Disney and MagicBands

Editor’s Note:  Today’s blog is from our friend Tiffany who recently had a chance to test Disney’s new MagicBands!  Thanks Tiffany!

It was nearly a month ago when my email, text, and facebook messages starting blowing up simultaneously. What was the reason? My friend was excitedly telling me that she had gotten us signed up to test Disney’s new Magic Bands! We each received a custom band, a one day park ticket, and we shared a room overnight and all we had to do was report back on our experience.

First off, the bands are CUTE! Each person gets to select their color (out of pink, green, red, orange, blue, grey, or yellow) and chooses the way their first name displays on the inside of the band. This is what the color selection screen looks like for the app:

After a week or so, we received a special delivery in the mail! I love the packaging for the bands!

As you can see, members of your party can select the same color if they wish. They are easy to tell apart since they have your name printed on the inside.

There is also a unique Band ID number for each band (hidden here). Once you link your bands to the Disney app, they can be replaced if lost or damaged. However, it would be difficult to damage these. We asked, and the battery should last about 2 YEARS! Also, the bands are waterproof so you can wear them swimming!

One last thing that I thought was really neat about the design of the bands is that they are easily adjustable for smaller wrists. If the band is for a child (or tiny adult), you can simply remove the grey portion (it peels off) and you are left with the colored portion. Easy peasy!

Now for the fun part – what the bands can DO! We had a one day ticket on the bands. We simply went to the turnstiles with the magic band readers and held up our wrists. Once the reader turned green, we were in! We also used these for our Fastpass+ passes. We were able to sign up for 3 attractions at our park of choice (Magic Kingdom) before our trip. These took all of the guesswork out of the timing of the passes – as the readers automatically read them and let us through the fastpass lines!

Additionally, our room key was loaded on the bands! When we got back to the resort at night, we merely had to hold up our wrist and the door unlocked. The bands also hold payment (although we had trouble with this at times. The payment readers are really small and you can’t always tell if they are turning green when your arm is blocking it). Finally, we were also testers for the new PhotoPass and our bands held all of our photos! WOW! That is a lot!

Besides using the bands for payment, we had no issues with the bands working. When they are scanned they make a chime. In most cases, there is also a reader that turns green. The only time we didn’t have this was with PhotoPass. The photographers used their usual scanners and we weren’t able to hear the chime with the loud park noises, so we just had to trust that we would get our pictures.

Currently, FastPass+ only allows for 3 passes per person per day. This works out to a lot less than you could normally get with paper tickets.  HOWEVER, you don’t have to have everyone up and in the park to get FastPasses for later, and your FastPasses aren’t always hours apart. For instance, on our second day we had passes for Toy Story Midway Mania at 9:15 and then walked to Tower of Terror where we had passes for 9:30. By 9:15am, the Toy Story line was already showing 75 minutes!

I am looking forward to using these in the future and hope they help with Extra Magic Hours! No more pulling out your room key and waiting for the castmembers to check them at every ride. WOOHOO!