You're not the only one Pete

[slapwhitey]

Hey Pete,

Just wanted to let you know you're not the only one. Up to this point we have LOVED the new magic bands. It's totally changed the way we tour the parks. We find the rope drop is not necessary anymore in order to get in the major attractions. We have also had no issues with park entry or anything.

Chris

 

[*NikkiBell*]

I love them too and am collecting all of the colors to match my outfits.

 

[dalt01]

i never understood what the beef was.

 

[HarkiQuinn]

I'll be honest, this will be my first time using the bands next month. The boards really scared me (I feel like there was nothing positive said about them), but the podcast discussion did make me feel a bit better.

Plus they come in colors! New thing to collect!

 

[Phoenixblue]

I won't get a chance to use them until November. I am actually looking forward to trying out the new system. We are planners, spreadsheet style planners . But we are also open to changing plans on the fly

I really hope with selling them in stores like they are now, that they will come out with more colors.

I am soooo hoping for Purple!

 

[Kristina4109]

We should be receiving ours in May! Yeah, I don't understand how they can have orange but not purple.

 

[SinceDay1]

We are here now and they have worked great! My wife and I have one of each color due to all the trips we made, it is nice to color match.

Richard

 

[j2thomason]

We've used them three times and love them! We have one more set on the way for our upcoming May trip. We will then have four different colors! It's nice to be able to swap them out to match your outfits. We love the ease of having everything connected to your magic band. Now that they are going to allow additional Fast Passes after you've used your first three....and they are adding park hopping, that makes them even better! Love the magic bands!

 

[ang]

I never used the new magic bands yet and really looking forward in using them!! Read the good and bad but the good out wade the bad.

Getting the fast passes in advance is a blessing for my family. My husband has RA and walking is horrible on him. To us this a blessing no more running around the park to each station!!

 

[doconeill]

I love them too and am collecting all of the colors to match my outfits.

Wow, I never got the idea that Nikki loved the MagicBands...nope...never...

About to start our first MagicBand adventure. After all my years of Fastpass and such, this is definitely different. Maybe I should start a thread to live rant-I mean, post...

 

[VolcomPaul]

Honestly... I thought it was kinda a dumb idea. BUT... My family and I have used them on two trips so far and like most have said it has changed our experience and made it more convenient for us to tour the parks. I wish everyone the same experience my family and I had. the one negative thing I can say if I had to was that our room door readers seemed "kinda" cheap. The mickey faceplate fell off atleast once a day during our visit. but other than that it was amazing.

-Paul

 

[NitroStitch]

I was dreading the Magic Bands and having FastPass Plus reservations to make long ahead of time, but I've had no problems with mine. I've also experienced a major perk of the My Disney Experience system, as another poster commented, in not needing to be at rope drop to ride Soarin' or other major draws for traditional FP's. On one Saturday in February, I showed up at Epcot around 11 am, having done zero pre-planning. I managed from my phone to make reservations for Soarin' at around 2 pm, and could have made a Test Track FP for about 11:30 am if I'd wanted Test Track instead. It's also nice not to have to hunt for my little slip of FP paper and have it available for the two checkpoints in the line - the Magic Band is more handy and convenient.

Hopefully they will make charging privileges open to Annual Passholders as the system evolves, since it's so convenient not to start hunting around in a backpack, pocket or purse for my wallet when I decide I need a Mickey Bar.

Now that they have park hopping allowed in the system, and if they can work something better with the tiered system of attractions, I won't see any down sides for my different types of touring.

 

[doconeill]

We've had a few hiccups so far, but none involved magicbands or Fastpass+. There are some things about Fastpass+ that it I'll mention at a later time once I've got time to post more.

As mentioned above the best thing was not having to be there at rope drop for certain things. This is our first fully-bus-dependent long stay in a while, and we weren't getting to the parks as early as we expected as we weren't prepared for the bus-sharing schedule with our resorts.

Both sets of MagicBands we have are fully interchangeable at both resorts and for purchases. It doesn't matter which one we use that day or for which reservation we technically received them for.

Edit: Just read about this, which has me a little scared for tomorrow:

http://www.insidethemagic.net/2014/...uts-wait-to-meet-anna-and-elsa-when-it-works/

 

[MrandMrsJoeFriday]

During our last trip on this past Saturday we experienced our first ever Hiccup with our Magic Bands, which according to the Disney Cast Member that helped us, is an issue unique to Annual Passholders. This was our 8th trip using magic bands, since they were introduced at the Pop Century resort. When we attempted to enter Epcot on Saturday, both of our new Annual Passholder Magic Bands read "NO MEDIA FOUND" on the screen. We were they asked to attempt to enter using our annual pass cards instead. After we got in the park we headed over to the Nemo ride, and were able to use our Bands for our Fastpass redemption without a problem. And finally, after we had left the park to head over to the Swan and Dolphin for the awesome Live taping of the DisUnplugged, we encountered another problem when we attempted to re enter the park. According to the cast member at the gate, Disney is experiencing a bunch of trouble with Annual Passholder bands attaching to the ticket media in there system, which causes them to read "no media found". The senior cast member that assisted us quickly knew what to do, which included her accessing our account in her tablet, deactivating both our Passholder magic bands, and then reactivating them via her system. After that, it worked like a charm. Oh and I must say that the Passholder magic bands come in a cool exclusive box, with an exclusive band slider inside. Hope this info helps!

 

[doconeill]

We didn't run into this AP bug (nice having to wait only 5 minutes to see Anna and Elsa... . In fact, things pretty much "just worked". Yes, occasionally you have to scan twice. And yes, the app still sucks. Had to use the web site a couple times but it wasn't much faster at least on my phone. And at one point I just had to use a kiosk to make a change because both app and web gave me errors, not helped by the fact that I seemed to get kicked of the Wi-Fi frequently enough still that I had a better time not using Wi-Fi at all.

The POP register touchpoints for paying are VERY picky and sensitive - even for swiping cards. Sometimes took two or three card swipes or scans. And they are slow to ask for the PINs.

The wireless handheld ones sometimes can give them grief as well. Saw a couple times where they had to grab another one. They are interesting though...they don't process the payment wirelessly...they just scan the band/card and verify the PIN wirelessly. Then they present a barcode on the screen the CM can then scan to make the payment.