Santa at Disney Springs and memory maker

[sysoph]

Hello all! We are staying outside of WDW for the first few days of our vacation to go to Legoland and Seaworld...I'd like to the the kids to visit Santa at Disney Springs. I have 2 questions...can we go to Disney Springs the day before we check in to Disney? Can we use memory maker before check in? According to the website your pics are included if you have memory maker, but I wasn't sure if we would be able to use it since we will not have checked in yet and I wasn't sure how it activated.

Thanks!