Should you deactivate MB?

[GrumpyFamilyof5]

1. If you have purchased tickets/passes, you can link them to your MDE account right now, today. That way, you can make also make advance FP+ reservations.
It also means that your MBs will be ready to access all of your tickets at the park gates.

2. No.

If you have Annual Passes, you will need to go to any ticket booth of Guest Relations to
activate them, but they will already be linked to your MDE.

awesome, so glad! So the MB I have I can continue to use all year then? Thx!

 

[Robo]

awesome, so glad! So the MB I have I can continue to use all year then? Thx!

Yes.

The specs on MBs call for their internal batteries to last for 2.5 to 3 years.
No MBs have been around that long, so we don't know anything yet.

Regardless, even when the internal batteries die (they are not replaceable) the MBs will still work just fine for park entry, FP+ entry, charging to resort rooms, and opening resort room doors.

The batteries are only needed for "distant" effects, such as automatically triggering the
on-ride photos and videos on attractions that offer them.

 

[magicaldisney]

One poster stated that she kept them activated so she could coordinate her magic band with her outfit to match every day.

Ahhh, a Disney geek after my own heart!

 

[ajfd]

We are up to almost 10 Magic Bands a person listed on MDE plus a couple of cards. Should we deactivate some of them? I thought I read about the system sometimes having issues trying to "read" through all of your MB.

Is there a way you can tell which ones are the oldest?

I also show 2 room keys and an expired AP card pass on MDE. I am assuming I can deactivate all of these as they are old.

Once you deactivate a band can you reactivate it later?

Yes, you should deactivate bands that you will not be using and old cards. We had several issues on our trip last week that were only solved by deactivating most of the bands / cards. As a family of four with 5 family trips and 2 parent-only trip in the last two years, we have close to 50 bands / cards between us in the system.

We had issues checking into BLT, then issues the next day, then issues when we moved to AKV. It wasn't until we deactivated all but one band and our APs that the problems went away.

All in all, it wasn't that bad. I think I spent a total of 90 minutes across several days at concierge. Not optimal, but they did upgrade us to a 2br instead of a 1br at BLT and at AKV they gave us 3 "any time" FP+ ... in both cases I didn't ask for anything nor was I upset, they just said "Here you go ... thanks for being patient."

 

[philharmagic fan]

Lol! I hear ya, but Boardwalk really had a very hard time and we were late for dinner over this - very frustrating. Their manager told us "you come too much." Really - I'm not even kidding. I even told them to stop sending them to me, but said they couldn't. Boardwalk had 4 new gray bands waiting for us at check-in. Even those gray ones didn't work!!

Then, we went to BLT and again, same problem. When he deactivated all of our bands, everything worked fine for that trip. I will see again soon!!

We go about 6 times per year and have accumulated several bands per person. Now we don't bother customizing ahead of time, take a couple of old ones with us, and decline the gray ones they offer at check-in. On a visit last fall, the check-in cast member at Grand Floridian suggested that it might be helpful to deactivated a few and did it for us in about 5 minutes while we waited.

 

[Missyrose]

We have 9 bands apiece and use them all on most trips. Just make sure to try the band on the resort door and if it doesn't open the door, take it to the front desk so they can reattach it properly to your MDE account. No need to deactivate any.

 

[PeasandCarrots]

I always deactivate all except the ones we are using on the trip (one per person). Yes you can reactivate it at any time with MDE. I do carry a "spare" set with me in case something goes wrong/gets lost, etc. and that way I know I can activate them on MDE if needed.