waste of money?...

[familymemories]

I looked into it BUT....I thought it was priced high. I wanted to spend the money somewhere else for our upcoming August 2015 trip.

 

[disnat]

I too looked into Memory Maker, but I always figure if the price is more than it would cost to buy a nice point and shoot digital camera, then it's not worth it. I've gotten so many wonderful and unique photos just by placing my camera on top of a trash can and using the timer. That way, everyone still comes out!

 

[disney2014plan]

Again, worth it if you want a lot of ride photos (and some unique short videos like 7DMT), and/or one of you always takes the pictures.

Like all the other things in Disney it's not a make-or-break thing - if you think it's overpriced, then don't buy it.

 

[GaSleepingBeautyFan]

I think it depends on how many pictures you think you will take of the whole family. I've always gotten it even for my solo trips because I made sure to stop at lots of photographers and also asked for magic shots when I could.

Now that I've gotten alot of the magic shots I want I knew I wasn't going to mess with having photopass photographers take many pictures of me. Add in the price increase, I chose not to get it on my April trip. I also had the photographers take pictures with my camera. After getting home and checking the pictures taken with my camera vs. the photopass ones, I will be buying 5 pictures from Disney and that's it.

Mostly because those 5 had issues when taken with my camera (blurry because the photography didn't give it a second to let it focus before snapping the picture on several and not framed correctly on several others that I really wanted. Plus one is a magic shot I didn't have and didn't know about so that was cool.

Buying those 5 pictures to download is much cheaper than paying for the complete memory maker download.

 

[gunderda]

We are only going to be at disney for 2 days in the parks (no character meals planned as of yet) so my plan is to go and try to use the cast members as much as possible, but I will also have my DSLR and a gopro. So in the end I will see how many photos we actually had taken with the disney pictures and then pay for it later. I just fear with only being their 2 days we won't get many taken. And I'd like to see the quality before we purchase it.
I'm just not super outgoing so I hope I can muster up the courage to ask for them to take our pictures a lot.

 

[Lucius Best]

It definitely looked expensive to me, we've never purchased any photo product before. But I was going with extended family on our most recent trip, so we split the cost. One thing that was nice was the automatic inclusion of ride photos on rides like Splash, Space Mountain, Everest, and the videos from 7DMT.

 

[cadawson]

It used to be worth it several years ago. However, now there do not seem to be as many photographers floating around, especially at Epcot. We had some beautiful photos from 2009-10 on World Showcase. Couldn't find photographers last summer! Got free MM as AP discount, so glad I wasn't out $.

 

[knieves711]

I had it last June and it was soooo worth it!! We ended up with over 200 pics by the time they were all downloaded and we added different borders to different ones. Plus we didnt have to worry about a camera, batteries, memory cards, etc..

 

[Hockeygirl21]

We just got back on Friday and I was not impressed with the memory maker -- it was hard to find the photographers in the parks and when we did there was always 6-10 families in line to get there pictures taken. We only did two rides where we got photo pass pictures taken but it was nice to have it for the character meet in greets.

 

[Sherri8806]

My husband cannot take a picture no matter what so I'm always the one taking the photos....and I'm never in them except selfie shots. So to me? It is beyond worth it.

Haha, I thought my husband was the only one! No matter what when he takes a pic something is wrong with it, drives me crazy not being able to be in the picture if I want it to be good I have to take it lol.

 

[Caede]

Memory Maker has always been worth it for my family of 6. We do meals, character meets, rides and lots of random walking-around photopass shots. Memory Maker allowed us to focus on having fun, being in the moment and not having to worry about composing pictures all the time. I constantly see people trying to wrangle their kids and take pictures and no one is having a good time. At least if I'm relying on photopass photographers, I just have to worry about wrangling my kids - not taking the picture, too. I love photography as a hobby, but Disney parks are not where I'm going to practice artful amateur photography. I see people walking around with their DSLRs and think "Stop being behind the camera, be with your family and friends."

