Old Refillable Coke Freestyle Mugs... Will They Still Work??

[Elias1901]

Hey all,

Just wondering if it is worth for me to tote along my old RFID chip embedded refillable Coke Freestyle mug that I got at Universal Orlando (possibly in 2016 or 2018... I forget honestly). If I take it to a quick service and get them to reactivate it, will that work? Will it even save me any money doing so?? I can’t remember in exacting detail but I seem to recall that if you brought the cup back in subsequent days, the reactivation price was cheaper than if you were to buy the cup all over again for a day of refills.

Has the rules on the refillable Coke Freestyle stuff changed? Can you buy length of stay ones? I’m staying at Royal Pacific on our next trip... does that matter? Or is it still park-specific where you buy or reactivate them day by day? Do they have any crossover to the resorts, or have any refill stations there?

Any detailed info on this subject would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

 

[DRussell88]

As long as the RFID chip still works, you can reactivate it at the parks. It is cheaper than buying a whole new one and you can buy refills for what I believe is $10 per day. I have not heard anything about length of stay options.

Right now, they are not doing refill stations at the resorts. It is in park only, unless something has recently changed.

 

[Elias1901]

As long as the RFID chip still works, you can reactivate it at the parks. It is cheaper than buying a whole new one and you can buy refills for what I believe is $10 per day. I have not heard anything about length of stay options.

Right now, they are not doing refill stations at the resorts. It is in park only, unless something has recently changed.

Good to know! I just had a feeling they might try to personally refuse me from reactivating a cup with an older design on it (if they’ve changed it up). Mine was a blue and white cup with swirls and stars design with the two park logos on one side and the Coke Freestyle logo on the other...

 

[cschaaf]

We recently did just this. We had a 2018 HHN refillable cup that we were able to reactivate this past October. You'll save the price of the cup.

When we reactivated our, we asked them to activate for 3 days (the number of days we'd be in the parks) and they did that. The TM told us to keep the receipt and show it if we had an issue.

And issues we did have.

Immediately after the activation, we tried to fill them and both got errors. We want to another TM who said that we should have only activated them for a day at a time (but didn't really explain why). She messed around with both of them, handed me more receipts to keep track of, then had us try again. My wife's worked, mine did not.

She messed around with mine more, more receipts, and finally it worked. She did say that those 2018 HHN cups had always been a problem.

A few hours later, we tried to fill them again and this time, my wife was getting the 'no refills remaining' error. We stopped at a kiosk and the TM pecked around on the register. A manager walked by and the TM called her over to help. The manager pecked away for a few minutes, then told us to try again and it worked. More paperwork.

Day 2 - first fill attempt failed on both cups. A quick stop at a kiosk and the TM had us up and running. I think one cup worked and one didn't after the first try... then he got them both working. You guessed it, more receipts.

Day 3 - same issue in the morning. I felt like I was carrying my tax paperwork at this point.

Overall, we still felt it was worth it. It helped that we were in the parks early and tried the first fill up before lunch crowds started to build. If we had to stand in a long line for the activation issues each day, that would have been a lot more frustrating.

Hopefully our issues were because of that particular cup.

 

[Elias1901]

We recently did just this. We had a 2018 HHN refillable cup that we were able to reactivate this past October. You'll save the price of the cup.

When we reactivated our, we asked them to activate for 3 days (the number of days we'd be in the parks) and they did that. The TM told us to keep the receipt and show it if we had an issue.

And issues we did have.

Immediately after the activation, we tried to fill them and both got errors. We want to another TM who said that we should have only activated them for a day at a time (but didn't really explain why). She messed around with both of them, handed me more receipts to keep track of, then had us try again. My wife's worked, mine did not.

She messed around with mine more, more receipts, and finally it worked. She did say that those 2018 HHN cups had always been a problem.

A few hours later, we tried to fill them again and this time, my wife was getting the 'no refills remaining' error. We stopped at a kiosk and the TM pecked around on the register. A manager walked by and the TM called her over to help. The manager pecked away for a few minutes, then told us to try again and it worked. More paperwork.

Day 2 - first fill attempt failed on both cups. A quick stop at a kiosk and the TM had us up and running. I think one cup worked and one didn't after the first try... then he got them both working. You guessed it, more receipts.

Day 3 - same issue in the morning. I felt like I was carrying my tax paperwork at this point.

Overall, we still felt it was worth it. It helped that we were in the parks early and tried the first fill up before lunch crowds started to build. If we had to stand in a long line for the activation issues each day, that would have been a lot more frustrating.

Hopefully our issues were because of that particular cup.

Wow! Sorry to hear about all those hiccups, but good to know they are willing to reactivate older cups. Though, mine could quite possibly be from 2016... but it seems like that shouldn’t matter.

It would be good if we could avoid the hiccups you guys experienced though. We are going to be in the Universal parks (and Volcano Bay, do they have machines there too? Do they cross over with same day refills in the theme parks too, if so?) for 3 full days. Should we be activating day by day only? Or would you suggest us to give activating the 3 days a try? Not sure if it’s an anomaly with your cups...

 

[NMK62303]

We brought old ones back this most recent trip a few weeks ago and did not have any issues - but we did activate day by day. Interesting that the day went a full 24 hours - one day my daughter and I were in the US side for early hours and the cup was still "active" from the day before, but later when we all went back we had to activate it again.

 

[cschaaf]

Wow! Sorry to hear about all those hiccups, but good to know they are willing to reactivate older cups. Though, mine could quite possibly be from 2016... but it seems like that shouldn’t matter.

