Ex-Park Commandos Try Magic Bands and FP+ (Now Trip Report)

[DisneyRegulars]

Welcome to my trip report. You're in for an adventure as our family explores the ins and outs of Fast Pass Plus and Magic Bands, as well as attends our very first MNSSHP. For this stay we'll be based once again in an AKV Value 1BR. We've stayed there before, this time we are ready for TINY. The dates for our stay our September 21 - 28th. [UPDATE: We switched last minute to SSR]

If you've never followed along with me before, here is a quick introduction to the cast. We are a family of 3, DH(late 30 something), DS (3 and a half)(DO NOT call him 3 unless you want to be corrected by an irate 3 and a half year old), and me (31). I consider ourselves recovering park commandos after joining DVC about 2 years ago. If you are recently joining me from our Magic Kingdom Ultimate Tour attempt this past July Well I Sure Hope We Love SSR , you will know that our recovery still has a long way to go, and we occasionally relapse into our old commando ways.

Here is a picture of us from our trip last year during the same time:

DH, aka Grizzly, is a wonderful husband and father. When he is not helping me plan our Disney vacations he is watching anything and everything paranormal or zombie related.

DS, aka Tigger, is now an adrenaline junky. This kid is not afraid of anything and loves loves loves rides. This will be his first trip where he passes the 40 inches mark so we are extremely excited to be taking him on some of the bigger rides. I think he is going to love BTMRR and ToT. Behind us are days of toddler wussiness and potty training (thank goodness!).

A few weeks ago we were invited to participate in the Magic Band testing. We thought about it for about an hour before diving in and customizing our Magic Bands. Who can resist something called a Magic Band that comes in bright colors? They arrived shortly after in this very fancy packaging:

For those of you customizing your bands, the name you give the band appears only on the underside of the band and on the packaging, so the name can't be seen by anybody when you are actually wearing the bands. I would have liked to have known this when ordering.

I like to do my trip reporting while on site during Tigger's extensive feats of napping. Please feel free to ask me any questions about the Magic Bands, Fast Pass+, MNSSHP, or anything else I may be able answer for you while I'm down there.

Up next, I'll provide some details on our current FP+ strategies, as well as my first adventures in Halloween costume making. Lets just say I didn't know things in water could catch on fire!

Stay tuned and Welcome!

 

[Thumper4me]

Hi!

I enjoyed your last trip report so I am subscribing to this one so I don't miss anything.

I am looking forward to how the FP+ system works for you and how you end up utilizing it.

The Halloween fireworks are fantastic - don't miss them!!

My DH and I are headed down to the BWV about 10 days after you are home. I can't wait!! I will be living vicariously through you until then.

Kelly

 

[catherines_mama]

Followed you over! I'm so curious about magi bands and FP+ can't wait to get your take and see how they work for ya

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Hi!

I enjoyed your last trip report so I am subscribing to this one so I don't miss anything.

I am looking forward to how the FP+ system works for you and how you end up utilizing it.

The Halloween fireworks are fantastic - don't miss them!!

My DH and I are headed down to the BWV about 10 days after you are home. I can't wait!! I will be living vicariously through you until then.

Kelly

Ahhhh BWV, one of my favorite resorts! We are going to make it a point to see both the parade and the fireworks during MNSSHP, I've heard good things about both.

Followed you over! I'm so curious about magi bands and FP+ can't wait to get your take and see how they work for ya

So glad to have you along again.

 

[wiigirl]

Following along!

 

[DisneyRegulars]

I thought I would chronicle a little bit about my experience so far with FP+ and Magic Bands. After a few moments of skepticism I instantly began planning our park days in a totally different manner than I have ever before. Just the thought of already having FPs for the big ticket rides seemed to lift a whole bunch of stress off of me that I didn't even know was there. All of a sudden there was less pressure to get to rope drop and do a fast pass march, and more time for leisurely character breakfasts and strolling through the parks taking advantage of PhotoPass people.