Our last trip in September, we had something like 500 photos on Memory Maker. I wish Disney would offer a 'memory maker' option for APs. I would pay stupid amounts of money to be able to use that as an AP holder now.

tl;dr: Totally worth it. Would pay a lot to get it added to my AP now.

 

[Dis703]

We find it worth it. Some trips we don't get a lot of great pics but on our most recent trip we got a ton of awesome photos. Including lots of ride pics and videos that were so great to have. Like our twins first ride on 7DMT! We went on that one a lot and the pics are just priceless.

We had a lot of great family photos and some awesome candid ones as well. There was a photographer in the Monsters Inc playground at Epcot and he even got down on the ground to take action shots of my boys climbing and playing on the equipment.

We also love the border and editing features.

 

[Eandbmom]

We thought it was a waste and didn't get it last year. We really regretted it. On our trip next year, I already budgeted it in.

 

[ReluctantDisaholic]

Definitely worth it for us. It's nice having pictures of all of us, and now that the ride photos are included, even better.

 

[Nancyg56]

That's interesting. I'm looking at getting MM for the first time for our next trip, because it will be our first trip with a kid. I think it will be nice to have Photopass photos of character meets and posed family photos, but I will have to remember to make sure we capture the candid moments as well! I don't want to miss those on DD's first trip.

We are going with the little family down the street and it is their first trip. We already bought it becasue my DD feels it is the best way to get shots of the girls and of all of us together.

We get it for a couple of reasons.
Without it I'm never in a picture.
My Wife can't take pictures of people without cutting their heads off. (With the camera)
With MM no one asks If I went along for the vacation, and everyone gets to keep their heads.

LOL! Yep, that is me!

 

[UncleMike101]

We are going with the little family down the street and it is their first trip. We already bought it becasue my DD feels it is the best way to get shots of the girls and of all of us together.




LOL! Yep, that is me!

We just returned from a week at WDW and we have 243 MM pics.
And I'm in them!!!
My Wife also took a bunch of pictures and movies with her phone.
I took my Fuji FinePix camera but it wouldn't turn on because the Temperature/humidity sensor is too blasted sensitive.......
It worked fine when the ambient temperature was below 85 degrees but it was in the mid-upper 90's every day with high humidity.

 

[elaine amj]

I got in on a MM share - so split the cost with a few other families. That makes it cheap enough that it's a no-brainer for my family.

Now they've got me hooked....I might even pay full price for it if I can't share with other families. I like it so much. And I'm a notorious cheapskate!

 

[MmmSuite]

I got 900 photographs, so it was good for us!

 

[MrsNesbet]

We absolutely LOVE MM!!!! we would NOT go without it. Last trip (8 days in the parks) we had over 1000 pics and we are not stopping every two minutes to take pics either. there are a ton of photographers around to take pics and they turn out so good. It's rare we've had a blurry shot. We also log on the site each night to make sure our pics are on our account. Twice (in 3 trips) we were missing a few and they were found in an hour!!! (this is key to check your account each night!) Our kids are only this age once so we love all the ride photos, ADR photos, etc.

We love it so much that this year we are going with DH's entire extended family (all who have either never been to disney or not in the last 20 years) and we offered to cover the cost of MM because it's that important to us. I am surprised the number of people who will shell out thousands for a trip yet balk at $160 to preserve the memories of that trip. We have the pics blown up all around the house, use them on our holiday card, they are priceless!!!!

I am thrilled they linked them with magic bands now because it's so much easier!!! The kids love to be the one to get their band scanned!! MM is my first tip to tell others when they head to disney!!!

 

[ChimCher-ee]

After reading this and other discussions, I decided to try it for our upcoming trip. I really want to break myself of that annoying habit--you know, the one where you say, "Wait! That's adorable! Let me get my camera/phone out!" and you wrestle it out while your loved ones wait with frozen expressions, dreading one more shot. I always promise no more, I'm going to live in the moment...

So, I'm going to turn it over to MM. This year's album will be all ride pictures (which we never bought before), magic shots, and whatever characters we see (only planning Stitch and Hiro/Baymax this year). I will consider it worth the price if it frees me from my camera/phone.