New magic bands or nah?

[k8pink]

I have a surprise birthday trip booked for my husband, staying at AKL. We already have magic bands linked to our MDE account, but I'm on the fence whether I should decline or take the ones we get for the resort stay. I thought it might be fun to customize his with a birthday message, and use it as part of the big reveal, but will that mess up access to our room on our existing bands in the event he wants to use his existing Pirates of the Caribbean band instead?

I guess the real question here is: Can we have more than one magic band work to unlock our room during our stay? Or will only the resort freebie work if I take them?

 

[WEDWDW]

As long as the previous MB is still "activated" on MDE,it will work.

 

[emmabelle]

I have over 10 bands and on our trip in July, they worked for the parks and memory maker, but I did have trouble with opening the room door. We were staying club level at WL so I had the cast member in the lounge fix them to work on the door. I really hadn't had a problem until this last trip. When we go in September I'm going to try all of them on the door and then go have any duds fixed. I need to match my bands to my outfits. haha

 

[Queen of the WDW Scene]

I never decline.
I figure I'm paying for it one way or another so I'm getting it.
Magic Bands are interchangeable so no nothing is going to get "messed up" although some people have reported if they have A LOT of active ones on their account they have issues. I have like 8 and no problem thus far.
You're not going to have a very long mmessage on the back. I think 10 characters is the limit as there's limited space and really only meant for a name.

 

[DisneyWishes14]

You can accept them and then just go into your MDE account, activate the ones you want to use on your trip and deactivate the others. I would suggest not having more than 2 MB's active or you may encounter issues unlocking your resort room door. At least I had that issue and the front desk CM said having many MB's active confuses the system.

 

[Malestrom Troll]

3 or 4 years ago we each had over 20 MBs linked to our accounts. That caused our new MBs to not unlock our door. Every year or so I deactivate old MBs in my account. I just keep it to my AP and new resort MBs.

 

[Canesfan3234]

3 or 4 years ago we each had over 20 MBs linked to our accounts. That caused our new MBs to not unlock our door. Every year or so I deactivate old MBs in my account. I just keep it to my AP and new resort MBs.

this. I've got 20+ bands linked on my account. I keep most if not all of them de-activated until I leave. I activate the ones I plan on using for that trip. No issues since starting this.

 

[Magical2017]

Just an idea, but I have decorated our bands with "skins" I got from Etsy. They stayed on the entire trip and were relatively inexpensive.

 

[Pmlocke]

I always get a new set of bands bacuase I figure I'm paying for it. The previous bands are marked with the year of the trip and placed in that trips scrapbook.

 

[bumbershoot]

I thought it might be fun to customize his with a birthday message, and use it as part of the big reveal

There are 9 tiny characters on the back for customization.

I figure I'm paying for it one way or another so I'm getting it.

Yep.

3 or 4 years ago we each had over 20 MBs linked to our accounts. That caused our new MBs to not unlock our door. Every year or so I deactivate old MBs in my account. I just keep it to my AP and new resort MBs.

I have nearly that many just on MY account, and I've had no issues.

Glitches can happen with just one linked. They like to blame it on multiple bands, but if it were a problem then it would be a problem for everyone. And it isn't.

 

[billy1]

We have just come back from Animal Kingdom Lodge and whilst there it was our daughter’s birthday. Instead of her name I had “birthday” on hers.

 

[Malestrom Troll]

There are 9 tiny characters on the back for customization.



Yep.



I have nearly that many just on MY account, and I've had no issues.

Glitches can happen with just one linked. They like to blame it on multiple bands, but if it were a problem then it would be a problem for everyone. And it isn't.

Well they were all active, I don't know if all of yours are active. This was years ago during a lengthy period were they were having major issues with MBs and MDE accounts and FPs. It likely has been resolved now but CMs will tell you do deactivate unused MBs since this used to be an issue. It wasn't fun spending 3 hours to get into our OKW room with multiple sets of new MBs the resort linked. Finally after the host called support they told us to deactivate all the old MBs and it magically worked.

 

[AngiTN]

3 or 4 years ago we each had over 20 MBs linked to our accounts. That caused our new MBs to not unlock our door. Every year or so I deactivate old MBs in my account. I just keep it to my AP and new resort MBs.

FYI - That doesn't do anything. I was told to mark them as lost. This will actually remove them from the available bands list (i.e. the active data base).
You can actually still use an inactive MB. As backwards as that sounds.

 

[AngiTN]

Glitches can happen with just one linked. They like to blame it on multiple bands, but if it were a problem then it would be a problem for everyone. And it isn't.

It's more than JUST multiple MB.
However, many MB can be one piece of the puzzle because having many MB usually means you have many trips which usually means many FP and many ADR and many resort reservations. All of which adds up to many hits to your MDE account and your account database size. All of that gets rather complicated to explain to folks so it's easy to say, watch the number of bands on your account because it's really rare for someone to have few bands but a whole lot of FP or ADR. Some local AP holders may, sure. But, based on personal experience with my account problems, it takes issues with all 4 areas, MB, FP, ADR and Resort Reservations, for you to have problems. Just 2, 3 won't do it.

 

[vinotinto]

We declined them our last trip in July 2018 and used the ones we had from our previous two trips in Oct 2016 and September 2017. They worked perfectly, and I figure less waste will eventually go into landfills.

 

[cwis]

FYI - That doesn't do anything. I was told to mark them as lost. This will actually remove them from the available bands list (i.e. the active data base).
You can actually still use an inactive MB. As backwards as that sounds.

This. I always deactivate the MBs I don't use, because i don't feel confident having “active” MBs in my hotel room. Who knows who enter the room when I'm not in there? Sometimes, I get to a park entrance using an inactive MB. When this happen, the CM always understands what is happening, raises his hand, and another CM with an iPad is able to re-activate the MB in just a few seconds, usually saying “oh I can see you have a lot of inactive MB, including this one, let me fix this for you”.

 

[happymommy]

The old ones tend to get faded a bit over time, so I always get a new one. I also bring a couple older ones along, as sometimes I want to coordinate color with what I'm wearing.

I'm taking a couple next trip (my AP one and another) since we're staying at the Dolphin. It will work for my ticket and FP+ at least, if nothing else.

 

[Jadyreen1282]

We collect them then sticker the crap out of them from that magic your band joint.