We currently have a 3.5 year old with an internal alarm clock set to 6:30am. No matter what we do the kid wakes up at 6:30am, 7:00am is sleeping in REALLY late for him. So since we're up, we are typically to the parks by rope drop. Scratch that last thought, we are ALWAYS at the parks by rope drop. Now, the same kid self destructs if he doesn't nap, and turns into a wet gremlin after 7pm (yes the Halloween party is going to be interesting). So after 4 trips with our beast we have learned to not count on evenings in the parks, sometimes we make it back, but more often than not we just hang around the hotel after nap time and use the time to swim.

So as far as FP+ planning, we planned ours very differently with our son than we would if we would be able to park hop to a different park in the evenings. For each park day we chose FP+ for the 3 attractions we cared most about, and spread them out about an hour apart from each other, starting around 10am, with the last one between 1 and 2pm. Then it's back to the hotel for us.

Here are some tidbits about selecting FP+s that I found interesting/useful
1. You can choose up to 3 attractions in any one park at a time. The system then goes through and creates 4 FP schedules for you to choose from. They roughly correspond to a morning schedule, mid-morning start, early afternoon start, and evening start. We always chose the morning schedule. After choosing a predefined schedule it is easy to update the times of individual attractions, or change the order if you don't like exactly what was provided.
2. The system gave me a 'bonus' FP+ on one of our MK days for Under the Sea. Cool beans, we'll take it!
3. It's very very easy to choose which people in your party you want to schedule FPs for. You can choose everyone, or select only a few people in your party very easily.
4. Before customizing your Magic Bands and scheduling FPs I would make sure all your family members are actually listed as "family members". Somehow, my son ended up as a 'friend' in the system. I can still schedule fast passes for him, but afterwards I cannot easily see that it actually worked. It can be a little disconcerting to see '6 FPs scheduled for today' when in fact there should be 9, but My Disney Experience only shows the count of FPs for family members. I'm sure I could call IT and have them move him to a family member, but I'm too afraid of something getting messed up, so I will save that task for after this trip.

Scheduling FPs was a breeze. I did them all on my phone on our labor day drive to NH. I have absolutely no complaints about the scheduling at all and thought it was easy, and the system was pretty well thought out. The only 'problem' I had was that I couldn't find any parades or fireworks viewing options anywhere, so I didn't schedule any of those. Most of them are too late for us anyways, so I wasn't too concerned. I also easily attached our APs and our MNSSHP tickets to the Magic Bands. I'm a little bit worried about the MNSSHP tickets working correctly, so I will for sure be bringing the hard copy tickets with me on party night.

Overall I'm really excited about this trip. We have 3 character breakfasts scheduled. (Akershus, Hollywood and Vine, Chef Mickey's) These will be a first for my son as all previous trips he has been terrified of the characters. I'm hoping he loves them this time. He's gotten a lot braver these past few months. In anticipation of the first big rides, the character breakfasts, and the Halloween party I went online to order the photopass+ yesterday and realized that it had to be ordered 14 days before your trip to get the discount. I was a little bit unhappy about that. I thought it was just anytime before your trip, such a bizarre arbitrary cutoff of 14 days. The $200 full price seems a bit steep to me, but I'm still considering it.

One more thing, I'm still getting emails about customizing my Magic Bands before they ship. It's odd. We already have our Magic Bands. Wonder if we'll get another set?

 

[DisneyRegulars]

So I just got off the phone with Member Services. We played a very fun game of 'move the points around' involving reallocating points on two different reservations and transferring points from one account to another, in order to switch our upcoming stay from AKV Value 1BR to SSR. (I can just hear everyone going "BUT WHY???"). It was all very complicated and I'm so glad EJ from member services was able to help me figure it all out.

So anyways, why switch? Well, when we were at SSR in July we fell in love with the Paddock Pool, and we really wanted to take advantage of the children's play area while our son is still little. We CANNOT wait. The next 7 days cannot go by fast enough. Grizzly is already talking about the grilled vegetable sandwich.

The next question: what about the Magic Bands??? I'm not sure. Everything I've read indicates that they will probably still work. People have been told that they won't work, only to find out they opened their room doors and still had charging privileges. Our reservation is under the same reservation number, I didn't even need to re-checkin, and all our Fast Passes still show up in MDE. I think we will be fine. I think I may have accidentally managed to sneak in a Magic Band test at SSR.

Coincidentally, there is a Value 1BR at AKV available from September 21-28. Good luck!!! Better hurry before the waitlist scoops them up.

