Magic Band Issues

[corpcomp]

My family and I traveled to WDW December 31 for 5 days.

Prior to arrival, I set up Magic Bands via My Disney Experience. I could not set up Fast Pass + for some reason. System would not allow me to do that. The personalized bands arrived a month before our trip and we thought everything was set.

On December 30th, I was called by Jill in Beach Club Operations telling me there was a problem with our magic bands. Was told that Wife and son's bands were not working and in their consolidating our DVC and MDE accounts, all our APs were deactivated.

At check-in, at Bay Lake, the front desk person could not help us with the band issue and sent us to the Guest Relations desk. We were advised we needed new bands for my wife and son (supposedly mine was OK) and they were issued new bands. We were told we have to go to guest relations in a park to get new APs.

It was New Year's Eve and we went to MK and guest services issued the new APs. We then went into the park which was packed and went to get food. After about 20 minutes waiting to order, we chose our food and my band was scanned and was asked to enter a pin. Pin? No one mentioned a pin. Did not have one. Was told to go city hall as we could not use the bands. None of them worked and we had no cash. There they said bands were not set up properly and we had no charging privileges. No one previously has mentioned this at Bay Lake. Pins were set up and for the next day all was quiet.

Two days later we switched hotels -BCV. You guessed it. Bands would no longer work. New room key we received would not work either. Spent half an hour at front desk trying to get everything going. We then went to Epcot. Went to get lunch and entered my pin. Surprise. No charging allowed on band or room key. Called ops center at BCV who said they would fix the problem immediately in the next few minutes and to reorder our food in 5 minutes. We did and again the Bands did not work. Had to pay with cash. We went back to the BC front desk shortly after lunch. Was issued new bands again. Went to the resort store and surprise, no charging privileges on band or Room key.

Went back to front desk asked for supervisor. Katrina I believe was the spelling of her name. They then had Rachel in Operations come out to help. She cancelled our reservation, set up a new one and gave us new room keys and bands. Went to the store with one of the front desk people. Surprise. No charging privileges. Went back to the front desk supervisor and was told somehow the pin that we had just entered was now missing.

I was losing it. They set up another pin and gave me some fast passes since we were no longer sure fast pass+ would work.

They told us that most people are OK, but for about 10% of the guests, it goes terribly wrong and mine was one of the worst. They then said the standard line from other guests with issues was that this was as messed up as Obamacare. Altogether, went for help 7 times and over 4 hours dealing with these stupid bands. As compensation, they gave us credit for a dinner at Cape May.

PS: one woman walked up to the Beach club front desk while we were there complaining that she was allergic to latex and the band was causing her wrist to break out badly. Woman at front desk told her the bands were hypoallergenic. She showed her her wrist and was given a different band immediately.

I can only say that the roll out for us was a failure. No guest should have to spend that much time, effort and frustration just being able to use a room key or a Magic Band. The staff was as frustrated as I was as evidenced by just watching them look at their screens and shaking their heads. They kept saying everything looked right but the Bands would not work. They really tried I have to give them credit for trying, but the system just failed us and them. We just feel we were cheated out of a decent vacation.

I emailed this letter to Guest Services a week ago about this but have not heard back. Hopefully I will. I'm running a convention at the Yacht Club in June and at this point dreading what might happen with all the participants.

Hope none of you ever have this much trouble and sorry for the length of this rant.

 

[katieandemismom]

We had a very similar problem at BCV at Thanksgiving complete with 11 visits to the front desk including two in dripping swimsuits bc the bands that opened the doors at noon wouldn't work at two. I thought dh 's head would spin off. We're trying again in April and hoping some of the kinks are worked out.

 

[Sammie]

We have not had any problems with any aspect of it and love it. Sorry your experience was not the same. Not sure what made the lady's arm break out but there is no latex in them.

I am sure they just gave her another rather deal with trying to make her believe it.

 

[tgropp]

Back in 2010 while staying at VWL. We had the same thing happen with our KTTW cards. Had to pay cash for our meals while we had the meal plan, and half the time our keys would not let us into our DVC unit. This went on for 7 days. It can really put a damper on your WDW trip. Sorry to hear of your situation

 

[bobbiwoz]

Sorry to read about problems.

Since October 1 st, I have used my MB for 22 days without problems, and it's still working.

 

[a742246]

I had similiar problems (November) as the op but I was lucky. Fearing that the magic bands would not work I always had my AP card, room key card, and credit card with me. Each night when we got back to the resort I would
go to the front desk and tell them the band wasn't working. It took them 3 tries (nights) to get it to work. Total lost time was about 45 minutes.

Do they still give you a room key card anymore?

