This week's experience with magic band

[rayasmom]

Overall I was generally pleased with the magic band concept .
- it was nice not having to fumble to find my room keys and/ or park tickets.
- it was nice to know that we had guaranteed fast pass options. Many of the paper fast passes were gone this week shortly after park opening (toy story mania, test track, Soarin) So without the magic band there would have been no guarantee of getting to ride those headliners.
- the overall feel of this vacation was more laid back than years past. I have always been a "park Nazi" - so my kids were pleased with this change.

Some negatives
- the band came off my 21 year olds arm during space mountain. It wasn't a big deal to get it replaced, but he continually had problems at the FP kiosk. We had it looked at twice by 2 different CMs and they didn't know why he kept getting the "blue light". However they gave him a paper pass in case there were any difficulties.
- 3 FP are not enough. We continued to use the paper fast pass system in addition to our scheduled FP plus. I will NOT be pleased if at some point 3 is truly the limit.
- it absolutely sucks that you cannot schedule FP plus for different parks on the same day. One day this week we hit 3 parks in one day. That is definitely a flaw that needs to be resolved. We are hoppers and always will be.

Anyway - this was our experience this week. We had a great time.

 

[Dallas_Lady]

Thanks for the review. I am tentatively planning a Thanksgiving trip for next year. I've done Thanksgiving before and it was good, but the MB and FP+ have me nervous...

 

[roomthreeseventeen]

Can I ask how the MB fell off on Space Mountain? Was it too lose on him or was it not fastened correctly? Did you have to go all the way to Guest Services to replace it?

 

[wiigirl]

Thanks for the review.

 

[Happyjen27]

Thanks for the update.

We're going soon, and I think our pro/con list may be similar to yours. We will need paper FPs to do everything we want to do, but, I think that it's fun to have some things we don't have to "hustle" for.

I even have 3 sleep-in days scheduled this trip, last trip I had maybe 1. My 5 year old son thought that was too busy. That will be a vast improvement to know we can sleep in and still get the headliners at Epcot (I booked my FP+ before they tiered the rides).

Appreciate the review!!

 

[rayasmom]

The band was on correctly. He literally put his arm on the back of the seat to turn around and look at us before the ride started (at the seat latch check) and it came off. Yes - had to go to guest relations to get the band replaced.

 

[quest4dl]

I just booked for our March trip prior to reading details about the magic bands and fp+ and now I'm wondering whether it either makes sense to stay on resort (assuming they are going through with not allowing fp+ users to use the legacy system in addition to fp+) or a park hopper. I picked an Epcot resort and planned to get a hopper as we are likely to hop to Epcot for a bit every day and also DHS - but this plan may not work so well if FP+ is limited to one park.

 

[Pooh2]

We just got back today. It took us a bit to figure out the fastpass plus, but by the end of the week we figured out how to make it work for us.

On our Epcot day yesterday, we did not arrive until 11:30 and got 4 rides, the Christmas processional, sit down dinner and visited 5 of the storytellers in the World showcase.
The lines were really crazy but we breezed right through each one.

Our magic bands had problems entering the parks about 4 times each. They had someone on hand who came over and scanned or did something to it very quickly and we were on our way.

 

[MissStitch626]

Thanks for the review. It seems like your experience was very similar to ours (we were there 12th - 26th Nov). I felt there were a lot of positives about the bands and enjoyed knowing that I was guaranteed certain rides but I also felt that 3 is not enough and hated not having FP when hopping parks.

Sorry about the lost band! This was my biggest fear - I was constantly checking that my band was still there throughout the trip. Drove DH crazy checking his wrist every hour

 

[Brian_WDW74]

Per the Looking for the Live Report and Just Back Threads? sticky thread, I have moved this to the Disney Trip Reports board.

 

[curemyreed]

Thanks for sharing your experiences with MB and FP+.