Must start packing. Oh and sew some tails on our costumes.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

I have some time while waiting for my coworker to call me back (yes on a SATURDAY GRRRRRR), so I thought I would finish that Halloween costume fiasco I had mentioned in my first post.

Tigger, un-rough and un-tumble boy that he is really wanted to be a Care Bear for Halloween, specifically Funshine Bear, the yellow one. Alright! We were all on board. I was going to be the purple Share Bear, and Grizzly was assigned Grumpy Bear who is blue. This was all fine and dandy until I realized that apparently no-one in the south ever dresses up for Halloween, ever. All the do-it-yourself Care Bear costumes involved sweatpants and hoodies, and there was no way we were walking around the MK in September in sweatpants and hoodies. So I had to come up with my own idea. Then came the next problem. Where to find matching yellow and purple shorts and shirts. Let me just say it's impossible. IMPOSSIBLE. Green shirt and shorts? No problem. Blue, sure. Purple or yellow? Ha! You'd have an easier time finding clothing covered in hedgehogs. I tried Target, Kohls, Walmart, Hanes, Amazon, Carters, pretty much every online retailer you can think of, and NOTHING. So the next obvious step was to buy white t-shirts and shorts and just dye them. Same problem. Apparently white cotton shorts are on someone's list of things you DO NOT EVER sell in August. There were none to be found anywhere. Finally I settled on dyeing white cotton sweatpants which I would hem into shorts and white cotton t-shirts. What fun. While Grizzly was out with friends one night I settled in with my boxes of RIT and started dyeing away. I was terrified of using the washer instructions as we just got a new washer and frankly I'm scared of the thing, so I decided stove top would be best. What could go wrong right? Well I had also purchased a hoodie for Tigger and an extra pair of sweatpants so he could be a care bear up here in chilly Buffalo for Halloween too. I grabbed our biggest pot reserved mostly for lobsters and stuffed in 1 XS childs hoodie, 2 pairs of XS sweatpants, and 2 white t-shirts. The instructions said the items should be able to "move freely". I took this to me, if I can get them to budge with my wooden spoon then I am good to go! So I start boiling them away and stirring them constantly as required. Stirring them involved mainly stabbing them with my spoon. 10 minutes into my 30 minutes of constant stirring while simmering the clothes the pot just begins to billow smoke. I mean smoke EVERYWHERE. Coincidentally I also realized we really need to re-hookup our downstairs smoke alarm. I quickly slam the lid on the pot and start lugging it out to the front porch. Get half way there and realize I won't be able to open the door. Waddle back to the kitchen, run and open the front door, and then successfully plunk a boiling smoking pot of half yellow clothes out on the font porch. Sigh. How is it even possible that something in water can catch on fire? I let them sit out there for an eternity before bringing them in. It took me 2 hours to build up the courage to dye my items purple. I ended up doing them in the sink with just hot water. They all came out remarkably well despite the near death experience.

So 2 dye jobs, 3 belly badges, and 3 sets of ears later we have almost complete Care Bear costumes. I just need to attach the tails. I should probably be attaching tails right now. Oh how these Disboards distract me. Did I mention, only 6 more days!!!!!!!!!

 

[catherines_mama]

Your costumes sound adorable! Can't wait to see them.

I'm excited you moved to SSR. I enjoy AKV but since you loved SSR so much...

So DH and I are at our 7 mos window for our April trip. We've had a studio at SSR reserved, it'd be our 1st stay. We talked about moving, looked at the options- there were options everywhere, but decided to stick with SSR. DH is excited to try it out.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Your costumes sound adorable! Can't wait to see them.

I'm excited you moved to SSR. I enjoy AKV but since you loved SSR so much...

So DH and I are at our 7 mos window for our April trip. We've had a studio at SSR reserved, it'd be our 1st stay. We talked about moving, looked at the options- there were options everywhere, but decided to stick with SSR. DH is excited to try it out.

