Our Magic Bands came today!

Ive never seen a picture of these posted before and I never really bothered to google it, so it was a nice surprise how when this box came in the mail. My kids were practically foaming at the mouth with excitement

We went last March and I received the band's also. It was fun to get in the mail and my 22 y.o. daughter was excited to try her pink band on :whoopie:

I was lazy and got standard gray

Do you get these once you reserve your room?

Nice photo! We were quite excited when we got ours last year, too. But such an expensive box and presentation. I thought it was a lot of our $$ spent.

My son lost his orange MB somewhere between BCV and AK. He was sad about having to replace it with a generic gray one without his name on it, but someone turned it in just outside of AK and a runner from the BCV brought it back the next morning . Nice service and a happy kid

If you are an uber planner you can get fast passes before you go and load them on magic bands. I have found the mydisneyexperience website to be a bit difficult, but I am sure it I me, not them.

rrazzorr said:

Do you get these once you reserve your room?

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If you're a DVC owner, I think the reservation should show up automatically in your account.

If you're renting points from an owner or exchanging in via RCI you'll need to get the Disney reservation number from the owner or from DVC Member Services. You can use that to link to your "My Disney Experience" profile and that'll bring up the option to customize your Bands.

-Rob

Rob562 said:

If you're a DVC owner, I think the reservation should show up automatically in your account.

If you're renting points from an owner or exchanging in via RCI you'll need to get the Disney reservation number from the owner or from DVC Member Services. You can use that to link to your "My Disney Experience" profile and that'll bring up the option to customize your Bands.

-Rob

Click to expand...

I found the RCI exchange process confusing wrt magicbands.

If your reservation is an RCI exchange reservation and more than 2 are traveling in your family you must call DVC member services and manually add the number of members above 2.

Disney says this is just how it works through RCI, they only assign 2 folks max to RCI reservations so you will only be able to get 2 magic bands unless you call and add the other members.

Also - what the pictures listed here doesn't show - is inside the magicband they imprint that members name. So if you have 5 people in your family you don't have to remember dd is pink, ds is blue, etc. etc., you can look on the inside and their name is imprinted.

Another piece of advice, the bands have two stubs to lock into the holes.. My 15 year old son likes to literally rip them on and off, he broke one of the stub-locks but the second held and I told him to be careful...

Another tip on the magic bands - when you arrive a lot of cast members assume you don't have magic bands and don't ask you. Don't be shy when you first arrive to show your magic band otherwise cast members may ask for info they don't need if you have a magic band!

Attached is a picture of our view out Bay Lake towers.. Was great!

sparty said:

I found the RCI exchange process confusing wrt magicbands.

If your reservation is an RCI exchange reservation and more than 2 are traveling in your family you must call DVC member services and manually add the number of members above 2.

Disney says this is just how it works through RCI, they only assign 2 folks max to RCI reservations so you will only be able to get 2 magic bands unless you call and add the other members.

Also - what the pictures listed here doesn't show - is inside the magicband they imprint that members name. So if you have 5 people in your family you don't have to remember dd is pink, ds is blue, etc. etc., you can look on the inside and their name is imprinted.

Another piece of advice, the bands have two stubs to lock into the holes.. My 15 year old son likes to literally rip them on and off, he broke one of the stub-locks but the second held and I told him to be careful...

Click to expand...

FYI, it says in the "Urgent Information" section of the RCI confirmation it does say "Call DVC member services at 800-800-9800 no later than 48 hours prior to arrival to provide all guest names in advance, no exceptions."

-Rob

Got back from our trip and the magic bands were very convenient to use. Room key, room billing, photopass, park ticket and fast pass. I carried nothing but my phone in my pocket all trip never needing a wallet or keys. The one thing you really have to keep an eye on is racking up a bill. All the little $20 snacks and odds n ends add up when you can simply wave a band and mentally its not a credit card.

It was super simple to call up DVC after the reservation and add our kids names. The time savings at the park is HOURS, and the few minutes you have to spend to add a few names to the reservation isnt worth complaining about. Once you get their names added, you can go to MyDisneyExperience and change the band colors, link tickets, fast passes and make reservations. I agree the site was not very intuitive and I am computer savvy, but after navigating it a while it was simple enough.

Another cool thing people do is decorate the bands as well with stickers, markers, etc. It doesnt impact its use. Disney even sells additional accessories for the bands.

FastPass is such a great system when combined with the bands and being able to load them initially via the internet. Having three popular rides selected on the band and hopping on the lesser used attractions we hit all the best parts of the park and were done by 2pm each day. Compared to Disneyland out here in Cali you have to visit each ride to get a printed ticket and you cant plan ahead of time since you dont know your return time until the ticket is printed.

Can you designate who has access to your credit card and who doesn't? Can you set up different credit cards for different people?

I'm organizing a family trip for probably 15 people next July and I'm taking care of the accommodations (a grand villa and 2 bedroom at OKW) and I'll probably take care of setting everybody up with a magic band.

A few months ago there was a lot of chatter on the dis boards about a loop hole with these and fast passes. It was for people that had park tickets separate from their reservation. Basically you ordered the amount of magic bands the room held instead if people and got more fast passes.

Example. If you had 2 people in a 1br that actually sleeps 4. You make up the names for the other 2 and get bands for them. When you make your fp reservations you get two sets.

People were even doing this with bands from previous trips!

The issue at the time was the fp system was using the mb system instead if park tickets. I'm not sure if it has been fixed yet.

Clemson Fan said:

Can you designate who has access to your credit card and who doesn't? Can you set up different credit cards for different people?

I'm organizing a family trip for probably 15 people next July and I'm taking care of the accommodations (a grand villa and 2 bedroom at OKW) and I'll probably take care of setting everybody up with a magic band.

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There's two ways of doing room charging with a large group:

First, you can set up room charging with a single credit card. Technically everyone would have access to it, but since using the Bands requires you to enter a PIN for each transaction, simply don't give the PIN to people you don't want to use it.

Second, you can set up different cards with different people. In this instance, skip the room charging part of online checkin and wait until you're at the resort. Then, each person who wants to set up an account needs to visit the front desk and set up charging for themselves. It only takes a couple minutes.

mdurette said:

A few months ago there was a lot of chatter on the dis boards about a loop hole with these and fast passes. It was for people that had park tickets separate from their reservation. Basically you ordered the amount of magic bands the room held instead if people and got more fast passes.

Example. If you had 2 people in a 1br that actually sleeps 4. You make up the names for the other 2 and get bands for them. When you make your fp reservations you get two sets.

People were even doing this with bands from previous trips!

The issue at the time was the fp system was using the mb system instead if park tickets. I'm not sure if it has been fixed yet.

Click to expand...

This was a while ago and was a very short-lived glitch in the system, and I think it was only when the system was in kiosk-only mode (no access to the phone app).

As designed, the FP+ system refers back to a specific person, not each Band individually. So when you use a Band at the FP+ posts at the rides, the system uses the Band to look up "you". That person must have a park ticket associated with their My Disney Experience, and that ticket must be used to enter the park. So any Band associated with your profile will only point back to you.

-Rob