It would be good if we could avoid the hiccups you guys experienced though. We are going to be in the Universal parks (and Volcano Bay, do they have machines there too? Do they cross over with same day refills in the theme parks too, if so?) for 3 full days. Should we be activating day by day only? Or would you suggest us to give activating the 3 days a try? Not sure if it’s an anomaly with your cups...

I'm not really sure what is best. Doing the 3-day activation really didn't help us, but it also didn't hurt. Had we done 1-day activation, we would have had to stop at a kiosk every day to activate... we ended up doing that anyway. With multi-day activation, at least there was a chance that we wouldn't have to stop at a kiosk. Never worked out, but didn't really cost us anything - other than having to hold on to a bunch of receipts.

The age of your cup shouldn't really matter - but I do wonder what would happen if your RFID tag was unreadable for some reason. Would they replace the cup? Worst case, you'll have to buy a new cup, so trying your old one won't hurt.

I haven't been to VB, so I'm not sure about that.

 

[FoodieFriend]

We recently did just this. We had a 2018 HHN refillable cup that we were able to reactivate this past October. You'll save the price of the cup.

When we reactivated our, we asked them to activate for 3 days (the number of days we'd be in the parks) and they did that. The TM told us to keep the receipt and show it if we had an issue.

And issues we did have.

Immediately after the activation, we tried to fill them and both got errors. We want to another TM who said that we should have only activated them for a day at a time (but didn't really explain why). She messed around with both of them, handed me more receipts to keep track of, then had us try again. My wife's worked, mine did not.

She messed around with mine more, more receipts, and finally it worked. She did say that those 2018 HHN cups had always been a problem.

A few hours later, we tried to fill them again and this time, my wife was getting the 'no refills remaining' error. We stopped at a kiosk and the TM pecked around on the register. A manager walked by and the TM called her over to help. The manager pecked away for a few minutes, then told us to try again and it worked. More paperwork.

Day 2 - first fill attempt failed on both cups. A quick stop at a kiosk and the TM had us up and running. I think one cup worked and one didn't after the first try... then he got them both working. You guessed it, more receipts.

Day 3 - same issue in the morning. I felt like I was carrying my tax paperwork at this point.

Overall, we still felt it was worth it. It helped that we were in the parks early and tried the first fill up before lunch crowds started to build. If we had to stand in a long line for the activation issues each day, that would have been a lot more frustrating.

Hopefully our issues were because of that particular cup.

Hope you don't mind my question, but how much you pay to reactivate per day? I've seen older blogs that say it's $8.99+tax (even included a picture of the sign), but I thought I had heard it's been increased to $9.99+tax in 2020. I still think it's worth it to reactivate it. Were you able to fill your own mugs or did they have team members working the freestyle machines like they are doing at Disney? We loved that Icee refills were included with the freestyle soda!

 

[cschaaf]

Hope you don't mind my question, but how much you pay to reactivate per day? I've seen older blogs that say it's $8.99+tax (even included a picture of the sign), but I thought I had heard it's been increased to $9.99+tax in 2020. I still think it's worth it to reactivate it. Were you able to fill your own mugs or did they have team members working the freestyle machines like they are doing at Disney? We loved that Icee refills were included with the freestyle soda!

I don’t remember what we paid. I looked back at my credit card statement and, if I found the right charge, we paid $9.04 per cup per day - that included tax and with an AP discount. So the 8.99 sounds about right for our October trip.

You fill your own cup at the freestyle machines.

 

[keishashadow]

You fill your own cup at the freestyle machines

Surprised if they are allowing people to refill their own cups given covid situation

 

[cschaaf]

Surprised if they are allowing people to refill their own cups given covid situation

Seemed safe enough to me. They had antibacterial wipes so you could clean the screen before you used them.

If you went to a kiosk for a refill, they would fill a paper cup and give that to you, then you dump it in your mug.

Is that how Disney does it? Or do you have to hand your mug to a CM? If so, I'd rather clean the screen and fill it myself.

 

[FoodieFriend]

Seemed safe enough to me. They had antibacterial wipes so you could clean the screen before you used them.

If you went to a kiosk for a refill, they would fill a paper cup and give that to you, then you dump it in your mug.

Is that how Disney does it? Or do you have to hand your mug to a CM? If so, I'd rather clean the screen and fill it myself.

Disney has Cast Members at every Coke Freestyle machine filling paper cups with drinks & handing it to customers who show their Disney refillable mug. The RFID chip for activation is not scanned at the time of paper cup issue. Some CMs are asking for a receipt to show mug is currently active, but it is not consistent from reports on Disboards. Other CMs are telling guests they can have a photo of their mug to show CMs for paper cup refills so guests don't have to carry their mugs with them since the RFID is not being scanned which is NOT Disney policy & some people are confused.

I always thought the Freestyle dispensing was fairly clean because only the base of your mug touched the machine. I thought I saw that Coke was trying to modify the app where you didn't have to touch the Freestyle screen at all, just scan the QR code of the machine you want to use & you could choose/dispense by using your phone. Oops, i guess your mug also touches the ice dispensing bar too.

I definitely prefer to clean the screen & refill it myself.

 

[keishashadow]

If you went to a kiosk for a refill, they would fill a paper cup and give that to you, then you dump it in your mug.

A good alternative imo

 

[cschaaf]

A good alternative imo

It felt a little wasteful, but is the best option for filling at a kiosk. The only time we went to a kiosk was at night in City Walk. There are no Freestyle machines in CW and you have to pay for refills, but you do get a discount with the refillable mug.