida so they will have to be shipped to the resort at some point.

They make the bands in Kentucky?? How cool!!! Do you know where?

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No I don't, and it may just be a distribution point. We got another box and that one said WDW Resort Center, so they could come from multiple places I guess.

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Thanks Mr. Hub, It's still pretty cool to know a little bit of the Magic is being sent from my beloved Kentucky!

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I'm not very sure how this is going to work for us coming from the UK, we will have 3week Disney Ultimate tickets, but are only staying onsite at the Beach Club for the last 5 days our tickets will be valid, though we will have MNSSHP tickets and MVMCP tickets for before and after we use our 3wk tickets. And I am planning resort ADRs for earlier and later than that to spread the Disney Magic throughout our whole trip.
Will we get Magic Bands instead of tickets, or will we only get them for the time we are staying onsite at the Beach Club? I know they won't ship them to us as we are in the UK.

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They are starting to issue them to people staying off site, so I imagine you will get they bands when ever you first come to the parks to get your tickets. The bands should be fully rolled out by next November, but we will have more information from Disney by then I'm sure.

King Fergus

As far as the magical express with wrist bands..I'am just off the phone with Disney rep and explained we will be flying into MCO instead of Sanford for the first time..Our wrist bands will be waiting at the resort concierge but you just inform Disney that you will be using the ME and there's no problem with that..They notify the ME bus driver with all the info..

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Ok, I have a question about our existing magic bands and the ME. We now have active magic bands from being at WDW in January (since our Canadian address was considered international, we had to wait and pick up the bands at the resort at check in) so logic dictates that we should be able to use them this fall to get on the ME. Has anyone experienced this scenario yet? mickey

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Yes you can Jan. You can reuse the bands over and over. Your new reservations should be linked to your bands already if you rebooked. They will say they are active if you go on MyDisneyExperience. Even if you didn't book yet, they will be active.

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JanJ wrote:
Ok, I have a question about our existing magic bands and the ME. We now have active magic bands from being at WDW in January (since our Canadian address was considered international, we had to wait and pick up the bands at the resort at check in) so logic dictates that we should be able to use them this fall to get on the ME. Has anyone experienced this scenario yet? mickey

Hi JanJ...I live in the states so I don't know if it would be different but I wouldn't think so...so here goes. I went to disney this past October and am going again in May. So I called disney and asked about my MB from October and I was told all I have to do is activate it and am good to go. So now I will have 2 MB as I picked out a new one for this upcoming trip. The person said that this will change down the road where you can active previous MB....but for now you can. Well that is what I was told anyway.

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Thanks mrhub and kathys - that is exactly what I thought. MDE still shows our January bands as being active and we also get new ones for our September trip so I will be trying the existing ones to get on the ME!