Magicband Users: has anyone been able to activate their park tickets early?

[RalphinSC]

Just trying to iron out our itinerary for our June trip to WDW this year. In the past, we have been able to go to guest relations at Downtown Disney to get our park tickets a day or two prior to checking in onsite for our "official" vacation and start using our WPFAM allotments.

Just checking to see if any of the Magicband users who have received bands in the mail for their packages have been able to use an entry entitlement before their actual check in date. We will be heading down a day early again this year and might want to drop into Disneyquest if our bands will allow us to start our 14 day clock and start using our entitlements before we check in at Pop the next day.

Any reports?

 

[Robo]

Just checking to see if any of the Magicband users who have received bands in the mail for their packages have been able to use an entry entitlement before their actual check in date.

Yes.

 

[RalphinSC]

Yes.

Thanks Robo! Just what I wanted to hear!

 

[zimaaaaah]

Very interested to learn how to do this. I asked that question to Disney reservations earlier tonite. The CM put me on hold and came back to say no. We wanted to add a single day room only reservation for the day before a six night package with 7 day ticket and wanted to activate the day of the single night reservation.

 

[Robo]

1- Very interested to learn how to do this.

2- I asked that question to Disney reservations earlier tonite. The CM put me on hold and came back to say no.

3- We wanted to add a single day room only reservation for the day before a six night package with 7 day ticket and wanted to activate the day of the single night reservation.

First off, if you are adding a room-only reservation at a DISNEY resort,
you will be issued another set of MagicBands for that added night's stay, so
there's no need to even worry about that.
(Your multiple sets of MagicBands will ALL work, so you can use either set
for the entire trip, if you'd like.)

1- You don't have to do anything special.

2- You'll find that the phone CM's are not good sources for
accurate park operations information.

3- Just make the room only reservation.
The MagicBand will allow you into the park on that added first day.
Quite likely you will be able to make advance FP+ reservations
for that "added" first day (by first dropping your FP+ for the current last day.)
After you arrive and have gone into a park, you can upgrade your park
tickets at any ticket booth or Guest Relations for $10.65 per ticket, per day.
After you add the day(s) to the tickets you can then make advance FP+ for the day(s)
at the end of the trip.

 

[zimaaaaah]

Thanks so much! I did not even think about getting the extra set of bands for the one night reservation.

 

[SpringBreak]

Robo,

I have 4 nights RO at one Disney resort followed by a package with tickets at another resort. The system will not allow me to make FP+ selections for the first four days.

I've also heard that my tickets will not be activated until the start of my second reservation unless I go to guest services. I heard that the magic bands are interchangeable, but they all link to your Mydisneyexperience account. If your MDE account has your tickets linked to a later stay, they won't be usable at a park until you get them activated at guest services.

Is this wrong?

 

[jeneric997]

We had a split stay in October with the second resort being the test resort for MB. While we couldn't do FP+ in advance we could do everything else- enter our room, charge, enter the parks and use the FP+ kiosk on the MB.

Disney told us none of this would work. Luckily, we were told by Robo and others that it was false information and tried anyway!

 

[vicki_c]

Robo,

I have 4 nights RO at one Disney resort followed by a package with tickets at another resort. The system will not allow me to make FP+ selections for the first four days.

I've also heard that my tickets will not be activated until the start of my second reservation unless I go to guest services. I heard that the magic bands are interchangeable, but they all link to your Mydisneyexperience account. If your MDE account has your tickets linked to a later stay, they won't be usable at a park until you get them activated at guest services.

Is this wrong?

There should be no need for activating tickets that are in your MDE account. That is why you can start using them early.

I have one set of tickets in my MDE and two room only reservations. I made FP reservations that cross both reservations at my 60 day mark (for the first stay) up to the 6 day limit because I have a 6 day ticket. My FP reservations currently cover 4 days in a row, then skip a day, then 2 more days.

 

[SpringBreak]

Vickie,

I think the difference is that my tickets are part of my room package. I'm telling you, I cannot find a way to book fpp for my first RO stay. All the fpp dates are blocked out until I get to the first day of my second reservation.

Believe me when I say that I would love to be wrong about this!

 

[rimomma66]

Vickie,

I think the difference is that my tickets are part of my room package. I'm telling you, I cannot find a way to book fpp for my first RO stay. All the fpp dates are blocked out until I get to the first day of my second reservation.

