Memory Maker, yes or no? Tell me your experience.

[krm222]

I am taking a group of 37 people, staying in 14 rooms. Can I add all of them as friends, and get all of their photos? Even their ride photos if I am not with them? The Disney site says that the 'owner' of the MM must scan their band within 24 hours to capture ride photos of their group. Is this true? It just sounds too good to be true!

We were a group of 9 with three different room reservations. As long as you are all Friends & Family on MDE the photos will show up. I was the owner and I never scanned my band for ride photos but they all showed up. It was a fun way to spy on our group: photos from a certain meet and greet would pop up and we knew where they were in the park!

 

[DisneyBabies]

I am taking a group of 37 people, staying in 14 rooms. Can I add all of them as friends, and get all of their photos? Even their ride photos if I am not with them? The Disney site says that the 'owner' of the MM must scan their band within 24 hours to capture ride photos of their group. Is this true? It just sounds too good to be true!

It's true ... as long as you are ll linked as friends and family in your MDE account.

@V2000 Here is what I wrote on another MM thread:

We have gotten it (and its predecessors) for every trip.

First off, I love the fact that I am actually in the pictures. That doesn't happen often in normal everyday life as I am usually the one holding the camera.

We also do as many magic shots as we can and the new video ones are really cute (especially Baymax at DHS - we're going to try to photobomb Baymax when we go back in April).

The ride photos are funny to us because we like to see DD1's face when she says she's having fun on the ride, but looks terrified!

If you do the BBB, Pirates Tutorial and Jedi Training Academy like we have done, all of those pics are included as well; and some of them are REALLY good.

The "roaming" photographers we have found were all really enthusiastic about getting fun pics for us and will pose us in different ways or in different places than the "in front of the castle" norm. Parents in the back, kids in the front, everyone leaning forward towards the camera; everyone jumping in the air together; the family standing together while one of the trains from 7DMT came down the track.

And we've found that if we let them know we have the MM, they tend to take more and varied shots.

Also, here are a couple of posts with pictures:

http://www.disboards.com/threads/memory-maker-what-do-you-love-about-it.3482223/reply?quote=55131765

http://www.disboards.com/threads/memory-maker-what-do-you-love-about-it.3482223/reply?quote=55131807

http://www.disboards.com/threads/memory-maker-what-do-you-love-about-it.3482223/reply?quote=55131841

Hope this helps.

 

[walker0829]

Bought it last September because the individual prints were like 15 each and my wife had about 45 pictures as favorites. Went through the pictures, thought they were pretty good, then haven't done a thing with them since. We kept saying we'd make a photo book via a 3rd party but then life just got in the way.

DS4 just looks through my saved iphone pics/videos. Of course, the iPhone could never capture the look of terror on his face going down Splash Mountain and on ToT...he'd probably laugh if he saw those now.

 

[DAlston4485]

We love Memory Maker and have purchased for all of our trips. Last trip (October 2014) my oldest (11 at the time) dressed up as Walt. A photographer spotted him and got so excited. He did a photo shoot of him different spots around the castle. We got tons of pics! It was so worth it!

 

[MrsHammer]

Are there ever photopass photographers at the resorts? We are staying at AKL and it would be great to get pics there of all us together instead of having to take the pics ourselves.

 

[North of Mouse]

Im in the minority. I don't get enough pictures to justify it.
First, I hate " posed" shots. They look phony. Especially the ones that have you do a fake emotion. Yuke.

Second I love "scenery" pictures. Space mtn, resort shots, Epcot ball at night tree of life. You get the idea, so I always have my dslr anyway. You dont get those shots with mm

I purchased 5 pictures total from my 10 day trip.

I agree! We love to take our own pictures, and not the 'canned' pictures everyone gets. The 7DMT video was neat, but that was the only one we would have gotten (the charge? $59 for just that one!).

My main complaint is the fact that now to get the AP, they MAKE you buy the MM - no, thanks, but we'll make our own decisions! No more AP's for us if that's what we have to pay to include the MM. Our current ones expire this month.
I take pictures so I can Photoshop and edit my own picks

 

[SaintsManiac]

I did not read all the replies, but speaking for myself it was worth it. It was first trip for DD5 and we met many characters. The magic shots were awesome, too. The best photographer was at AK. He really got us into it.

I had one printed on canvas and it's just gorgeous. I think if you plan to meet characters it's a must.

The ride photos are so fun! We would spend our time in line looking at the pictures from the day

 

[Stigsmom]

For us it was a huge NO. Got it because I thought my mom would adore getting the pictures, as we had a prior trip not getting them even though over a hundred came up for a weekend of 2 short park days. We were also doing 2 park days again but with more time at the parks and also character meals. We were sorely disappointed that there were no photos done at one of the meals and only got photos at the next meal after asking/complaining. At that point halfway through our trip we had had NO photopass taken except 1 on-ride pics!!! The photographers were either not available or swamped with huge lines of families (when we saw them, and that was only 2 near the same spot!)

I would never do it again. After everything we had around 30 photos mostly from the meal where we spoke up about the lack of photographers, and one character meet my daughter did where she got lots of attention for having a doll of that character. We could have handed our phones to staff and asked nicely for a snapshot at those places and saved our $. Even further, we would have thought to ask others to do so and gotten more pics overall instead of thinking we were getting tons of "photopass" that were never going to be.

Hope this helps- fyi this was week before Christmas 2015.

 

[colarey]

Very worth it for us, primarily because of Jedi Training and Enchanted Tales with Belle. If your kids do either of those shows (and actually participate in Enchanted Tales instead of watching), you'll get a lot of really great pictures. At JTA we had some surprisingly talented photographers, those pictures are really nice looking. The ride photos and videos were exciting to us too, because we have never once bought any ride photo on rides we've done at amusement parks. We did go out of our way to stop at most photographers that we saw but it never felt annoying to keep taking pictures. We had fun with it and ended up with a lot of pictures, of all of us mind you! Usually I'm missing from all of our photos so it was nice to have our whole family in them!