Memory Maker- Is it Worth it?

[aprilbabes]

My Disney vacation photos have always been a priority and my favorite souvenir from the trip. I take lots of pictures! I do take advantage of the photographers, but always ask them to use my camera and it's never been an issue.
A friend of mine (who is also a photographer herself) said she got MM on her last trip and loved it.
I'm still unsure if it's worth the money though. I always found many of the photographers to be a little on the amateur side and found that you have to get lucky to find someone good.
Can anyone share their experiences with MM- positive and negative. Tia!

 

[bbak30]

We didn't get it for our trip last April and it was just the 4 of us. Honestly we didn't miss it.
We did get it for our October trip when there were 11 of us and we LOVED it.
I wouldn't pay that much for just my little family of 4, but I would get it for a big group again. It was awesome that it included ride photos!

 

[godders]

I've gotten it on my last two trips and really enjoyed having all the ride photos and the magic shots. I'm a photographer myself so I come home with thousands of my own photos but sometimes it's nice to be in front of the camera too. Also my camera is big and have often found that people trying to use it at character meals for example can't even use it when it's in point-and-shoot mode.

If you go to WDW regularly and it isn't out of your budget I would definitely recommend it to at least try once. I ended up with an extra 300 or so photos once I'd added borders and such. I will just also say that my last trips have been over the Halloween parties so the special magic shots from those are an extra bonus.

I was recently at Disneyland and didn't have their version (a buy on the day photopass) and missed automatically knowing I was going to have some photos of the family on rides and such.

 

[ENJDisneyFan]

We loved having it on our last trip. The best part for me was having the whole family in the pics, which normally is difficult unless you constantly ask someone to take pics for you. I thought it was well worth the money. If you are traveling with a group and can split the cost, even better!

 

[Shellyb84]

We love it. We're bad about forgetting to stop and take photos with our camera, but we would walk by a photopass photographer and stop for a quick photo. It was nice to not have to dig the camera out of the bag. The best part is getting photos at places like BBB, JTA, etc. I like to enjoy the moment without being behind a camera. Also, my dad and I got picked to be part of the performance at Hoop De Doo and they got some good shots of that too. It's fun to have the ride photos, which is something we would never purchase on their own.

 

[asbyrneva]

We get it because:
I'm usually never in a shot cause I'm taking pictures,
get the ride photos
and magic shots and videos & anipated photos.

Yes they may not be the most professional shots ever but they are still good clear photos that capture a lot of shots I never would get cause I'm in the moment. Basically the rule of thumb is somewhere around 10 photos, if you think you would have 10 individual photos that your would like to buy then the memory maker is worth it.

I always recommend it for first trip, we didn't get it our first trip and I regret not having it.

 

[rsagusti]

I'm a photographer and I love the memory maker. If only for the bonus pictures to expand the album I make from our trip and the ride pictures. the ride videos are also awesome. I honestly don't even bring my 'big' camera anymore, I'll bring a gopro and just enjoy our trip and not have to be 'on duty'. Yes the pictures are mostly 'crap' technically but they capture the moments and they are fine for a family album. plus if you get extra magic (last year we got picked to be in the SWW parade) you get a lot of pictures from the parade photographer.

 

[efam]

My profile picture is from a Disney photographer...you should have seen my version of the same picture!!
I only bought 3 must-have pictures from our last trip, which cost me $45. I still can't justify the full cost of Memory Maker. I got a letter in the mail about it yesterday and I still can't decide. I don't have too much longer until we go!

 

[msmama]

My answer as to worth is always a question - what are you going to do with the photos after?

Are they going to sit on your computer and you'll look back at them occasionally? I totally don't think it's worth the price tag! Are you going to make a photo book or print out pictures? Then perhaps it's worth it.

I make a photobook from each of my trips so it's worth it to me. The only photos of my son and I (we're usually the only 2 travelers) together (other than selfies which aren't great - it's hard to get the castle plus two people with a foot height difference in a good selfie) are taken by the photopass folks. We're also big fans of the magic shots! We ask EVERY photographer we see if they have magic shots.

I actually don't take a camera into the parks anymore. It's a bit too cumbersome when it's just the two of us so I just use my phone for pictures which are...fine (but nothing great usually).

