Magic bands suddenly not working

jimim

DIS Veteran
Joined
Jan 4, 2011
i need some insite. We have bands from day 1 up to present day. Suddenly today out of nowhere a ton are not working for our room but for fast passes and park entrance and charging they r. They said at front desk we have too many? We have 40 total.
 
I’ve had a similiar issue.
It seems they get confused with more than 10 active bands at a time.
We’ve had the front desk take our bands, so they could remove all, them just add the ones we have with us.
 
You can go online to MDE and deactivate multiple bands that you don't really need. If you decide you want to use that band, you can reactivate it and deactivate another.
 


i need some insite. We have bands from day 1 up to present day. Suddenly today out of nowhere a ton are not working for our room but for fast passes and park entrance and charging they r. They said at front desk we have too many? We have 40 total.
Your door reader needs a new battery. Your magic bands are fine.
 


It's not an issue of having too many magic bands. Maintenance needs to come up and changethec battery in your door
 
People have reported that if they have a lot of bands active there tends to be glitches.
I would suggest deactivating some.
 
There are known issues with too many MagicBands. From our welcome e-mail for an upcoming DVC trip...

MagicBand Reminder:
To take full advantage of all your Resort MagicBand has to offer, deactivate all prior MagicBands you do not plan on using by visiting MyDisneyExperience.com. If you need assistance with deactivating your MagicBands, please contact Member Services at 800-800-9800.​

I have personally run into issues where only certain bands would work on the door, but others would not. A visit to Guest Services sometimes fixes the issue with the bands not working on the door.

I do not have personal experience with this, but I have heard that if one band does not work on the door, you can deactivate it in MDE, then activate it again. This may allow it to work again.

But I think the OP's situation is different, in that these bands were working on the door, then just stopped mid trip (maybe that is a poor assumption on my part). I would agree, as many of the others have said, that this may be an issue with the door itself.
 
I’ll ask about the door when we get back. It’s very random with which work and don’t work. Some are newer. Some r older. That’s why I didn’t think it was the band itself.
 
Thanks everyone with the info! Just had a killer meal at jiko as always and off to see if river of lights is a sleeper. Lol. Jungle book kinda was. I know others love it. It was cool. Just kinda chill. I want me some more flight of passage instead!
 
I’ll ask about the door when we get back. It’s very random with which work and don’t work. Some are newer. Some r older. That’s why I didn’t think it was the band itself.

On our last trip, only three of my nine MB's worked on the door; the one we got in the mail for that trip, an purchased MB, and one other old one. No rhyme or reason why that one other random MB did work.
 
We had trouble with our bands opening our doors at the Poly a few weeks ago. When we would place the band on the door the light would turn green, but the door wouldn't unlock. It would take 2-3 attempts before the door would actually unlock. You could hear when it finally unlocked, as you would hear the mechanism. I figured the door battery may need to be changed. Called maintenance and they said "oh they all do that, that's just how they work". Um....we've been plenty of times since the bands and have never had that issue, including 3 nights just prior at All Star Sports and didn't have that issue. They did a few things to the door with some sort of scanner they had with them and then told me it was all fixed. It continued to have the problem. Since it was our last day I didn't worry about it. Lol.
 
People have reported that if they have a lot of bands active there tends to be glitches.
I would suggest deactivating some.

Yes that’s a glitch.

But it doesn’t just affect the room door.

I’ll ask about the door when we get back. It’s very random with which work and don’t work. Some are newer. Some r older. That’s why I didn’t think it was the band itself.

Just like sometimes a tv remote will work and other times it won’t until you jiggle it to get the batteries to hit right.
 
Agree with PPs that it's the door.

We have had issues with our bands not working at all, anywhere, and were told by the front desk it was because we had too many active on our account. They deactivated all the bands except the ones that were on us and that resolved the issue.
 
Agree with PPs that it's the door.

We have had issues with our bands not working at all, anywhere, and were told by the front desk it was because we had too many active on our account. They deactivated all the bands except the ones that were on us and that resolved the issue.

Technically, you are correct, but the underlying problem of the door is too many Magic Bands. I saw a great post that went into a lot of technical detail describing the problem, and I will try to summarize the concept. And of course, I can't find that original post.

The door is a battery operated device that has limited memory. When there are a lot of Magic Bands, the memory in the door can only 'hold' so many of the codes. That is why some MB will work, and others will not work. When you visit guest services, they can send more information to the door lock to handle the additional codes.

I think this is why sometimes it will blink green, but not open the door. The door is trying to go through all the codes to see if it is a truly acceptable code to actually unlock the door, and it just times out.
 
Technically, you are correct, but the underlying problem of the door is too many Magic Bands. I saw a great post that went into a lot of technical detail describing the problem, and I will try to summarize the concept. And of course, I can't find that original post.

The door is a battery operated device that has limited memory. When there are a lot of Magic Bands, the memory in the door can only 'hold' so many of the codes. That is why some MB will work, and others will not work. When you visit guest services, they can send more information to the door lock to handle the additional codes.

I think this is why sometimes it will blink green, but not open the door. The door is trying to go through all the codes to see if it is a truly acceptable code to actually unlock the door, and it just times out.

Makes sense, but I was agreeing with PPs that is sounds like a door battery issue since it stopped mid-trip and not in all cases.
 
Now - worth noting? This may have nothing to do with "battery's".

EVERY Hotel Keylock system resides on the local HOTEL computer. These have to download your MB data from the Main WDW backend computer system.

...and sometimes? The whole thing screws up.

Now, the RESTAURANTS, SHOPS, etc in the Hotel do what every other WDW System does.... they phone home to the Main WDW MB Computer.
So guess what happens? Your MB works GREAT for everything - except your door lock :).

What to do? Rather than have the Front Desk try to "reprogram" all your bands? Ask for a Key Card.
 
In the past 2/3 years I have had issues with one or more of the MB's in our party not opening doors - that's probably 20 ish trips over many resorts with brand new as well as older and specialty MB's and I had to have my MDE account re- built.

Its not the door battery - it is MDE keeps all the information, old trips, old adrs' and FP+, canceled or rebooked trips are never archived its all still there. So if you have taken a few trips over the past few years, made a few ADR's and have several MB"s it may be time to talk to IT and have your MDE rebuilt. The phone CM's and the resort CM's will "blame it on too many MB's" but the issue is all the old information causing the system to lag when you access your room. Our MB's always worked for charging, park entrance and FP+ but we had issues with accessing the room. The final straw was when my MIL was stuck outside the room at OKW for a while (when her MB had been working fine prior) without a cell phone.

Guest relations looked at my account and suggested I create a new email and account as I had too much information for the system to handle. I read a few accounts of others who were in the same situation on the theme park board and here on the resorts board and decided to take the chance and do this. So far so good xx fingers for our August trip that we won't make 2/3 additional trips to the front desk to re-key magic bands.
 

GET A DISNEY VACATION QUOTE

Dreams Unlimited Travel is committed to providing you with the very best vacation planning experience possible. Our Vacation Planners are experts and will share their honest advice to help you have a magical vacation.

Let us help you with your next Disney Vacation!





Top