Believe me when I say that I would love to be wrong about this!

I would think you would need tickets added to MDE that cover those extra days. If the others are "Package" tix, then they may work off of that check in date. I could be wrong, but seems logical to me.

 

[vicki_c]

Vickie,

I think the difference is that my tickets are part of my room package. I'm telling you, I cannot find a way to book fpp for my first RO stay. All the fpp dates are blocked out until I get to the first day of my second reservation.

Believe me when I say that I would love to be wrong about this!

Well that stinks sorry to get your hopes up anyone, but you're right,I don't have tickets with a package.

 

[rcraw45425]

Don't mean to hijack but his is actually sort of tied. Can you activate the dining part at DTD guest services? We'll be arriving around dinner time and were hoping to use a QS at DTD since I think that Captain cooks' may be out of commission for our visit.

 

[SpringBreak]

Don't mean to hijack but his is actually sort of tied. Can you activate the dining part at DTD guest services? We'll be arriving around dinner time and were hoping to use a QS at DTD since I think that Captain cooks' may be out of commission for our visit.

I don't think you can use DDP credits until you check into the resort that has the dining plan added to your package.

 

[SpringBreak]

Well that stinks sorry to get your hopes up anyone, but you're right,I don't have tickets with a package.

No problem. This has been confusing for me to figure out. I think the situation is like this....While I do have tickets, they are considered part of my second reservation, like my DDP credits are. Just like I can't use those dining credits whenever I want, I can't use my tickets until I check in on THAT reservation or get them unlocked at a GS.

Unfortunately, I didn't think about this when I booked my trip. I thought, I have tickets, I can use them whenever I want. We leave March 1. I'll post back if we have any issues with all this. I'll try and get our tickets 3 days early. We will make AK our first day, where FPP isn't as important. Then hopefully, once the tickets are unlocked, well be able to make FPP selections for the remainder of our first RO reservation.

 

[Autumnslight]

We had this same situation in December. We did a split stay. The first 2nights were room-only, and the last 7 were a package with tickets and the dining plan.

When we arrived at our first park (Epcot) during the room-only reservation, we went to guest services, and the CM was able to activate our package tickets early. He warned us before he started that he probably could do it, but that sometimes there are problems when they try to do this, because the packages don't always play nicely in the system. If there were problems, we would actually have to go to our second resort to get the tickets activated. Luckily, he was able to get it done in only a few minutes. He did have to call our second resort though to make it happen.

As for the DDP, we were NOT able to use those credits until we actually went to the second resort and checked in. We tried to use them for lunch that day, and weren't able to. HOWEVER, we made sure that what we ordered was DDP eligible, paid for it via credit card, and kept the receipt. After we checked in to the second resort that night, we talked with the front desk, and they were able to take away the appropriate number of dining plan credits, and refund the amount we paid for the meal to our credit card. So, that's a work-around that will basically result in letting you "use" your credits before you actually check in. It'll ONLY work for the day of check-in for the package resort though, NOT before that.

For FP+, we also couldn't make FP+ selections ahead of time before the check-in date at the resort where we had the package with tickets. It wasn't a huge deal for us, as we had planned accordingly once we figured that out. As soon as the tickets were activated, I was able to go in and make FP+ selections with the MDE app.

NOTE: this is all irrelevant if you have tickets that are NOT part of a package. In that case, you can just use them whenever, no problem, so long as they're linked in MDE.

 

[awdwnut]

No problem. This has been confusing for me to figure out. I think the situation is like this....While I do have tickets, they are considered part of my second reservation, like my DDP credits are. Just like I can't use those dining credits whenever I want, I can't use my tickets until I check in on THAT reservation or get them unlocked at a GS.

Unfortunately, I didn't think about this when I booked my trip. I thought, I have tickets, I can use them whenever I want. We leave March 1. I'll post back if we have any issues with all this. I'll try and get our tickets 3 days early. We will make AK our first day, where FPP isn't as important. Then hopefully, once the tickets are unlocked, well be able to make FPP selections for the remainder of our first RO reservation.

Hello SpringBreak,

I have read a few different reports stating that people with package tickets were able to use their tickets via MB's prior to the package check in date without having to unlock them at GS. We are in the exact same boat as you are and are very interested to hear how your experience goes next month.

Have a great trip!!

awdwnut