Some pictures are just OK. Frankly they're never going to be great because no matter what you're going to have people in the background of your photos but the people would be there whether you took the picture or someone else did. I've only ever had a few (and I've used Photopass A LOT) where the pictures were bad enough as to be unusable (bad settings or something). I've also met the occasional photographer over the years that will really spend some time with you to get some awesome shorts (my best luck with this has been in World Showcase).

 

[njmousefest]

I went for it this year in an effort to leave the DSLR at home with one less bag full of lenses. Will still carry a small point & shoot in a pocket, but trying to go bag free this year.

 

[Squggl3]

I love MM, we have it with our annual passes, but we also have always bought it when we didn't have APs. We have a family group of 25 people going in April and last time we all went we had over 1,000 photos without all the borders.

 

[Jadyreen1282]

We got a couple of videos last time. We got over 300 pictures. Some were family photo quality and ended up as gifts and Xmas cards.

 

[BuckeyeBama]

The problem with MM - they are all posed pictures, and they are very repetitive. We get it every few years, but much prefer the impromptu picture that we take of one another when no one knows that their picture is being taken. That is the true "magic" caught forever. The good moments and the bad, they remind us of who we are, not just where we are.

 

[_Sarah_]

I love it because the photographers will take so many pictures with their cameras, but (in my experience) will only take a couple on your camera. With just a few exceptions, the quality of their photos are much, much better than I can get with my point & shoot (I hate lugging my DSLR around the parks). Our son is 2.5 now, and the photographers are so patient and several times have spent quite a bit of time working with us to get great photos of him.

The first time we bought memory maker was when we took our son for his first trip. We really thought we would be fine taking our own pictures, so we skipped buying it in advance. The photographers took awesome photos of our character meets on their cameras, and the ones the attendants took on our camera were awful. We ended up buying MM at full-price that trip and have bought it every trip we take with him since then. If it's an adults-only trip, we don't buy it though.

 

[Heidi K]

We love Memory Maker! I think it's best if you have a longer trip, a lot of people, or you're doing Jedi Training/Enchanted Tales with Belle/Pirate Experience/character meet & greets. Our trips have tended to fall into all of those categories. Also, as someone posted above, we make actual photo albums after the trip and the whole family loves looking through them.

 

[Smbmoyers]

I plan on it 100 percent. As a mom I want to be in the pictures of my family. Not behind the lense and missing out. Going through our pictures of other family vacations I'm missing from all of them. Not this time y'all! Makes the $$ worth it for our week of disney!

 

[walker0829]

Bought it last year, and I can count on one hand how many times I've looked at the pictures after loading them to my hard drive...

 

[Mikie]

The problem with MM - they are all posed pictures, and they are very repetitive. We get it every few years, but much prefer the impromptu picture that we take of one another when no one knows that their picture is being taken. That is the true "magic" caught forever. The good moments and the bad, they remind us of who we are, not just where we are.

Interestingly, one of the reasons I recommend it is the exact opposite of this statement! You can hand your own camera to a photog, but that's when they'll only take your one or two posed, "say cheese" moments. When we've done MM, the photog at character meets is snapping away and we get lots of good shots of the interaction and not just the pose. I suppose that is specific to character meets, though - throughout the park, the photogs do just wait till you're posed.

MM is also very beneficial if you do Enchanted Tales, Jedi Training, Pirates League, or BBB where they take a LOT of pictures of the whole experience.

Other "exclusive" reasons to get it: ride photos, videos, magic shots, stickers and borders you can add with Disney's software. none of these can be replicated with your own camera.

Even though I love MM (especially for larger families or groups), I'd always still bring my own camera for lots of candids and pics from resort time.

 

[disneyfav4ever]

We got it for our last trip and loved it! And unlike a previous poster, not all the pictures were posed, and there were some beautiful candid shots.

 

[SnipsNSnails]

For a longer trip, yes. If there are more than one family group, yes. My parents and I split the cost. We had tons of photos. The shots from JTA alone were worth it. Getting the ride photos are fun too. I hate the user interface for Photopass though. My mom takes tons of photos but at character meets etc she doesn't bother to pull out the camera. Wish she would have with Chewie as the photographer didn't use the flash or something. But my photoshop skills improved them some but they are still really bad. When we have MM, we make it a point to stop and have them taken. My parents got silver APs and went back to AK last week and were able to still use the MM which was nice too. So we got plenty of use out of it.