So cool! I hope you guys love it. It's definitely worth at least one try. Our 7 month window is coming up for our anniversary trip which we moved to april 30- may 4th next year. We have AKV Value Studio right now, but I'm hoping to switch to GFV. I've been stalking availability every morning and it's been clear so far, so I think I will have a good chance at getting it.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Only 3 more days until we are at Disney. This will be the three longest days. I am just so excited for all of the fun things with Tigger, character meals, New rides, fun pool area... so many things to look forward to. -Grizzly

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Alright. Last night I began packing after attaching 3 care bear tales. Finally! We have completed costumes. Once again I failed miserably at getting everything into one checked bag, (I really have no idea how we travelled with just carry-ons before Tigger), so we will be taking two checked bags with us. Also yesterday I attempted to see if there were FP + available for the new Princess Meet and Greet, but was denied access to the FP+ system. For now my FP+ that I scheduled earlier are all still listed in My Disney Experience, but I can't make any changes to them. I'm very curious to find out if they will still work. I've packed my Magic Bands, but I have resigned myself to the possibility that they may very well do nothing for us. I may have to change the title of my trip report.

I soooooo need this vacation. Almost time to go.

 

[catherines_mama]

Good luck! And have a blast no matter what. I'm really curious about the Magic Bands too, I wonder how they'll work- I was hoping to hear your accounts so hope they do!

Travel safe!

 

[disfanforlife]

Have a great trip! We have always been commandos too and are really trying to slow it down a bit for our upcoming trip in November. Looking forward to hearing how the magic bands work for you. Not sure if we will have the opportunity to use them or not...

 

[DisneyRegulars]

We made it! Our magic bands opened our SSR room!!! We are off to find an earl of sandwich sandwich. We have the best room ever, I'll give a full update later. Yeah for magic bands!

Update: The MB's also worked for food purchases. Seems Tigger has started his traditional vacation fast, refusing to eat the macaroni and cheese because it was not the right shape.

We could not for the life of us find my bluetooth key board, so updates will only come live when I have summoned up the patience to peck away at the iPad. Seeing as I'm traveling with a three and a half year old the likelihood of me having any patience left is pretty slim. We'll see.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Alright, just got back from a fantastic morning in the Magic Kingdom. Our FP+s worked seamlessly. We also got to take advantage of our room keys AND annual passes for fast passes, so it was a bit of a fast pass-apalooza this morning. At one point we held fast passes for Peter Pan, Winnie the Pooh, and Cinderella all for the same hour, and managed to do them all with 30 minutes to spare. The park was busy, but not terrible. Full update to come once I find a keyboard. For now we are watching football while Tigger takes a nap he insisted he didn't need.

 

[disfanforlife]

That is great news! I have been Leary of it. Thinking if we didn't have to use them we might not. Our trip is November 9. So who knows if they will still be testing then or if everyone will have them. I guess I will wait and see!

 

[catherines_mama]

Sounds like a great trip so far! Can't wait to hear about this room! We love Earl of Sandwich and ate there like 3 times the week we were there. We'd go to DTD just to eat. Lol

Yay for all the FP success.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

That is great news! I have been Leary of it. Thinking if we didn't have to use them we might not. Our trip is November 9. So who knows if they will still be testing then or if everyone will have them. I guess I will wait and see!

I was leary too. First day went swimmingly. I'm developing a love hate relationship with the bands themselves though.

Sounds like a great trip so far! Can't wait to hear about this room! We love Earl of Sandwich and ate there like 3 times the week we were there. We'd go to DTD just to eat. Lol

Yay for all the FP success.

We can't get enough of Earl of Sandwich. My mom called me a few weeks ago from the Newark airport I think to tell me all about the world's best tuna melt she had just had. When I asked her where it was from I had to laugh because she said Earl of Sandwich. I had specifically taken her there for our trip a few years ago to get the tuna melt, and she had said the same thing then, but she had forgotten all about it.

 

[disfanforlife]

I was leary too. First day went swimmingly. I'm developing a love hate relationship with the bands themselves though.



We can't get enough of Earl of Sandwich. My mom called me a few weeks ago from the Newark airport I think to tell me all about the world's best tuna melt she had just had. When I asked her where it was from I had to laugh because she said Earl of Sandwich. I had specifically taken her there for our trip a few years ago to get the tuna melt, and she had said the same thing then, but she had forgotten all about it.

Can't wait to hear more! Whatever you learn will hopefully help teach me!