 

[Tink Fans]

Oh that is awful and very sorry to hear about your experience. I was worried about the same things happening since it was relatively new and I only started researching a few months before. We were at BW 6 days and BC for 4 days and used the same bands for 10 days (even though they sent two sets) and thankfully no problems at all. We had our tix linked, dinner reservations and FP+. Earlier on I did have some problems setting up the FP+. On December 30th we left AK about 9:30 a.m. and while on the bus to MK logged onto the
APP to change some FP+ with no problems. However, we found if you tried to change them later in the day when all FP were done, you could not (this was at Epcot for popular ones Test Track and Mission Space). We just worked with what we had. I never took my band off -- wore it in hot tubs, pools, steam room, sauna the whole time.

All in all my family really thought it was great (although if we had those problems we would feel very frustrated with the whole process too!) and I put them away and we'll see how they work for the next trip.

 

[Sur]

Just the title made me laugh!

 

[wiigirl]

Just the title made me laugh!

Me too

 

[DeeCee735]

I was lucky on my October trip with no problems at all. Went back in November with DH, each of us with new bands(Disney suggest getting a different band for each trip, according to the CM I spoke to, while still working out the bugs). New bands didn't work so great. He was really ticked off at the amount of time we spent trying to work out the bugs. Disney is an expensive vacation and we certainly don't need to be wasting our precious vacation time waiting for them to figure things out.

We had to have the bands reset or something like that twice in the first two days of our trip.

Hopefully we don't have this nightmare again in February, with yet again new bands! We're starting a collection already....frustrating! I like the plastic cards much better, even though being able to book 3 FP in one day is nice with the new bands.

That being said....being that we are a large party for February trip, trying to book FP together for this upcoming trip just didn't go as smoothly. MS had to be called three times, each with a 20 minute+ wait, to work out whatever bugs 3 of our party had with linking their bands to MDE. Yikes already!
Hopefully this "beta" stage and all these bugs will be settled quickly!

Just our two cents

 

[corpcomp]

I was lucky on my October trip with no problems at all. Went back in November with DH, each of us with new bands(Disney suggest getting a different band for each trip, according to the CM I spoke to, while still working out the bugs). New bands didn't work so great. He was really ticked off at the amount of time we spent trying to work out the bugs. Disney is an expensive vacation and we certainly don't need to be wasting our precious vacation time waiting for them to figure things out.

We had to have the bands reset or something like that twice in the first two days of our trip.

Hopefully we don't have this nightmare again in February, with yet again new bands! We're starting a collection already....frustrating! I like the plastic cards much better, even though being able to book 3 FP in one day is nice with the new bands.

That being said....being that we are a large party for February trip, trying to book FP together for this upcoming trip just didn't go as smoothly. MS had to be called three times, each with a 20 minute+ wait, to work out whatever bugs 3 of our party had with linking their bands to MDE. Yikes already!
Hopefully this "beta" stage and all these bugs will be settled quickly!

Just our two cents

Actually one of the issues they said early on was that I had a separate DVC account and a separate My Disney Experience account. One had my first name in the user section - Ron, and the other had Ronald. They said that messed up the system and could not combine the accounts without losing data, which they claimed was the reason my APs were deactivated when they did combine the accounts just before we arrived. So I started feeling that its all my fault. But after that, nothing worked well.

 

[edith76]

We were part of the experiment and our experience was just as bad. Luckily we only tried to buy ice cream at MK and husband had cash to pay. We did have pins set up but they were erased. One day at Studios the Parking attendant insisted my PAP was expired even though she could read the date on it. On one of the phone calls I was told to scan with my iPhone to fix the PAP problem with MB. Used my itouch first ... it killed the app. Then I stupidly tried with my iPhone. also killed the app. Couldn't reinstall app because gadgets insisted it was already there. At this point I gave up with Disney tech support and fixed what I could myself with my laptop. Don't even ask about the fp or fp+. We left for a week and returned to Disney for a few days. Magic Bands worked fine this time. Got fp for wishes, paid for dinner at ohana - no problems.

We did waste a lot of time with the magic bands but for us this was a 6 week vacation with no set plans so it just a new Disney experience. Really feel badly for someone who had their plans messed up by this.

 

[jco_direwolf]

Went thanksgiving week, and sounds like my experience, stayed at SSR. Although I was in much better humor about it. Because out of 5 bands, we had some Random set work on the door each night. It was really very funny, I kept telling people I was taking prop bets on the door.

Every night I walked over to Check-in (THANK Goodness, I was in the springs.) And got them to "add" the missing bands bck to our doors. (2br lock-out) infact some bands would work on one door but not the other one night, then both doors the next night (with no changes) then neither door the next night.. etc.. I was looking for a pattern and didn't see any.

My Son's band didn't work to get him into the park.

The two times I tried to use my band to pay for something it was a fail. I did set up a PIN and knew about it. So that wasn't element of my story.

BUt the system (which I believe is called LIlo) has in 2 trips never kept my band working the whole time on the doors.